Burning Atlanta

And, of course, they use the standard, "The sky is falling" argument about the economy. (yawn)

Cut off the incentives.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox's decision this week to prohibit illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses will not make Michigan safer, critics of his opinion argued.

Instead, it further will limit the number of agriculture and construction workers here and increase the number of unlicensed drivers on the state's roadways, they said.

"If you deny driver's licenses, then we'll have no information" about undocumented immigrants, said Andres Abreu, editor of El Vocero Hispano, a Spanish-edition newspaper in Grand Rapids. "That's no good for security."  What kind of silly ass argument is that? A pro-illegal wants a data base of illegals. Ahh, don't think so. Maybe an, "Ok, we'll use forged documents claiming who we are as long as we can drive and stay here?"

"Cox's ruling is right-on," said state Rep. Dave Agema, R-Rockford, who introduced a bill last summer to prohibit illegal immigrants from obtaining licenses. His bill has not received a hearing in the Democratic-controlled House.

"We have to make our driver's licenses secure. Currently, they are not," Agema said, adding the proof of residency required to get a license easily can be forged.

"This should have been done the year after 9/11, not now," he said.

Agema also wondered if illegal immigrants have used licenses to register to vote. Only U.S. citizens have the right to vote in federal, state and local elections.

"Nobody checks for fraud. It's kinda scary," he said.

"We see it as a disaster from several perspectives," Musick said of the opinion. "Many businesses are very much dependent on immigrants, regardless of their legal status, being able to get to work and carry on normal commerce."

Immigration reform is necessary, said Abreu, but making life "impossible" for the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S. is not the way to do it. To hell it ain't.

"We need secure borders. That is the first step," he said. We need a lot of things and cutting off incentives is a very good direction.