Of towards the left is San Diego, USA. Right side is Tijuana, Mexico. (wiki entry)
Here's to hoping the next big topic after the health care craze will be immigration reform. I'm pretty excited about a Democratic majority finally having a crack at it.
I support wide open borders, with restrictions solely for known criminals/enemies and those with communicable diseases. Obviously our political system and xenophobic conservatives/southerners won't stand for borders that open, but any nudge in this direction (including amnesty) will be a useful improvement for the economy, social justice, our fabulous melting pot effect, and general prosperity. As any student of history knows, high immigration rates made the USA what it's been in years past. We've always been a nation of immigrants.
Immigration is enormously wonderful for development. Yet roughly since 1914/WWI, nationalists in more-developed nations have become so obsessed with protecting their relative power over less fortunate people, they've lost sight of how labor mobility benefits everyone in the long run.
One thing I also keep hearing from nationalists is that them darn immigrants oughta be required to learn English—that it should be a national language. Um, not really (xkcd). Let immigrants and future generations pick up the dominant language on their own. It's worked fine in the past, it will work fine in the future.
Besides, English's role as our globalized world's lingua franca is only going to increase. Too much intellectual capital has been invested for it to be otherwise: vast amounts of business, information, science, and other research and works of art have been produced in English. What does every odd person in Europe speak? English. On an international flight from China to Japan with a South Korean flight crew, want to guess what language "This is your captain speaking, ..." is in? English!
(Cross posted. For a bit more on the inanity of political barriers to labor and trade, a previous post.)
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