I have recently read three articles/opinions/editorials in the Washington Post espousing the view that the U.S. should open up immigration for Haitians to our country.  The general reasoning is that a Haitian making meager wages in the U.S. makes much more than they might make in Haiti and that the money they (the diaspora) send back to family/friends in country far exceeds that of the money contributed to Haitian relief effort from other countries, charities, and NGO’s.

• Debate grows in aftermath of quake: Should U.S. let more Haitians immigrate?
• To help Haiti’s earthquake victims, change U.S. immigration laws
• What Haiti needs: A Haitian diaspora

Unfortunately for the Haitians, and others in similar situations around the world whose countries have been devastated by natural disaster or unnatural disaster such as lack of government, business, and functioning civil society, the U.S is just not ready to allow for mass migration of disaffected individuals to the U.S.  While, according to certain pundits, such an evolution might not have as much impact on employment/unemployment as we would expect, we are not going to be able to convince heartland America of that.  While I would prefer to stay out of the political arena, it would be sure suicide for the current administration to open up the flood, or perhaps I should say, earthquake, gates to Haitian immigration.

Any suggestion of a job taken away from an American by an immigrant is going to be torn up in the conservative media and rightly so.  I consider myself a moderate independent and a humanitarian but until we get our house in order, our doors should be just barely ajar.  If we start opening up immigration to citizens of every failed state in the world we are setting ourselves up for disaster.  Where is it going to stop?  Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, D.R. Congo, Eritria, Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, etc?  The list goes on.  Maybe Cuba or Venezuela would be happy to open up to the Haitian invasion…

The U.S.  needs to get its own house in order and, though we haven’t had the “natural disaster” impact quite like that of the one that affected Haiti (though I would say Katrina was significant), we still have a long row to hoe before we can start letting the rest of the world eat of our harvest unconditionally.

According to the Washington Post article, “Legacy of a lost wolf,” dated 25 December 2009, by Betsy Karasik, Mexican gray wolves are one of the most endangered mammals in North America.  Despite a campaign by farmers, ranchers, and government agencies to eradicate the wolves, eleven of them were reintroduced to the wild in Arizona and New Mexico in 1998.

Unfortunately, ranchers have cattle on millions of acres of federal land in the West supported by government subsidies that cost the U.S. taxpayers 135 million dollars a year.  Apparently under an Agricultural Department program, we the taxpayers for the benefit of said subsidized ranchers, exterminate more than 100,000 carnivores deemed to be detrimental to the ranchers that we subsidize.   Animals exterminated include bears, wolves, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons and cougars using methods such as leg hold traps, aerial shooting and poisoning.

The article focuses later on a breeding wolf female who was shot, which is tragic.  What is more tragic is that the female and family were targeted for preying on livestock for which the ranchers are compensated.  Why should we kill a predator of livestock and then compensate the rancher for the death of said livestock?  If we, “the effing government,” are going to pay ranchers for livestock killed by an endangered species, what is the justification for killing the predator?