Aliens

I want to take a moment and talk about aliens. Not the little green men that have everyone in the UK talking, but rather foriegners who have entered the USA.

We have all heard the stories of people who entered the United States by obtaining a visa and then simply never left. (For the sake of clarity, I’ll call them “squatters”.) There’s a lot of hand-wringing in D.C. about how we can keep better track of the squatters. More specifically, how can we know if these people are conspiring to do us harm and how can we locate them when necessary?

I think we already have a good working solution to this problem. Twenty-seven states use gps-enabled bracelets to track parolees. (For the record, the states are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.)

The bracelets are small, secure, simple to maintain and even easier to administer/monitor. A company out of Tampa, FL called Pro Tech Monitoring runs the program and can track thousands of people within a few feet of their exact location at any moment.

So, what’s the problem with strapping a bracelet to every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mohamed that wants to come into the country? And don’t you dare answer it costs too much. Don’t you say it or I swear I will come through this monitor and just smack ya! If the monitor costs $200 and we give out the “legal” limit of 675,000 visas plus the “exception” limit of 480,000 family visas, the cost comes to roughly $231 million. That’s it.

I know this isn’t the solution for illegal aliens, but I gotta think this is a step in the right direction. I can appreciate that we’ve never done anything like this before, but doesn’t that kind of make you wonder what the heck we were thinking back then?

Anyway, this solution works for me. I’m interested in hearing what you have to say. Post your comments and email your elected officials.