30 Years

On June 30, 2005 there was a horrific crash that killed five people and injured five more. Two of the dead were children; one was a pregnant woman. The car was full of illegal aliens being smuggled into the U.S., but nobody was chasing the car -- the driver, probably nervous and frightened, passed on a blind corner and crashed head-on into a large pickup.

The driver of that car was Fidel Wilfredo Gonzales, who is 20 years old now -- and has just been sentenced to 30 years in prison on multiple counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon.

Gonzales is directly responsible for the horrors of that day. His actions, taken of his own free will, caused those deaths, injuries, and much consequent misery. He deserves that sentence, and arguably more.

But while he bears responsibility for his own actions, I believe our immigration policies bear responsibility, too -- not for his actions, but for creating the incentives for those actions. Gonzales was essentially in this game for the money, and the money was only there because these aliens could only immigrate here illegally. I don't know whether the aliens Gonzales was carrying wanted to come here to become Americans, or simply to take advantage of jobs or handouts available here for them. In either case, I believe our current policies are loony.

People who want to come here to become good Americans -- we should welcome them, plain and simple.

People who want to come here to take advantage of our generosity -- we should remove their incentive for doing so. Not by the utterly hopeless notion of "closing the border", but instead by being tough on employers who illegally hire them, and by stopping the government handouts and policies (such as free hospital care) that attract them.

Instead, we have our hopelessly ill-designed system of unachievable goals, conflicting incentives, and guaranteed human misery. The miserable story of Gonzales and his passengers is but one tiny piece, destined to be repeated over and over until and unless we chuck our current system out the window. Let's chuck it!