Will we be forced to follow Arizona?

As everyone knows Arizona recently passed its controversial law on immigration. Even though it has not gone into effect yet many immigrants currently living in Arizona are leaving to find day labor else where. They used to be abundant in the parking lots of hardware stores. Soon neighboring states to Arizona will have a dramatic increase in immigrant population. Recently in Houston an immigrant smuggling ring was uncovered and exposed. Given that they were here before Arizona passed the law, they will increase unless Texas takes a stand to stop illegal immigration. Due to Arizona's actions other states (Texas included)might be forced to enact similar laws, unless they can find another compromise. In the past Texas representatives have proposed similar but not identical bills to the floor, but they were defeated by the committee. I propose that, if the Arizona immigration law makes its way through the Judicial system and is found to indeed be constitutional, Texas will have a similar law on the floor for voting during the next gathering. Texas has a different relationship with its immigrant population, however with the influx in illegal immigrants and increase in crime rates we will be forced to enact laws. Many people claim that these laws are going to profile people that have dark skin, but the way I see it is, if we have tried everything else with no success then we must do what it takes. Fences have been built and they have been cut, jumped, or simply walked around. People have been deployed but they can only do so much at the border that they can't stop the entire flow of immigrants. Police driving by hardware store parking lots know that the vast majority of day laborers waiting for a job are illegal will finally be able to do something without the illegal immigrants using our laws and constitutions against us.

Blog stage 6 comment

I agree that marijuana does need to be legalized. Like you said, if it was legalized it would help our stance against the Mexican drug cartel. How many arrests have there been this year for alcohol related incidents? If Texas wants to defend its borders and take power away from the cartel they must legalize it to take away their supply powers as you said. What i fear is once it becomes a legal substance, all the cartels that are making illegal money off of it will start to move into the states illegally to produce a more potent form. Legalizing marijuana will save us billions in tax dollars that would otherwise be spent to prosecute individuals. But it will also create a new problem, that will require tax money to still be spent tracking down and eliminating illegal grow operations that will form. Given we won't spend as much as we currently are, we will still need to find ways to address the problem that will occur. California has Marijuana legalized and they are experiencing a lot of problems within their wildlife parks because illegal immigrants are starting to do guerrilla growing. Not only does this require them to destroy and chop down trees, they are polluting the environment with pesticides and other chemicals because they can't maintain their crops daily. The best start is to legalize marijuana but this won't solve all of our problems.

Mentor Masters

The author of this editorial set his sights on any adult that touches a child's life. The author talks about how adults working within mentoring programs help set good examples and help children to stay out of trouble. By using a local and now nationally known child within a mentoring program as their main focus they quickly struck to Texas hearts. This article helps push people into helping the youth in the nation by setting examples with leadership. Everyone knows about big brother/Big sister but not everyone thinks they can make a difference or help change anything. When this author showed how a little bit of effort can go along way they helped reopen doors for people and might have given someone something to do on a weekend. I fully agree with the author, especially the final paragraph, you might not be known nationally but you will forever change a life that might have been wasted. If more people were like this the world definitely would be a better place, but beggars can't be choosers.