Tuesday, June 06, 2006

A Modest Immigration Proposal

By now, reams of well-reasoned arguments (and tons of crackpot rhetoric from the Bill O'Reillys of the world) have been written by people smarter than me (well, except for Bill O'Reilly) about how to solve the illegal immigration issue. Should we build fences around the border? Give amnesty to those already here? Send crazy vigilantes down to patrol the border? Send the illegals on a massive hunting trip with Dick Cheney?

This is one man's modest, (only slightly) satirical proposal of how to fix the immigration problem. It appeared to me, literally, as I was watching television the other night. The solution lies in an obscure Japanese program that has been retooled and broadcast on American television via Spike TV. The show is Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, or MXC.

For those of you not familiar with MXC, it's a re-dub of the extremely peculiar Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle. In the show, Japanese "contestants" are put through strange, often impossible, physical challenges such as balancing on a swinging bridge while people fire soccer balls at their head, hurling themselves at walls while wearing velcro jumpsuits and trying to stick, running through doorways that might be made of paper or might be made of wood, or trying to run across a pond full of "stepping stones" where some of the stones are unstable, and dodging oddly dressed monsters while trying to score a touchdown. It's a pretty dumb show and a guilty pleasure for me. But it might just be the solution to our country's most pressing problem.

Think about it. Illegal immigrants already swim across large bodies of water, dodge "Minutemen" trying to nab them, climb walls topped with barbed wire, and avoid INS agents. If they're going to go to all that trouble to get here, why not make it work for us. My idea is to set up giant Takeshi's Castle sets up along the border at the most frequent crossing points. Hire full-time camera crews to work the shows, producers and editors to put the shows together, and writers to provide dialogue.

My plan is to run anyone trying to illegally cross the Mexican border through the full run of Takeshi's Castle challenges. Anyone who makes it through the entire gauntlet of challenges gets a green card.

One of the things Takeshi's Castle is known for is that the challenges got more and more difficult until almost no one is able to complete it. This is a list of the challenges in the show. The challenges in the show get progressively harder until almost no one makes it through to the end. The series of challenges would weed the thousands of illegals trying to get into the country down to just a few. Voila! Immigration problem solved!

But wait, you say. These immigrants are going to take our jobs, their children receive our social services! This is going to cost us money!

No problem there. The government can just start a 24-hour "Most Extreme Illegal Immigration Challenge" channel and sell advertising to offset these costs. You gotta think the "reality tv" craze could support a channel dedicated to this most real of reality shows. If not, we can just add a few more shows. "I Want to Be American" Idol, where immigrants attempt to sing the Star Spangled Banner in George Bush approved English while Simon Cowell insults them; The Mole (as in the sauce) where a group of illegals try to sneak into the country, only to discover that one of their number is a secret border patrol agent; El Apprentice, where a group of immigrants are put through meaningless challenges, with the winner becoming Donald Trump's poolboy.

You get the picture. We've got a potential goldmine on our hands and we don't even know it!

There you have it. One guy's Modest Proposal to fix a big problem. Jonathan Swift, eat my dust!

-Gryph

"What do you think, sirs?"
-Joel Hodgson as Joel Robinson on MST3K

"It Stinks!"
-Trace Beaulieu as "Dr. Forrester" (in response)