Imagine you have a child that requires urgent medical care. After calling 911 with no response, you decide to put your child in your car and drive on the highway to the hospital. Unfortunately, the only road to the hospital is a four-lane highway with a speed limit of 30 MPH.
You start driving at 30 MPH to follow the rules, but you realize that you will not get to the hospital on time. Meanwhile, you see a Ferrari drive driven by a pro baseball player driving to a baseball game at 85 MPH with a police escort. Then you see a drug dealer in a Mercedes drive by at 80 MPH to go sell cocaine to teens, again with no consequences. Eventually, the rest of the cars on the road start driving 70 MPH, ignoring the speed limit, but you continue to drive 30 as the speed limit requires.
Finally, you decide to disregard the speed limit and go faster to get to the hospital. As soon as you get to 60 MPH, a police officer pulls you over, sends you to jail, and suspends your driver’s license for 10 years. The health of your child is disregarded by the police, and the other cars on the road continue to speed with no repercussions.
The moral of the story:
• A four-lane highway with a speed limit of 30 MPH is our current immigration system. It does not make sense, is not fair, and does no benefit either the US or the immigrant. It needs to be reformed.
• The pro baseball player is an analogy for, well, a pro baseball player. Some people get a free pass through the immigration system because of their ability to play a sport or activity that does not contribute to our society. Our system favors high-profile people regardless of their contribution to our country. Our system will bend the rules for baseball players but not for families that are simply trying to put food on the table or provide medical treatment for a family member.
• The analogy of the license suspension is addressing the penalties for illegal immigration. They are neither fair nor reasonable. The penalty does not fit the crime. An illegal immigrant essentially is given an automatic ten year sentence, as they are banned from entering this country for ten years if they are caught and deported. For comparison purposes, lesser sentences are given to rapists, drug dealers, and aggravated child molesters.

Engraved on the Statue of Liberty is the quote, "..."Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Based on the US's current Immigration policy the quote should read, "Give me your strong, your wealthy, your pitchers with the best fastball. We don't want your wretched refuse. We'll incarcerate the homeless after we pull them from the tempest. I extinguish my lamp behind the sealed golden door.

With so much money circulating in the economy in the 2000's, how is it that the country did not grow?  The problem is that much of the money was stale.  By stale, I am saying that it was not circulating and adding to the "velocity" of money.  In the late 1990's, the ultra-wealthy invested in venture capital and alternative investments that contributed to the creation of new businesses and industries.  The money helped grow ideas into what are now some of the world's leading companies.

Then, the hedge funds emerged.  They diverted the funds of the ultra-wealthy into vehicles of leverage and speculation, rather than investments such as venture capital.  Venture capital is an investment.  A hedge fund is speculation.  The diversion of so much wealth out of legitimate investments into levered speculation was a major catalyst in the downfall of the US economy.