Why is there even debate on the question of ILLEGAL immigration?

[chicagojoe]

I have nothing against immigrants coming to America. My father was an immigrant. I just can't understand ANY resistance to attempting to stop illegal immigration. As much as I hate the Radical Right, I'm with them on this one. Always have been.

[PowerToThePeople]

1. well

seems to me that the "right" wants to make it easier for illegals to get legal status. May be off here though. The reason they claim is that, "they will work jobs that American's are not willing to take." The reality is, that Americans just are not willing to do that job for what they want to pay. Raise wages and they will do it. Capitalists want "slave" labor, that is the jist of it...

[whistle]

2. Not at all, slave labor is on the rise throughout the world and...

...America's wealthiest people do feel entitled to the cheapest service labor they can find to take care of their large estates.

[mopaul]

13. SLAVERY, bush refers to it a lot, 'jobs americans wont' do'

slavery still exists, it's just cleaned up a little.

before long, even folks in gated communities will be clamoring for those jobs picking lettuce. just give bush time.

[primavera]

46. Not just the wealthy

What is your reaction going to be when you go into a supermarket and find that the cost of tomatoes has risen to $10/lb?

[Peak_Oil]

138. My reaction would be surprise.

If the tomatoes at the supermarket went from $2.39 to $10 due to labor costs, that would mean that someone is getting paid $7.61/hr to pick one pound of tomatoes. I'd take that job.

[chicagojoe]

3. Then why do I keep hearing my fellow lefties

complain when illegal aliens are denied "rights" and drivers' licenses? Aside from basic human rights, ILLEGAL aliens aren't supposed to have any rights, are they?

[PowerToThePeople]

4. If you are talking Cali

then it is the repuke Gov that is giving them drivers licences. They have "human" rights but not citezen rights, imo. They need escorted out of the country humainely and given the proper routes to citenzenship if that is what they desire.

[chicagojoe]

5. Exactly. Sign up at the door. Thanks for correction on license thing.

[whistle]

16. Why not open the borders to anyone who wishes to come to the..

...U.S. to live and work then? Legal, illegal; desirable, undesirable; skilled, unskilled; law abiding, criminal.

[barb162]

78. what if a billion or so people wanted to come here?

[chicagojoe]

109. They can stand in line and come in LEGALLY.

[jdj]

87. I kind of look at it biblically.

The poorest of people in Mexico as well as central and south america have the most native american blood. The higher class they are generally the more European Spanish blood they have.

And it is the poorest who are immigrating here from Mexico.

These are very close blood relatives to the people that our european ancestors committed genocide on. So techically, their people were here a hell of a lot earlier than our people were.

The sins of the fathers shall be passed down to the sons. I certainly don't feel like I have any real right to protest, what would I base it on...my people killed your people?

And the hispanics here have made my town now only 50% white. I'm thrilled considering that at least 90% of the whites here are revolting fundie republicans.

[DulceDecorum]

9. LEGAL aliens have rights until they claim them

If you are an alien and you are reading this
you should be aware that if you at any point mention the existence of international law or the Constitution of the US to any INS officer, then you are totally SCREWED.

Immigration law is so illegal that Congress has stuck in at least one rider that says if it ever reaches the Supreme Court, then only that tiny section can be dealt with and not the other abuses that have been legislated.

For example, Immigration laws are ex post facto. In other words, they travel backwards through time.
So if they decide on January 10 2006 that no redheads are to be admitted into the US, then grandma who came over in 1934 can now be deported under this new law. Yes, it was legal when she came over but since she is/was a redhead and the laws go backward through time.
She violated the January 10, 2006 law when she arrived in 1934, and she must now pay the price.
The Constitution outlaws ex post facto laws but Congress has stuck them into Immigration law and only the Supreme Court can now remove them with one deft stroke.

Once you mention the accountability, neither INS nor any Immigration Judge is permitted to rule in your favor. You will automatically be found guilty until you wind up in front of a Federal Circuit of Appeals.

You will NEVER be provided with any legal assistance whatsoever because you are not in a criminal proceeding. However, you should also be aware that INS officers are permitted to kill, pretty much with impunity, and they are famed worldwide for shooting people in the back and then claiming that they were fleeing "justice."

Also look out for the judges who double as prosecutors
- in the same case, and in the same courtroom -
and then mark their own paper by finding you guilty of anything they come up that day.

This message was addressed to the LEGAL aliens.

[realisticphish]

11. let me get this straight

(and i truly am ignorant about this)
Congress could pass a law declaring, for example, every person of middle eastern heritage as not allowed to enter the US. they could then deport all current U.S. citizens who are first generation middle eastern immigrants?

holy fuck.


:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[DulceDecorum]

35. Yes, absolutely.

The trouble with ex post facto laws is that you are innocent until they are passed and then you automatically become guilty.
They give the lawmakers WAAAY too much power over the people and that is why they are barred by the Constitution.

The drinking age used to be 18
and a lot of 19 year olds went out and drank legally.
Now that the drinking age is 21,
IF THE DRINKING LAW WAS EX POST FACTO,
-- which, thank God, it is NOT --
then ALL those 18-20 year olds who were drinking fifty years ago,
can be picked up and busted,
even though it was legal at the time when they did it.

The US is really weird when it comes to Immigration law.
Let us say that they discover that you should NOT have been deported or harassed or something.
The Justice Department reserves the right to come to your country and abduct you and drag your ass back into the US.
Now, I am NOT talking about criminals. They have to extradite criminals and your country has to agree to it. No, I am talking about a civil matter, a just-because-I-damn-well-feel-like-it.
An oops-sorry-we-thought-you-were-someone-else-you-can-go-back-to-class-now.
In other words, once you have stepped on US soil, the US thinks it can do whatever the EFF it wants to do with your ass, anytime it wants to do it. Hence, the Hague Invasion Act whereby the US military plan to "rescue" any US war criminal from receiving justice.

It has been said that in 1996,
the entire bin Laden family living in the US was issued diplomatic immunity by the Saudi government. Since they all had diplomatic passports, that is why they were allowed to leave after 911.
Now if you look at Immigration law, you can see why such a move would be simply leveling the playing field.

In an Immigration Court,
the prosecutor and the judge are both hired and paid by INS.
Sometimes the Immigration judge is also the prosecutor,
and the stenographer,
and the interpreter,
and the witness.
What are your chances of winning?

In an Immigration Court, if you do not show up WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE,
or if your immigration file cannot be located,
then you are automatically guilty as charged and/or subject to deportation.
It is the law.
This means that any alien who was supposed to be at the Immigration Court
for whatever reason,
in the federal building in Oklahoma that was bombed,
was screwed FOREVER,
because the building was bombed
and so they did NOT show up in immigration court
and their files are all missing anyway, due to the force of the blast.

But one should not be despondent, immigration law has its perks.
There is one provision whereby well-endowed women receive special visas to enter the US simply because they are well-endowed.
WARNING: GRAPHIC LINK
http://funreports.com/2005/01/13/57824.html
Anna Kournikova, you have passed your INS interview.
Welcome to the USA.

[realisticphish]

36. god

im going to have to read up on this some more; i never realized how screwed up it was

:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[primavera]

49. Read Chae Chan Ping

CHAE CHAN PING v. U.S., 130 U.S. 581 (1889)
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=130&page=581

It was the first of what came to be known as the plenary powers cases, which established that the US government had a sovereign right to preserve the integrity of its borders and that exempted them from pretty much any legal constraint. What's remarkable is the wording in several of those early cases - which have never been overturned, incidentally - which justify arbitrary actions against aliens on the grounds that they're members of inferior races. Real nazi shit, yet they remain on the books and are cited by the government as the basis for their authority to this day.

[DulceDecorum]

75. THANK YOU!!!

When one sifts through Supreme Court case law,
one is frequently taken well aback.

Immigration law in particular is SO BOGUS that it unfixable.
That is why decent people have a VERY hard time working in INS and they quit constantly or transfer out.

As for Nazi crap,
Buck vs Bell is what really inspired the whole eugenics-population control mindset and it has NEVER been repealed or even challenged in any way.
They ALWAYS start with the disabled.
The brown-skinned people are usually next.

The way that Down syndrome is handled in this day and age is directly related to eugenics, the study of heredity improvement of the human race or as it is collectively called, select breeding of human beings. The creator of this theory is Francis Galton, one of Charles Darwin's first cousins. He was a brilliant man, who collected statistics, traveled around the world and dreamt of the genetic utopia. Galton developed the idea that if pigeons and cattle were bred to improve the race that we should do the same with humans. His theory in itself was illogical but the moral behind this idea was still heavily suggestible. He coined the term "eugenics" from his take on what the human race should be like and of the word genetics.

By the year 1900 eugenics had caught on to society like a wild fire. The name Eugene became oddly popular and if your child was born with a genetic defect they figured that it wasn't a eugenic marriage. The support for this theory was immense, meetings and luncheons were taking place all over, Britain. In Germany they had come up with the extreme form of breeding. As it was now thought the "feeble minded" (which included alcoholics, mentally retarded, criminals and epileptics) should not be allowed to reproduce and stop creating people that have a similar mutation or birth defect.

This principle was especially recognized in America where in 1904 Charles Davenport persuaded Andrew Carnegie to fund a lab for the study of eugenics. Charles just wanted to end dysgenic breeding instead of enforcing the principles that Galton had created. Most of the eugenic actions resulted in the anti-immigrant movement. As the influx of immigration continued the propaganda began that the Anglo-Saxon population was being intentionally diluted. So they tried to get laws on the books. Of coarse for those who wanted the immigrants removed, wrongfully treated or stopped from coming in eugenics proved to be a very plausible argument.

A few years later (in 1911) sterilization was legal in six different states and by 1917 legal in eleven states. Sterilization was the unlawful act of stopping the "mentally unfit" from reproducing without their permission or by surgical or mental means. In the case of Buck vs. Bell they ruled that Carrie Buck could be sterilized because in the eyes of the law she was thought of as feeble minded. Carrie, her mother Emma and her seven-month-old daughter, Vivian, were all living in a colony for epileptics and the feeble minded in Lynchburg. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' judgement was "three generations of imbeciles are enough." Doris, Carrie's sister tried unsuccessfully to have children before she realized what they had done to here without her consent.

America wasn't the only country to enforce the principles of eugenics. Soon to follow came Sweden, Canada, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Iceland and the notorious Germany which first sterilized 400,000 people and then gased 70,000 of them during the first two months of World War II just to clear out hospital beds for the soldiers. Britain was the only predominantly Protestant industrialized nation to never pass a single eugenic law (partially due to the good works of Josiah Wedgwood). The Roman Catholic countries also never passed any eugenic laws either (Spain, etc).

Josiah Wedgwood hated eugenics. He said that the Eugenics Society was trying "to breed up the working class as though they were cattle." As a result of his hatred he rejected every eugenics bill that found its way to parliament. That was part of the apparent British resistance to eugenics. Every bill except for one which stated that gave the state the power to have a child removed from their home because the ruling forces in that household were incapable of the correct up-bringing or "feeble-minded." He fiercely fought this bill off, but after his party dematerialized the bill (in less offensive wording) was passed. He felt as though he had lost the battle, but clearly he hadn't or the atrocities would still be taking place.
http://flysci.com/genome/genome_21.asp

On the one hand there are the Malthusians or neo-Malthusians who feel that population growth is the most severe problem facing the world; for them population growth is the root cause of hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, disease and social unrest. Furthermore, it is population growth in the poor nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that is the greatest threat.
On the other hand, there are those (revisionists is one term used to describe them, Marxists another) who claim that the Malthusians, by blaming or scapegoating the victims of global problems, are masking their real causes, among which is the global expansion of the culture of capitalism.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/population_readings.htm
Here we get to one of the primary documents of the population debate, a summary of the infamous 1974 National Security Study Memorandum - NSSM 200 - the Nixon-Kissinger, NSC, CIA, Pentagon, USAID guidance document on population control and the U.S. political interests. This reading provides excepts from the memo; it shows, in brief, that the purpose of pursing a policy of population control was to serve the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interest at the expense of the developing countries.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/population_readings.htm

On the one hand there are the Malthusians or neo-Malthusians who feel that population growth is the most severe problem facing the world; for them population growth is the root cause of hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, disease and social unrest. Furthermore, it is population growth in the poor nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that is the greatest threat.
On the other hand, there are those (revisionists is one term used to describe them, Marxists another) who claim that the Malthusians, by blaming or scapegoating the victims of global problems, are masking their real causes, among which is the global expansion of the culture of capitalism.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/population_readings.htm
Here we get to one of the primary documents of the population debate, a summary of the infamous 1974 National Security Study Memorandum - NSSM 200 - the Nixon-Kissinger, NSC, CIA, Pentagon, USAID guidance document on population control and the U.S. political interests. This reading provides excepts from the memo; it shows, in brief, that the purpose of pursing a policy of population control was to serve the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interest at the expense of the developing countries.
http://faculty.plattsburgh.edu/richard.robbins/legacy/population_readings.htm

[ultraist]

143. What case or legislation outlawed forced sterlizations?

Wasn't the case premised on Right to privacy as Roe vs. Wade was?

[barb162]

93. you might want to check post 21 for some reality checking

"As to the poster who said that immigration laws are retroactive and could one day theoretically call for the deportation of certaub individuals (such as for having red hair), that is absolutely not the case"

[bmovies]

14. I dont have a problem with giving them drivers licenses

I mean, drivers licenses are a priviledge, and I really cant see what it has to do with slave wages. I just dont see the harm. Quite the contrary.

But what I do have a problem with is that some states lower tuition costs, or at least trying to, for illegal aliens. That I dont get. Regular law abiding citizens have to pay the regular costs, but illegal aliens get a discount rate for being illegal? I just dont get that.

And some republicans are trying to make that federal.


(October 23, 2003 - Washington, DC) Senator Orrin Hatch's DREAM Act is a massive illegal alien amnesty program disguised as an educational initiative, charges the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2003 (S. 1545), known as the DREAM Act, is set for mark-up in the Senate on Thursday. It will place American citizens in direct competition with illegal aliens for scarce slots in freshmen classes at state colleges and universities while awarding the illegal alien students with an amnesty.

The bill will grant residency to an unlimited number of illegal aliens who have completed high school in the U.S. and will require states to make illegal aliens eligible for subsidized in-state tuition. "This bill is a crass political calculation aimed at selling an amnesty disguised as an educational initiative," charged Dan Stein, FAIR's Executive Director. Stein noted that Democrats have already publicly stated that the DREAM act is just the beginning of a larger amnesty bidding war, and the bill will be used as a vehicle to extend amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Stein noted that since the number of slots at universities is fixed and tuition dollars are short, that for every illegal alien admitted an American student, or legal resident was being turned away. "This massive give-away of higher education to illegal aliens comes at a time when every state university system is raising tuition and cutting education benefits," Stein continued.

This week, the state of Maryland announced that tuition in its university system could go up as much as 40 percent, putting a college education out of the reach of many middle class families. "Orrin Hatch now wants to force the children of U.S. citizens to compete for admission and shrinking tuition assistance programs with people who are in the country illegally. He and his colleagues are literally taking opportunities and tuition assistance away from the children of citizens and giving them to illegal aliens," Stein charged.

-snip-

http://www.fairus.org/Media/Media.cfm?ID=2194&c=34

[Igel]

22. In a lot of states the only requirement to register to vote is a

driver's license.

In Texas, not even that.

Since many (most?) illegal immigrants for a number of years say they eventually want to return to their home country, I don't want them voting. No self-perceived permanent stake in system, no say in long-term functioning of system.

[seventythree]

99. Kerry was a supporter of DREAM

all the democrat primary candidates were -- I wrote numerous emails

[primavera]

129. Please don't cite that nazi garbage

FAIR is the lead organization in a consortium of white supremacist organizations who all share the same boards of directors and right-wing sources of funding, most notably the Scaife Mellon family and the Pioneer Fund, a nazi eugenics foundation. Don't take my word for it, read the reports from Southern Poverty Law Center which monitors FAIR as a hate group.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=93

[Pushed To The Left]

81. Right wing is phony on the issue

They say they oppose illegal immigration, but they never do anything effective to solve the problem. Illegal immigration leads to cheap labor, which is what conservatism is all about! My theory is that illegal immigration is allowed to continue because powerful people are profiting from it. If progressives took control of this issue, we could expose the right wing's phoniness!

[seventythree]

101. correct

republicans get cheap labor and democrats get a labor pool to organize -- why do you think NEITHER party wants to pay attention to what the people are screaming?

[izzie]

6. I see nothing wrong with them coming either but--

isn't it better if we had some control over it? People living here have some rights if they did as they should, that the new ones will do it under some control.

[The Magistrate]

7. The Right, Mr. Joe

Is rather split on this matter. What could be called the "paleo-cons" are certainly against illegal immigration, though not always for savory motives, while both "Rockefeller Republican" and corporatist free-marketeers see it as a valuable source of cheap labor. This last is certainly key, for it is simply a mirror of a proper left critique of the practice: it acts to hold down wages overall. It does this in several ways, the most broad of which is simply by increasing the quantity of laborers available, which will act, like a greater plentitude of any commodity, to drive down its price. Beyond this, there is the fact that many illegal immigrants are quite willing to work for much less than persons born in our country would willingly accept, particularly in semi-skilled trades, and this too has a depressing effect on the wage rates over-all.

[diplomats]

134. Another reason why the Repugs are split on this issue is

because most of the illegal aliens are Hispanic and Bush & Co are courting the Hispanic vote.

What kind of makes me angry is the fact that Pres. Fox of Mexico is doing absolutely nothing about the situation. He and his administration WANT their citizens to go to the US. :mad: That lets them off the hook of providing jobs and a good economy for their own citizens.

[0rganism]

8. The radical rightwing is at odds with the big money rightwing on this one

While the blue-collar rightwing indulges itself in racist one-upmanship, employment-oriented resentiment, and ultra nationalism, there's a lot of push among the agro-industry republicans to extend all kinds of quasi-legal status to the migrants -- which is really the worst of all possible worlds. It dilutes the workforce and artificially reduces the cost of labor, while denying the illegal immigrants full human rights at the same time it encourages them to leave their homelands to work for shit wages in the USA.

To the extent that our involvment in developing countries has impoverished and destabilized those countries, we owe them real repairs to their infrastructure, not just some bullshit gray area in our legal code where the poorest among them can sneak across the border and make some local capitalist even richer without fear of repercussions.

[dcn112]

10. Illegal immigration is not good for the unions

There is not an unlimited supply of jobs or resources here. When you flood the country will illegal labor you undermine the unions. Bush would like to dissolve the unions and lower labor costs. That is why he is doing nothing. By allowing illegal immigration you allow many on the "Radical Right" to escape labor laws, payroll taxes, and generally make it easier to hide income from the government.

[seventythree]

104. not good for unions but great for union bosses/organizers

this became real clear to me during the Iowa primary when a group fighting outsourcing and HB1 Visas placed some ads in Iowa which the unions went nuts over. Labor needs a pool to organize -- except for government workers their numbers are falling like a rock and that means no money for the chieftains.

[alittlelark]

115. The unions have NO POWER here,,,,,

The corporatocracy does, however, want a constant influx of marginalized workers to exploit.

[fujiyama]

12. The debate

usually isn't on whether it's "good" or not. It's about how it can be stopped.

Few will argue that illegal immigration is a "good" thing. It's bad in a number of ways. First of all, it's illegal. There is no accountabilty of who enters and leaves the country. It drives down wages in some cases and allows abuses and exploitation of those that enter (often substandard wages, sweatshop conditions) and it's also a security threat.

But as long as nations to the south of the US are poorer than it, it will countinue.

The question is how do you stop it? A few simple ideas are to:

Number 1, have stricter accountability for those corporations that hire illigal aliens. This is a must.

Finding a way to "Spread the wealth". Perhaps globalization in this sense is part of the problem and the solution. They need jobs as well. Often the best way for prosperity is through trade, but this too can lead to exploitation.

Finally, possibly making it difficult to recieve any benefits like SS or public school, even if they work to legally immigrate later. It may also be a good idea to not allow them to immigrate later if they are found to have violated once (though obviously this will depend on how long they have stayed).

RWers will sometimes support a military on the border. This may or may not work. I would prefer not to have a "fortress America" with snipers all along the border. Plus, even if this were to be implemented, which military would be used to police the borders - that same one in Iraq?

Ultimately, there may be some changes needed for the legal immigration system as well. The red tape should be lessened. Expediting the process wouldn't hurt.

Just a few ideas.

[primavera]

53. Why not legitimize it?

It seems to me that much of the concern over illegal immigrants is that they enter illegally. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the employment of large numbers of Mexican immigrants in agriculture was something we invited. Ever heard of the Bracero program? It was at the invitation of our government that hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers came to the US to help us grow food during the second world war. I know, that was a long time ago, but the communities of immigrants which grew up in the US and the pattern of employing migratory workers in agriculture dates back to that.

You mention "spreading the wealth." Well, aruably, that's exactly what employing migrant labor is doing. For Mexicans accustomed to making $20/week, making $200/week is one hell of a step up, they can send money home to their families with that kind of money, providing an economic shot in the arm to their country, while simultaneously giving us a bargain deal on agricultural labor. Which in turn keeps our consumer costs down and does good things for our trade balance, everybody wins.

Okay, it probably would drive down wages in agriculture, but a) how many Americans are just dying to get out into the fields to pick asparagus? And b) are we willing to accept the consequences of agricultural goods going up if we were to pay US workers what it would take to motivate them to go out and work under the scorching sun? Maybe, we might be, but it wouldn't be as simple a matter as it might appear at first glance.

So why not make it legal for them to come to the US and work? Then they wouldn't be "illegal aliens" anymore, they be legal immigrants. We could collect taxes on them, issue driver's licenses so that our national security dudes would know who they all were and where they all lived and would have photos of them on file, sounds like an improvement to having them simply buy fake IDs at the corner document dealer and us having no knowledge about them whatsoever.

[dcn112]

74. yes but

that migrant worker program has been around for some time and it is well planned. If we need more agricultural workers we can use that plan to bring in more. The whole problem with illegal immigration is that it is ILLEGAL. We don't know who is coming across, want they want to do, etc. Most of illegals that cross the border today are not taking jobs in agriculture. The are taking jobs that provide economic benefits to some while depressing wages for others.

[primavera]

76. All the more reason to have them enter legally

As you say, we have no idea of who is coming across, or even how many of them there are. If you provided avenues for these people to enter legally, we would have nice, little digital photos and fingerprints and addresses and backgrounds and, hell, you name it, on file for all of these presently unknown people.

As for taking jobs from Americans, this is yet another bit of mythology advanced by the right wing. Read "Imagining Miami" by Dr. Sheila Croucher. She was amazed by the popular perception that immigrants took jobs from US workers and so conducted a massive study on the topic. She employed every different model she could lay her hands on, from poli sci models, to labor models, to econ models, you name it, she tried it, and, no matter how much she juggled the numbers, she couldn't come up with a result which bore out this popular perception. Other similar studies undertaken have found pretty much the same thing.

The thing is, although it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense that immigrants would consume jobs, ergo there would be fewer jobs for US workers, what that fails to take into account is the fact that immigrants are also consuming while they're here and thus creating jobs even as they consume them. For instance, an immigrant goes and works on a farm. He uses his salary to buy a truck. He doesn't buy a Mexican truck, he buys an American truck. He fills the tank of his American truck with gas pumped at an American gas station. He finances the purchase of his American truck through a loan taken out from an American bank. He buys insurance for his American truck from an American insurance provider. When it breaks down (which it will do often, it being an American truck), he will take it to an American service shop where it will be worked on by, you guessed it, an American. He will pay vehicle taxes and licensing fees to an American DMV. And this is just his truck. His groceries, his house, everything he consumes in this country generates jobs. Multiply that a few million migrant workers and you;ve got a hell of a market, that's a lot of new jobs that would not be there were it not for the presence of the immigrant.

Which is why studies bear out that immigrants create at least as many jobs - and better ones - for US workers as they consume. Yet again, the reality is that immigrants are beneficial to the economy, absolutely the opposite of the propaganda the right-wing xenophobes would have you believe.

[seventythree]

105. each immigrant from Mexico

costs us $50,000 over a lifetime according to an immigration reform site I have read because they are low income and consume more services than the taxes they pay in. Did the amnesty in the 80's stop the flood, no, it just got worse because sooner or later they figured we'd do it again -- and we look to be about to. If we need agricultural workers because the wages are so low that no American will take the job, then empty the prisons of the the non-violent -- which is most of the prisoners. Have them work the fields and make the same wages as a Mexican would. I guarantee you that they would rather make minimum wage and have a nest egg when they leave than make $24 a week in the prison laundry. You could even charge them something for their keep -- let them learn how the working world operates -- and knock time off their sentence for working so we all would win. Unlike the days when unions complained because they were put to work on the roads, no union will complain that they are working in the fields. The hospitality industry can afford to raise wages, and there are plenty of people in this country who don't have skills who could use a low skill job -- that's what factories used to provide, but now they are nearly gone.

[primavera]

127. Let me guess, you read that at FAIR?

I'm well acquainted with the figure you quote, it comes from a right-wing anti-immigrant lobbying association known as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or the Federation of Anti-Immigrant Racists to those of us who know and hate them. Southern Poverty Law monitors them as a hate group and if you do some digging, you'll find that FAIR heads a consortium of white supremacist organizations who all share the same boards of directors and the same sources of funding, namely, the Scaife Mellon Foundation and the Pioneer Fund, a Nazi eugenics foundation dedicated to carrying on the good work of Joseph Mengele.

FAIR is extremely active, they were the primary architects behind proposition 187 in California and, more recently, Prop 200 in Arizona. I can't tell you how much it alarms to to see their stuff cropping up here on DU. Post 14 also quoted FAIR. The problem is, they know that if they wear hoods and burn crosses, nobody will listen to them, whereas, if they claim to support immigration reform, well, that sounds all well and reaosnable, and so people pay attention to what they have to say. But you can be absolutely 100% sure that anything these guys have to say is totally bogus. FAIR is famous for inventing wild, imaginary, but highly inflammatory numbers of the type you quote. The problem is, whenever anyone else tries to reproduce their results, no one seems to be abel to come anywhere close to the numbers they come up with. No one knows what weird ass methodologies they're using or how they arrive at those numbers (personally, I think they just make them up), but one thing is for sure: no reputable scholar has ever been able to duplicate them.

The $50K figure is total fabricated crap, please give it the total lack of attention it deserves.

[seventythree]

130. thanks for the info

I don't really think that was the site, but I'll go to them and see as I think I will remember the general look of the site. I got it from a democrat friend who is really pretty careful about her sources. I am also a big Dobbs watcher -- and the group where I got the info is sometimes on there -- do you watch Dobbs with any regularity? You mentioned places of repute which refute these figures -- could you link them?

[chicagojoe]

113. It goes beyond the "fields".

Here in the Chicago area, factory jobs that once paid $10-$15 per hour now pay $8 or $9 per hour, due to the availability of immigrants who will work for less. Are all of these immigrants LEGAL? I sincerely doubt it.

[suigeneris]

15. Please see my comments on a national ID card here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3084415

[apple_ridge]

17. My only problem with it is that we are simply

overpopulated at this point. Every day the traffic gets worse and I watch more and more housing coming up everywhere. I live in what many might call a small town, but developments are popping up so fast that there won't be any open space left in a few years. You can hardly drive across town any more without somebody doing something to pss you off. Bad attitudes become more prevalent as the population grows.

The Inn is full.

Also, the worst thing you can do to the environment is create another over consumptive American.

[Name removed]

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[sadiesworld]

25. Wanting to stop ILLEGAL immigration is facist?!

NEWSFLASH: The primary responsibility of our elected representatives is to provide for the security and welfare of US citizens. Illegal immigration depresses wages, overburdens social safety nets, leads to increased environmental concerns and may present a security threat. We have EVERY right to be concerned about this issue.

What we SHOULD be doing is supporting populist leaders in these countries and calling off the IMF and World Bank vultures. I certainly do not blame poor individuals for wanting to better their lot, but I DO blame the global elite for promoting inequities which leave us dogs fighting for the table scraps.

[Name removed]

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[sadiesworld]

28. Do you understand the concept of citizenship?

[pabloseb]

30. I guess no n/t

[sadiesworld]

31. Currently, citizenship is our only method of preserving...

representative government. While free traders and open border proponents enjoy throwing around terms like racist, xenophobe, and --your personal favorite--fascist, they (inadvertently?) play into the hands of the gobal corporate elite. One World is nice, One Corporate World w/o representation...is not. It really is about the democracy.

[pabloseb]

32. My point is, human rights are first

People have a right to feed their families, whatever their citizenship. How that is playing into the hands of the global corporate elite is beyond me.

Just because you were lucky to be born in the US doesn't mean that those who weren't as lucky can't try not to die of starvation (by the way, the US foreign policy is partly responsible of the fact that they can't make a living in their home countries). I don't sympathize with walmart and their explotaitive practices, but I sympathize with the honest guy working two shifts and saving each cent to send to their family.

Immigration is an extremely complex issue from all points - political, moral, economic, etc. You're looking at it from the macro-economical point of view and totally forgetting about the human component of it.

[KissMeKate]

41. six billion people- how many of those should we ship into our country ?

there are hundreds of millions of people in china going hungry- how about those children dyiong of malaria, dysentary, and starvation in Africa?

Do they ALL have the right to come to the united states since they are hungry? When do the citisens of the united states get to control their own country? I mean, how many starving people will it take to satisfy you that we as Americans have done enough?

My father has been driven out of buisiness because he cant compete with those roofers who hire illegal immigrants and pay them peanuts.

HE HAS A RIGHT TO EAT TOO! And so does his wife, and so did his kids.

Countries have a right to control their borders. Citisens have a right to control their country.

[pabloseb]

91. I'm talking about the ones that are already here...

If they have settled down, lead a honest life, work hard, and probably even have American children, they should be legalized. The US should take reasonable attempts to prevent new illegal immigrants from entering the country, as long as they (the US border patrol) don't violate basic human rights (like the right to life, the right to a fair trial, the right to remain silent, etc, etc).

I sympathize with the hardship your family is going through, although I doubt illegal immigration is the only or main reason behind...

[sadiesworld]

44. You appear to be arguing that a non-citizen should have the

same rights and constitutional protections as a US citizen. If we surrender the distinction between citizens and non-citizens, then whose consent are our officials to be governed by? Corporations?

Of course, US foreign policy is partially responsible for the conditions in 2nd and 3rd world countries. As are the corrupt leaders in those countries. Illegal immigration is a wonderful way to keep poor countries poor. By exporting poverty, corrupt politicians are able to ignore the inequitable conditions their policies help create.

As for me being fortunate to have been born in the US, in case you hadn't noticed, we are in a bit of a slide ourselves. It may very well become bad enough that large numbers of US citizens will want to leave in an attempt to provide for their familes. I would hope they would want to stay and fight the ruthless assholes, but I wouldn't BLAME them for leaving. OTOH, I wouldn't call countries unwilling or unable to accept illegal US immigrants "fascist".

At least you now acknowledge that immigration is a "complex issue". Calling those who oppose illegal immigration "fascists", fails to acknowledge that complexity.

[pabloseb]

92. Illegal immigrants should be legalized

under certain conditions. That's what I'm arguing. You shouldn't surrender the distinction between citizens and non-citizens; quite on the other hand, what I'm saying is that if someone came, settled down, led a honest life, worked hard, stayed (and has no plans to leave) and may be even has an American family (children), then that person should be legalized and even given citizenship.

And if you deny that you've been incredibly fortunate to have been born in the US, spend a couple of months in a random country in the world.

It was an exaggeration to call some people fascists and I apologize, but I do believe they share some of the nationalistic bigotry. You say that "at least" I recognize that it's a complex issue; I of course do, unlike others who say stop illegal immigrants, period. They're putting a nationality before any human right.

I'm not saying everybody should be allowed to come, or that the concept of citizenship should be abolished; I'm saying that can't be the only parameter and human rights (right to life, right to eat, right not to be separated from one's family) need to be considered, and have to take precedence over nationality or strict legality under certain reasonable conditions.

[Name removed]

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[barb162]

80. why don't you just substitute "illegal" for "criminal" and stop

throwing the word fascist around for anyone who disagrees with you. You are not even using the word "fascist" in the correct context...check some history books.

[pabloseb]

94. So...

until two years ago homosexual sex was illegal in several US states. Are you saying that gays were and had to be treated like criminals? The US would have never gotten to be an independent country if people had followed British law. And so on and on and on and on.

Immoral law shouldn't be supported. We can argue whether immigration law is immoral or not, but just because that something is illegal doesn't make it wrong.

I don't throw fascist to anyone who disagrees with me. Only to those who put pertenence to a certain group over any human right.

[primavera]

55. Actually, the social welfare cost is a wingnut myth

Anti-immigrant lobbying groups, using methodologies that no statistician has ever been able to reproduce, keep coming up with these fantastic numbers about how much of a drain immigrants place on social services. Those kinds of estimates are always thrown around in the context of initiatives to curtail immigrant access to services, such as Prop 187 in California and Prop 200 in Arizona, but the fact remains, they're totally bogus estimates. Most impartial studies have tended to show that immigrants draw less on social services than do natives, and the taxes they pay more than make up for the modest degree to which they draw on social services. In actuality, as a white person, your social services programs benefit from immigrants who contribute more than they take out of those programs.

[WoodrowFan]

68. saw some figures recently

damn, wish I could remember where I saw them, but they showed illegals paid considerable more in taxes than they received in social services.

[primavera]

71. That's true

What most people don't realize is that undocumented aliens pay exactly the same taxes as US workers do. Alright, so it's probably not out of the goodness of their hearts, but their employers know that, if they run a labor intensive business like farming, and they report to the IRS that they only hired one worker during the year, there's no way the IRS is ever going to believe them. And the IRS will consequently descend upon them like a plague of locusts and will shut them down. This is generally not an attractive option for an aspiring business. So the employers withhold taxes on undocumented aliens just as they do on US workers. And because the IRS is in the business of collecting tax revenues and not of enforcing immigration laws, they frankly couldn't care less whether it's a US worker or an undocumented worker who is paying the taxes, so they make available to undocumented workers what they call Taxpayer Identification Numbers, sometimes known as TINs, so that they can collect taxes from everybody equally.

So yeah, these people are all paying the same taxes as US workers, ergo paying for the same social programs, but they're too terrified to ever use any of the services for which they're paying. So they pay in and take very little out. Yep, it sure sounds like a rip off alright to me, but it's not US taxpayers who are being ripped off as the anti-immigrant groups would have us all believe.

[seventythree]

110. oh, sure, their kids aren't going to school

and they never get sick and go to the er. They don't drive on the roads and they don't flush toilets. I don't care if you are legal or illegal, if you are low income you consume more in services than you pay in taxes. I once was a crisis intervention working for a southern state -- I worked with illegal (and legal) agricultural workers -- they consume social services. I grew up in a manufacturing (no longer) town with 25% Hispanic, many probably were illegal but the work paid well, and in the 50's we needed the bodies. That is not the kind of work they, or us, can get, now.

[primavera]

128. No, actually, they don't

If an undocumented alien gets sick, they are far less likely to seek medical attention than is a native who feels entitled to treatment. When their homes are broken into, they do not call the police, because they're afraid of the police. Even though the Supreme Court in Plyler v. Doe held that education cannot be withheld from children based upon citizenship or nationality, many undocumented aliens are too afraid of something bad happening to their children to ever send their kids to schools.

Every study I've ever read - and, as a migration policy analyst who spends 40+ hours a week reading these sorts of things, I've read quite a few - bears out that undocumented aliens draw less on social services than they pay in in taxes. You can choose to believe that your intuition is more reliable than the efforts of scholars, but I think you're fooling yourself.

[seventythree]

131. No I will look at the scholars

but you need to link me to them. I really don't believe that the majority of illegals don't send their kids to school, or take their kids to the er -- I can believe they don't call the cops if their home is broken into. If this were true, that the majority do not use hopspitals or schools, I don't think we would be even having a discussion about the burden on border states, do you? Either that, or what we are seeing in schools and hospitals is a tip of one huge iceberg.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[barb162]

40. there is nothing fascist about that poster's comments

[Name removed]

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[WoodrowFan]

69. yes I'm sure that never occurred to them

(slaps forhead) DOH! Hey Manuel, I have an idea, instead of risking our lives paying these coyotes money to smuggle us across a desert, risking arrest, robbery and abuse and seperation from our families and our culture to do some gringo's shit work, let's walk down to El Wal-Mart and fill out a job application! BRILLIANT IDEA!!! oh wait, maybe that's because they can't FIND a job at home that pays as well!!!!!

[Name removed]

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[Bouncy Ball]

156. That $ 3 to $ 5 K figure is absolutely RIDICULOUS

do you know how long they'd have to save up to get that? Too long to make it worth it to come to the US!

Try lowering that figure, instead of inflating it for your sensationalistic purposes.

[Name removed]

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[seventythree]

111. God knows our manufacturing jobs are there

[WoodrowFan]

67. hear hear!!!

Well said.

[pabloseb]

19. Also, how you stop it?

Assuming that the "clear" solution is to stop illegal immigration (which to me is a completely fascist statement), how do you stop it? You spend billions to fortify the borders and shoot anybody who tries to cross? You don't hand out any more tourist visas to anyone to prevent some of them to staying here illegally? When you catch illegal immigrants, you just deport them right away, separating them from their families (which in many cases are American) and source of living?

[barb162]

42. first, stopping illegals from being here is not fascist any more than

a cop is fascist if he stops me from driving 100mph in a 20 mph zone.
Second, beefing up the border security and turning people back at the border is a lot easier than shooting them, right? Why make up a red herring argument about SHOOTING people.

If illegals are here with their American citizen families, why aren't they applying for citizenship again? Why didn't they apply for legal status BEFORE they came here? Do you have some problems with doing things legally; why are you defending illegal actions?

[primavera]

50. Not that easy, I'm afraid

The American citizens to whom pabloseb was referring are likely children born in the US of illegal immigrant parents. US law says that, although children born on US soil are indisputably US citizens, no matter who their parents might be, children are not allowed to file immigration petitions on behalf of their parents until they turn 18. So the parents remain illegal, even though their children are US citizens, not Mexican citizens. So the parents aren't welcome here, the children aren't welcome there, yet parents obviously can't just leave their infant children, so, what's the easy way out of that dilemma?

And actually, intercepting aliens crossing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, along a 2,000 mile long border is not as easy as you imagine. The US Border Patrol is already the largest non-military force, they had something like 40,000 people last time I checked, which was some time ago, I'd bet money it's much higher now. How much can you beef up the border? We'd need more troops than we have in Iraq.

[barb162]

83. then I say we should beef up the borders as we simply don't

have unlimited resources here to support endless numbers of illegals. And if it takes as many people as we have in Iraq, so be it. Illegals are draining this economy, theya re forcing the wages downward, they are using the natural resources of this country, etc.
And I wonder why you say the children of illegals born here are not welcome in the country of their parents. If you or I were born in England of American parents, I think you or I would still be welcome back in the US. I don't think this is a dilemma at all. Have the illegals go back to their own countries and take their children with them; they are responsible for the children they created, right?

[barb162]

84. then I say beef up the borders because we don't

have unlimited resources here to support endless numbers of illegals. And if it takes as many people as we have in Iraq, so be it. Illegals are draining this economy, they are forcing the wages downward, they are using the natural resources of this country, etc.

And I wonder why you say the children of illegals born here are not welcome in the country of their parents. If you or I were born in England of American parents, I think you or I would still be welcome back in the US. I don't think this is a dilemma at all. Have the illegals go back to their own countries and take their children with them; they are responsible for the children they created, right?

[Name removed]

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[pabloseb]

90. no words...

:scared: :puke:

[Bouncy Ball]

157. Advocating shooting illegal aliens on sight?

I hope you enjoy your stay here at DU.

[Name removed]

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[uhhuh]

20. I Would Have No Problem

With enforcing laws to prevent illegal immigration if they were implemented fairly.

As it stands now, what we are talking about is enforcing immigration law to prevent people from Mexico and Central American countries from coming here. If this policy was extended to include Cubans, rather than rewarding them for illegally entering the country, it would at least be consistent.

The people who are fleeing their countries to come here are not doing so because they hate their home countries so much, but because organizations like the world bank and IMF, supported wholeheartedly by the power brokers in the U.S., have conducted a relentless campaign of economic terrorism on the lands of their birth.

Between destablizing the governments where they come from, and keeping them in gut wrenching poverty, with strongmen and corrupt police, and death squads and such, there is not much they can do except to attempt to flee into the belly of the beast and try to hide on its back until it tears its own heart out.

Most of the people who have fled here from elsewhere that I've talked to didn't come here for freedom or opportunity or milk and honey and streets of gold. Most still are very much in love with the land of their birth. They just got tired of watching it die.

I think the easiest way to prevent illegal immigration is to stop raping other nations of their wealth and resorces, and essentially punching holes in their raft so they try to climb on to the first rock they see in the distance. That rock is the U.S., and that rock is slowly sinking.

If we invested a good degree of capital in helping to restore these nations to a reasonably livable status for most of their people, I think they wouldn't be even interested in coming here.

[pabloseb]

23. Great post!

:thumbsup: :hi:

[barb162]

79. where do we get this capital... Bush is wildly spending this

country into fucking bankruptcy with his wars, our tax dollars are going to the defense dept., we are running the biggest trade deficits ever, etc.

[uhhuh]

85. I don't know

I would like to see at least a 2 yr freeze on any and all defense spending beyond the most basic mainenance levels. Those funds could then be diverted to something worthwhile.

[barb162]

98. wishful thinking is nice, BUT

I would like to get the illegals deported who have overstayed visas. I think that's a few million right there. I would also like to see people who have applied legally to be able to come here before one more illegal sets foot here. And I want to see the borders beefed up big-time and employers of illegals get fined so heavily they will never ever think of hiring an illegal again. And the millions in fines I'd get from these employers I would use for beefing up the border. The border security could possibly be phased out somewhat quickly if other employers of illegals saw test case employers being tossed in jail and having their assets confiscated in a very aggressive fashion.

I don't know how much I would be blaming the IMF or World Bank for problems in other countries. It is an extremely complex issue. No government has to accept these financial arrangements, do they? What you may see as economic terrorism I may see as fundamental flaws within certain nations, such as perhaps, lack of natural resources, lack of controlling population, etc. I think overpopulation or having more children than one can afford is a very taboo subject when one discusses immigration...issues of personal responsibility arise and a lot of people don't like to deal with that subject.

[uhhuh]

112. No they don't have to accept the arrangements

But the oligarchs in power there make everyone submit to them whether they want to or not. If they are deposed or defeated by election, that has no effect on the raw deal they got dragged into when they had bad leaders.

Those countries have plenty of natural resources that have been systematically stolen from them and given over to multi-nationals and the corrupt politicians that love them.Population control? Get serious. When you live in an area with no social services and a high mortality rate, including disease AND murder, the idea of limiting growth in population is silly.

Even if there were to be shown a benefit to them in doing so, they would have to have access to sex education and reliable birth control.

[barb162]

120. your points are valid

but I know if people on this planet don't start zipping it up, there wont be a single tree or blade of grass left where there isn't a human squatting on it and crying out for food. I look at Haiti (no trees; all burned for firewood, hurricane comes, oops, mudslides), I look at India (what, a billion people in that country alone), etc., and there are a billion poverty-stricken people on this planet who would probably love to come here. Meanwhile the USA economy is imploding and I think there will be a major recession soon if not worse, what with the dollar slide, the understated unemployment, the deficit, etc.

WHat the IMF and WB are doing I am sure is not the absolute best for each nation they "helped" BUT maybe they did create some employment in these countries and got a few people on their feet, hopefully not just the relatives of the dictators/leaders who deposited funds in Swiss banks. I don't know as I don't follow those two organizations anymore.

Somewhere along the line here, I don't know when, these countries and their people have to get it through their heads they have to get the populations under control. If their land supports 2 people an acre because it is lousy soil or mountainous or whatever, then they shouldn't be expecting to be coming here because they are overbreeding. The UN and world leaders meet periodically on overpopulation and they all mouth the same things and then I watch the population stats rise again the next year. Fish are being totally depleted in the oceans, water is being polluted all over the planet, that tsunami killed a lot of people living in very low-lying areas they probably should not have been in the first place....

China uses some very strict and sickeningly barbaric methods to control their population growth but maybe, sad to say, that is what it takes.

I don't think the US should be the answer to the economic and other problems of other countries. The US should not be accepting unlimited legal or any illegal immigration anymore. There are too many problems in the US now and I think it is going to get a lot worse. More illegals just multiplies the problems here.

[seventythree]

114. While I understand,

isn't there also the argument that we nasty capitalists DO bring a higher standard of living when we send our manufacturing jobs, there? When our companies make other investments there? We've lost thousands and thousands of manufacturing jobs to Central America and Asia, we are worse for it and they are better for it. You are right -- we are slowly sinking. How much more are we to give? We aren't totally responsible for their corrupt and inhumane governments, although we have had a hand in maintaining corruption friendly to us. But don't they bear some responsibility for cleaning them up, just as we are responsible for cleaning up the corruption here.

[uhhuh]

122. Yes they do

And when the people take responisibilty for their government and pass their hopes into leaders like Hugo Chavez and Aristide and Mossadegh? (sp) and Allende, what do they get?

They get U.S. destabilation and coups! That's what. They get their leaders killed or demonized until they are forced into accepting the "business friendly" replacement that first world nations demand of them.

There aren't hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan refugees fleeing their contry because, as economically difficult as it is right now, they have benn able to retain the leader that they have selected after TWO serious coup attempts. These people SHOULD be able to thrive and survive because their leadership is not putting up with the first world's bully tactics. I think it is not over though. I think they will try to remove him until they succeed.

[seventythree]

132. I don't disagree

but I am also not totally ready to accept that the business friendly replacement appreciably makes their life any worse, either. However, that is not to deny their right to self-determination. You must also realize that coups don't happen without the locals being involved -- it's not all about us.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

21. Since I'm an immigration professional,

allow me to make a few points.

BTW, I am also a legal immigrant who has dealt with immigration and USCIS (f/k/a INS) since 1987, first as an E-1 visa holder dependent child, then as a F-1 student, then as a spouse of a U.S. citizen (finally obtaining my "green card" after the removal of the conditions on my marriage).

First of all, people need to understand that there are NO laws in current immigration regulations that will allow an illegal immigrant (defined as one who entered the U.S. without inspection at the border) to do anything to legalize his/her status in the U.S. (I am purposedly excluding those seeking asylum). There are very few things that an alien who has overstayed a visa and remains in the U.S. unlawfully can do too, but this is a separate issue.

Only when Congress authorizes mini "amnesties" can illegal people who meet certain criteria (for instance, proving they were living in the U.S. since a certain date, etc.) then proceed to file petitions/applications/motions with USCIS. Since there is no amnesty in place, this does not currently apply.

Therefore, people need to understand that an illegal alien (defined supra) can't do anything to legalize his/her status.

USCIS (and the Dept. of State) deals primarily with LEGAL immigration (other agencies within the DOJ and DHS deal with border enforcement, etc.). This means people who come in as non-immigrants: as tourists or business people for extended periods (B1/B2), students/trainees (M, F, H-3 and J visas), temporary workers (H-1B), intracompany transferees (L-1A and L-1B), treaty trader/investors (E-1 and E-2), extraordinary ability aliens (O-1, O-2), performers/athletes (P visas), journalists (I visas) and even "snitches" (S visas). Then, there is the whole immigrant visa category for family members, ranging from spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens (higher priority) to brothers and sisters of citizens (lowest priority).

For pretty much most of the above, the processing times are very long, the USCIS is severely understaffed and underfunded and the immigration officers who do work there know often very little about the complex regulations. At work, I get to deal with these morons all the time.

As to the poster who said that immigration laws are retroactive and could one day theoretically call for the deportation of certaub individuals (such as for having red hair), that is absolutely not the case. Realistically, the only people being deported nowadays have committed certain serious felonies or are found to have committed war crimes.

Yes, technically illegal immigrants can be deported, but few actually ever do get deported. The deportation process is itself very long.

Do I feel sorry for an illegal immigrant who is a drug dealer and gets deported, even if he has family here?
No, I don't, because it's the law. It's a consequence of committing a crime. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

If you're going to be an illegal immigrant, at least commit no (other) crimes. I can't shed a tear for people who expect laws not to apply to them.

Many people also come here illegally erroneously thinking that having a baby in the U.S. will grant automatic legal residence. This is not true. That child (a U.S. citizen by birth) would need to wait until s/he is 21 to sponsor his parents for permanent residence, and even then the wait times are very long (years, not months).

I realize that the great overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are not drug dealers or felons, and that they are only trying to make a life for themselves.

However, in making the choice to enter the U.S. unlawfully, they have already committed a crime and need to be aware of the repercussions which may include living a lifetime in secrecy, using false Soc. Sec. Nos. (thereby committing yet another crime), etc. and waiting in vain for amnesties that Congress may or may not allow.

Should something be done to prevent illegal immigration? Absolutely. Perhaps a temporary residence permit that has to be resubmitted every few years and limited employment authorizations only when the employer makes attestations to wage/benefits and living conditions.

Should we allow illegal immigrants to come and work as they please without consequence for their actions, while there are countless other people from all over the world who wait years and years to come in the legal way? Absolutely not.

Immigration is and will always be a difficult subject matter.

[pabloseb]

26. I'm a legal immigrant too

and I support the rights of illegal immigrants. I'm a "legal alien" because I was incredibly fortunate to be born in a middle class family which allowed me to get an excellent education. I can't but sympathize with the plight of those who have been much less fortunate than me, but still are fighting so that their children can have the possibilities they were denied.

You're also wrong that only people who committed (another) crime are deported. There are cases of random deportations. Not many, but enough to create a sense of paranoia among the community. Even the rumor of deportations taking place force scores of illegal immigrants not to live their homes for extended periods and risk losing their jobs.

Now, just opening the doors to everybody simply wouldn't work, and we may agree on partial solutions such as temporary work permits. However, in my view illegal immigrants have done nothing wrong and are not criminals; they are persons who have struggled in life much more than you and me and are working very hard, taking high risks, to improve the situation for them and their families.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

33. Of struggles...

I really don't know how you can say my struggles were fewer because I am a legal immigrant than those of illegal immigrants!

I came here at age 15, no knowledge of English, ending up in a high school in rural North Carolina, where, believe me, foreign people (even white foreigners) are very much harassed and segregated (as I was). My dad was a low-level employee of a foreign company that owned a U.S. subsidiary in the rural NC town where we lived. We too were trying to make a better life for ourselves. We just did it legally.

Out of sheer effort not due to my race or social status (not great) or money (definitely not), I managed to graduate in 2 years, being able to read, write and comprehend English (albeit with a slight southern twang), despite English not being spoken at all in my household and without such "luxuries" as English as a Second Language classes or, at the very least, caring teachers. I went to a public university at age 17. I did well enough to be able to make it in graduate school at one of the best private universities in the nation. All this time, due to a lawyer snafu, I turned 21 at the wrong time and was shut out of my parents' application for a green card.

I became a student in F-1 status, struggling with the idea of having to return to my home country, where I had no more ties, without my family. Yes, it is hard to fathom for me to leave your new life and go back to a place you left behind. However, I believe in the rule of law. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, I believe. I knew then as I know now that I have to abide to the law as it is written.

Thankfully, I met my now-husband, and was able to apply for permanent residence based on our marriage.

I'm sorry, but illegal immigrants, according to the law, do not have "clean hands." They have committed a crime: they entered illegally, without inspection. Now, this does not mean that they do not deserve to be treated with respect, etc.

One who steals an apple to feed his family has committed a crime, even if the punishment should take into consideration the reasons why the crime was committed. Deportation is the punishment for entering the U.S. unlawfully. And, on this point, I am very familiar with the deportation proceedings in New York City and I can tell you that the current cases are people who have been clearly convicted of multiple felonies (including drugs, theft, murder, molestation, etc.), immigrant smugglers, evaders of child support, people convicted of fraud, a couple of suspected former Nazi guards who never got their U.S. citizenship, and repeated illegal entrants (those who have entered illegally many many times).

No one is going through deportation for being simply an illegal immigrant. Otherwise, the NYC area would be half deserted. Deportation legends abound in the immigration community, but, unless you are one of the categories above, are simply that: urban legends.

I have never used a fake document, I have never paid anyone to smuggle me in, I have never worked illegally, I always pay my taxes. I am not rich, my family is definitely not rich (unless you count eating a Christmas dinner of pasta and butter as being a sign of "wealth") and I busted my butt to get where I am today, despite all the things that were against me.

So do not judge my struggles as less important or impressive than those of illegal immigrants.

[pabloseb]

34. Don't take it personal...

I wasn't really talking about you specifically since I ovbiously didn't know anything about your particular situation. I value how hard you have fought to get to where you are now.

However, it's still true that, on average, illegal immigrants are facing harder struggles than legal immigrants. And most immigrants wouldn't be allowed to immigrate legally; otherwise they of course would.

Perhaps because I come from a country where laws are taken much more lightly than here, I put morality above (WAY above) legality. If something is moral I give a sh*t about what the law says. Although I don't smoke marijuana, I don't see my friends who do as criminals. Breaking immoral laws not only is not wrong, it is necessary. When sodomy was a crime in many states (only two years ago), what would you have advised gays to do?

Of course, one needs to consider the consequences when breaking the law. And illegal immigrants do - they have the damocles spade of deportation pending on their heads, and they still choose this path because it's either that or missery (in many cases anyway. There are always exceptions). By the way, I know for a fact that random deporations do happen - may be not in NYC (although I read articles in the NYT saying otherwise), and may be they are very rare, but they exist. But even if it's only an urban legend, immagine the pressure of living under those conditions.

Thanks for contributing to the debate about this very complex issue! :hi:

[DulceDecorum]

77. If you look at the Constitution

and then look at Immigration law,
you will see for yourself that most Immigration law is totally unconstitutional
and you do NOT need a law degree to realize that.

Article. I.
Section. 8.
Clause 4: To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
Section. 9.
Clause 3: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html

As you can see,
Congress is only granted the power
To establish an UNIFORM Rule of Naturalization.

It is a cold blooded fact that there are different INS offices and each INS office conducts business as it sees fit. Therefore, INS New York may have a policy of allowing F1 students to deal with a certain problem in a certain way whereas INS Boston may have a blanket policy of deporting F1 students with the exact same problem.
Where is the uniformity in that?

If you are indeed working in Immigration law,
then you know DAMN WELL that there is a HANDBOOK that is released by the DoJ every so often. Time was when only top immigration lawyers and firms were allowed access to this HANDBOOK and this HANDBOOK carries FAR MORE WEIGHT than anything else on the books.
There is stuff in this HANDBOOK that is NOT available elsewhere.
Furthermore, it is an openly acknowledged FACT that the most successful immigration lawyers are people who either retired from INS or who have contacts on the inside.

Immigration law is a mess.
Perhaps the INS office you report to is not in as bad shape as some of the ones I have seen, but let me tell you here and now, that there is NO UNIFORMITY in Immigration law and therefore the implementation of much of it is unconstitutional.

And I am not even talking about illegal aliens.
I am speaking only of those who arrived here with the proper papers and are doing what they should be doing.
A decent honest law-abiding driver needs to go to the DMV every so often and they go there expecting to be treated the same as everyone else. One law for all. An alien visiting an INS office is playing Russian Roulette with every visit.

In further defense of me statements, I urge you to consider well known Immigration cases such as
YICK WO V. HOPKINS (1886)
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/64.htm

The Chinese Exclusion Case arose in a time of virulent anti-Chinese racism in this country, hardly an era our modern nation should emulate. Yet despite its less-than-admirable beginnings, the plenary power doctrine has survived to shield a range of subsequent immigration provisions from searching constitutional scrutiny. The result, as the Supreme Court explained in a 1976 case called Mathews v. Diaz, is that,"(i)n the exercise of its broad power over naturalization and immigration, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens."
(What happened to the equal protection of the 14 Amendment?)
This practice has not gone unchallenged. Indeed, the plenary power doctrine has faced years of withering criticism from advocates, scholars, and jurists. Even individual members of the Supreme Court have occasionally questioned the doctrine's validity. Still, the Court has never formally rejected its plenary power precedents, and the government has continued to rely on them in its legal briefs when defending immigration provisions against constitutional attack.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20010731_morrison.html

KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES (1944)
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/65.htm

Immigration law is so very horrible that, in many and several instances,
THE INS ITSELF goes to bat against the US on behalf of the alien.

After the House veto of the Attorney General's decision to allow Chadha to remain in the United States, the Immigration Judge reopened the deportation proceedings to implement the House order deporting Chadha. Chadha moved to terminate the proceedings on the ground that 244(c)(2) is unconstitutional. The Immigration Judge held that he had no authority to rule on the constitutional validity of 244(c)(2). On November 8, 1976, Chadha was ordered deported pursuant to the House action.
Chadha appealed the deportation order to the Board of Immigration Appeals, again contending that 244(c)(2) is unconstitutional. The Board held that it had "no power to declare unconstitutional an act of Congress" and Chadha's appeal was dismissed.
Pursuant to 106(a) of the Act, 8 U.S.C. 1105a(a), Chadha filed a petition for review of the deportation order in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Immigration and Naturalization Service agreed with Chadha's position before the Court of Appeals and joined him in arguing that 244(c)(2) is unconstitutional.
After full briefing and oral argument, the Court of Appeals held that the House was without constitutional authority to order Chadha's deportation; accordingly it directed the Attorney General "to cease and desist from taking any steps to deport this alien based upon the resolution enacted by the House of Representatives." The essence of its holding was that 244(c)(2) violates the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.
We granted certiorari and we now affirm....
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/chadha.html

In that particular case,
INS v. Chadha, 462 US 919 (1983) the Supreme Court decision wiped HUNDREDS of federal laws off the books. That ONE decision is SO MONUMENTAL that I cannot even begin to explain it.
I dig the Constitution. It is a beautiful thing when it works.
Which, unfortunately, is seldom.

[cags]

24. I don't buy that they only do jobs Americans won't do.

I knew a guy in college who was an illegal, he worked as a detailer for motorhomes, while he was going through school. He told me how he paid $5000 to get his wifes little sisters smuggled over here.

They aren't just doing farm and labor jobs.

They are going to college, and taking jobs that americans will do.

Now I don't blame them, If I was them I would do the same thing.

I don't really know what the answer is here.

[barb162]

43. They are not just doing low-level jobs, that is for sure and they are

lowering wage levels for certain job categories. To me there are answers: deportation, better border security, beefing up INS, enforcing and ensuring that people apply legally before they come here, etc.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

29. As long as employers are looking for slave labor,

illegal immigrants will come.

I'd lay heavy penalties on employers of illegal immigrants.

[Cleita]

38. Exactly. If employers are forced to pay a living wage

with benefits, that will stop a lot of it. If we had national health care a huge burden would be lifted off of employers making it more possible for them to pay a living wage.

It seems to me there should be some provision though for guest workers. Many Americans won't work at seasonal jobs like harvesting.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

51. In Oregon, picking berries used to be the quintessential summer job

for teenagers. This was in the 1960s, when my Oregon cousins were teenagers. I'm not sure when berry picking stopped being a teenage job and turned into a job for illegal immigrants who could be housed in storage sheds, but by the time I arrived there in the mid 1980s, teenagers didn't go berry picking anymore.

[Cleita]

52. I used to pick berries too in the fifties in Southern California

when I was a teenager. It was the only summer job most of us could get in our town. We picked alongside the braceros though who were allowed in this country legally to work in agricultural and then they were expected to go back to Mexico when the season was over.

It seems there could be a solution to this problem. Incidentally, where I live now, the vineyard workers get $10 an hour and are unionized thanks to Cesar Chavez. It seems to work out because with a family working they can make a decent living.

[seventythree]

118. And in Illinois, the teens

still detassle corn and derogue the beans. My nephew was crew chief, having worked a few seasnons, and made 12 or 15 an hour -- more than he could get working a summer job with the state park service.

[seventythree]

117. How do employers check the paperwork?

especially if the documents are forged, as I understand many are. Who do they call to find about the legal status of a worker -- to check if documents are forged?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

149. I doubt that many honest employers are caught up in this

From what I heard about in Oregon, employers of illegals knew exactly what they were doing, because they paid sub-minimum wage.

The employers who picked up the guys who hung out at 12th and East Burnside in Portland every morning didn't care about papers.

My last employer in Oregon required ALL employees (not just the obviously foreign born) to produce proof of eligibility to work in the U.S.--a birth certificate, a U.S. passport, a green card, or an appropriate visa.

[seventythree]

150. gotcha

on the guys hanging out on street corners, but the birth certificate thing is an easy thing to counterfeit, saw them do it on a tv special about illegals getting driver's licenses. I understand all kinds of counterfeit documents are easy to obtain on the west coast, and I suppose every big city. There has got to be a way for an employer to call social security and verify the person is legal -- a way for social security to know who is and isn't. I know it probably won't fly here, but I am not opposed to a national ID card as to me it is nothing more than a driver's license.

[DrWeird]

37. I'm all for illegal immigration.

People are doing it to make their lives better and feed their families. Good for them.

Now if you want to speed up and streamline the process through which people can become legal immigrants, so they can do it legally, that's perfectly fine with me.

The difference between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants, to me, is just a paperwork technicality.

[Bridget Burke]

47. It's hard enough for legal immigrants to become citizens....

I've known enough highly educated people who needed the (expensive) help of immigration lawyers to stay--people who would become great citizens. Procedures should be streamlined for them--& for the undocumented.

Bush's plan would allow for "guest workers"--a permanent underclass. I agree that all immigrants should be encouraged to go for citizenship--they'd start wanting to be paid more & treated better. But Bush's pals prefer to keep them illegal, unless they can create new braceros. Of course, putting a few "illegal employers" in jail would cut down the demand. But that will never happen.

Bush's plans also include making it harder for them to get drivers licenses & making asylum harder to win. Oh, and the budget means our border guards will be thin on the ground.

[pabloseb]

95. Finally someone with a little common sense...

:thumbsup:

[barb162]

39. me too and totally.

It is also an issue that can be used to destroy Bush I believe. There are a lot of GOP types who can't stand illegal immigration and not just the radical right. I think the Bush plan to legalize illegals is a disastrous plan that will encourage more illegals to come here and will further break the back of Social Security and other safety nets and will further drive down wages.

I think all illegals should be sent back to their countries of origin with a bill to their respective governments for the plane fares. They force down wages of jobs, they often use public health care and education without paying into it, they don't pay income taxes, they often ship their incomes back home instead of spending it here, etc. Lou Dobbs on CNN does stories on this almost every day how they are hurting the economy of this country. I think the last estimate I heard was that there were about 20 million here.

[primavera]

45. Because the economy depends upon it

Undocumented migrant workers will put in a huge amount of labor for rock bottom wages. Particularly in industries in which labor is the primary cost of business, like construction and agriculture, the employment of such undocumented workers is a crucial ingredient in keeping costs down.

One could argue that letting prices float to a more realistic market level is what should happen and that's fine, but think about the ripples for a minute. The price of tomatoes in your supermarket is going to skyrocket overnight. You, as a conscientious consumer who wants to support American grown produce, may very well pay the higher price. But what about other people who won't? They will want to continue to be able to buy their tomatoes at the lower price, which means supermarkets will turn increasingly to imported produce to supply their needs. So the immediate result will be an increased demand for imported produce, a reduced demand for domestic produce, and a corresponding loss of jobs in US agriculture, as well as tax revenues from the affected businesses. Increased imports will produce a negative shift in the trade balance and a concommitant depreciation in the value of the dollar. US agriculture will scream for tariff protection, in response to which trading partners will respond in kind by increasing their own tariffs and duties. All of these aftershocks will take place as sure as you breathe the instant you eliminate undocumented migrant labor from the US agricultural equation.

Much the same can be said for the construction industry. How much do you imagine the cost of a new house will go up when the cost of hiring the labor needed to build it doubles? How many people will be able to afford to buy a new house then?

These may well be eggs we need to break to make the omelette we want, but it's important to not underestimate just how much the US economy has come to rely upon undocumented labor. We are all about low prices in this country: we want our MalWarts and our Costcos and our Shoppers Food Warehouses; we want cheap food, cheap clothes, cheap homes, cheap everything. And our economic system is built upon that. How long could the Walton family continue to pay their employees slave wages, enabling them to accrue fantastic personal fortunes, if their employees couldn't get goods cheap enough to support even a modest standard of living on those slave wages? We're talking a serious economic revolution here and nobody is eager to embark upon it - not the rich people, because their fortunes depend upon being able to pay their workers peanuts, nor, for that matter, the poor people who suddenly wouldn't be able to afford the cost of basic goods and services and who would undoubtedly undergo a period of severe hardship and deprivation before wages and the increased cost of living had a chance to equilibrate. It's something to think about.

[idlisambar]

64. I've thought about it and it would be better to clamp down if done right

The benefits of clamping down on illegal immigration outweigh the costs as long as the enforcement costs are low. Probably the cheapest way to improve enforcement is to make it more difficult for illegals to gain employment. Requiring a more robust and systematic check of employee eligibility would do the job. The challenge is not in the technology or infrastructure to support this, but the fact that employers don't want to stop hiring illegals and will fight any measure that requires them to do so.

The extra cost for agricultural and construction would be a real cost born by all of us, but the primary beneficiary would low-income Americans who would face reduced downward wage pressure. The benefit to them combined with the reduced load on tax-payer-funded social services would make clamping down on illigal immigration worthwhile to Americans if done cheaply.

[primavera]

66. I'm not so sure

Some of the benefits you attribute to clamping down are open to debate. For instance, the burden on tax-payer-funded benefits to which you allude is arguably grossly overestimated. Right-wing anti-immigrant groups like to invent all sorts of wild numbers alleging that social services bear a terrible burden thanks to immigrants, but most impartial studies show quite the opposite, that immigrants draw less on social services than do natives, and the extent to which they do draw on them is more than offset by the taxes they pay into them. So, actually, our social services would lose money by eliminating immigrant participation in them. Unless, of course, you take the viewpoint advocated by anti-immigrant lobbyists that immigrants should continue to pay into those programs through their taxes, but should simply not be allowed to access the programs they're paying for. Of course, that would be financially advantageous, but then, theft usually is.

As for driving down the cost of wages. Mmm, yeah, there's probably a point there. But I'm not sure how many Americans really want to work in the fields under a blazing hot sun farming potatoes. Oh, I'm sure if you raised the wages enough, it might become attractive to some American workers, but unless you raised the pay to rival that of professions - at which point it would cost more to buy a bag of potatoes than it would to buy a new BMW - I'm doubtful there would be a rush of US workers running to take advantage of those jobs.

Nor am I confident that it really matters. I mean, do you grow your own food? Grow your own grain, mill your own flour, bake your own bread? I know I don't, nor does it bother me that I don't. It's not cost effective for me to give up my current job, which pays me enough so that I can afford to buy the food I need. None, or at least very few of us actually make ourselves the food we consume, instead we work at whatever it is that we do and pay for food. I don't really see that there's anything wrong with that. So, if you're resigned to paying somebody else for the service of providing your food, what does it really matter whom you're paying for that service, as long as you have a stream of income which will reliably ensure that you can go on buying that food?

It seems to me that what we ought to be focusing on here is not making it more attractive for US workers to pick cotton or fruit or whatever, but investing in our educational systems so that Americans may work as lawyers and bankers and doctrs and so on, buy the food that they need, and have a whole lot more money left at the end of the day than they would have if they took up careers as fruit pickers.

[idlisambar]

72. admittedly it's a complex issue

"Some of the benefits you attribute to clamping down are open to debate. For instance, the burden on tax-payer-funded benefits to which you allude is arguably grossly overestimated. Right-wing anti-immigrant groups like to invent all sorts of wild numbers alleging that social services bear a terrible burden thanks to immigrants, but most impartial studies show quite the opposite, that immigrants draw less on social services than do natives, and the extent to which they do draw on them is more than offset by the taxes they pay into them"

The costs may be exaggerated by some, but I would be very surprised if illegal immigrants actually were less demanding of social services than natives and very surprised if they actually pay more in taxes than they draw from services. Could you point me to such a study? In terms of education costs for example, it is not plausible that the education of the average child of an illegal immigrant is less expensive than the child of a native.

Of course, the other factor is that costs are not well distributed. The border states are asked to bear more than their share of costs through education and other state funded social services, while the rest of us reap the benefits of lower prices.

"But I'm not sure how many Americans really want to work in the fields under a blazing hot sun farming potatoes. Oh, I'm sure if you raised the wages enough, it might become attractive to some American workers, but unless you raised the pay to rival that of professions - at which point it would cost more to buy a bag of potatoes than it would to buy a new BMW - I'm doubtful there would be a rush of US workers running to take advantage of those jobs."

I can't speak about agriculture, but concerning the construction industry this argument falls a little flat. Japan, a nation that does not readily accept immigrants, has been forced to use other measures to meet its construction needs. Construction firms in Japan invest much more heavily than firms in the U.S. Some of these funds go toward productivity enhancing improvements such as automated construction, and sometimes money is spent purely on decreasing the danger and/or improving the working conditions (automation yields dividends here as well). Finally, wages are also much higher in construction than here.

I can imagine similar measures taken here in construction and even in agriculture. No doubt there are many simple and/or creative measures that could be taken to increase the desirability of agricultural work if employers had reason to bother.

[barb162]

86. that's correct; illegals are actually draining this economy by

the burden they put on schools, hospitals, other social services, etc.

If prices go up and I expect they would, the overall cost to the economy would most likely still be far less if we stop the illegal immigration.

Going after employers and fining them bigtime ( similar to drug dealers) if they hire illegals would go really far in stopping the main reason the illegals come here.

[goodhue]

48. human rights, human dignity, that kind of thing . . .

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

54. Here's somebody that disagrees with you.

"I hold the right of expatriation to be inherent in every man by the laws of nature, and incapable of being rightfully taken from him even by the united will of every other person in the nation. If the laws have provided no particular mode by which the right of expatriation may be exercised, the individual may do it by any effectual and unequivocal act or declaration." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1806. FE 8:458

[Name removed]

147. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[William Bloode]

58. Immigration is a sore spot for me.

This countries policy of immigration helped kill off my people. Massive unchecked immigration fueled the move west by humgry people looking for a new life. Bad thing is their new life came at the expense of my forefathers.

Samethimg happening again in a way. There are only a limited amount of jobs and resources. We can no longer have such a wide open policy. It drives down wages, drives up housing costs leaving the rest of us stuck.

Also in a time of such shortness of employment why should citizens be forced to compete with illegals who are willing to work for less? I see it in my town, restruant jobs and such go to the illegals for the most part while citizens who need the job suffer.

I don't blame the immigrants, i blame our own goverment for not enforcing the laws we have on the books. It's ridiculous, on my last job it was found 24 people were working under the same S.S. number.

Sorry but they got to go.

[barb162]

116. good points and I totally agree. 24 people on one SS number

certainly shows they keep breaking laws once they get here, doesn't it.

[DrGonzoLives]

60. I tend to agree

chiefly because they are nothing more than a cheap, exploitable pool of labor for unscrupulous business owners. Previous posters are right, Americans don't take "those" jobs because the employers of "those" jobs know that they can hire three illegal immigrants for the price of one American.

And for those who cry "racist," go check out how some western Europeans react to illegal immigrants in their countries.

[redherring]

61. If wage is increased for everybody

that is, if we ensure that even illegal immigrants get at least a certain amount of wage, the incentive of corporations to hire illegal immigrants will indeed be reduced. The reason why illegal immigrants are hired is that they don't have to be paid as much as Americans or legal immigrants. So the corporations are only abusing these people by hiring them.
They just not to penalize corporations big time for hiring workers for less than minimum wage.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

63. Blaming the victims.

The corporations rape their country of it's resources, put small farmers out of business, which forces them to flee to this country where they are underpaid for the work Americans refuse to do.

Then, we good "liberals", blame them for our troubles.

Go figure.

[barb162]

88. excuse me, but is this the only country to which they can fleee

[knight_of_the_star]

62. I only have one problem with illegal immigration

Namely the part called ILLEGAL.

[ultraist]

65. Legalizing "illegal aliens" effectively lowers wages for legals

These illegals are willing to work for less, thus all wages are drug down. Mexicans comprise 90% of construction workers now displacing millions of Americans. Big builders and developers profits are skyrocketing.

The real benefit of W's plan is to provide cheap labor for wealthy business owners and big corps.

Migrant workers have been used in my state for decades in the cotton fields, textile mills, and manufacturing plants.

If W really cared about the human rights of migrant workers, he would put the screws to Mexico to do something about their elitist system that has two classes: the extremely wealthy and the very poor.

I'm all for immigration with reasonable caps so that our own are not displaced and without reasonable pay and employment.

[XanaDUer]

70. You got it. I wrote Craig about this and pretty much

stated what you said.

When Craig went into his la-di-da crap about America's bounty, I thought I was going to :puke:

Only repuklicans can make screwing over legal and illegal workers sound like they are doing you a favor set to the tune of "God Bless America."

[Cleita]

82. So you're blaming the victim here. It's the employers who

should be made to pay a living wage. In other words, we need to raise the minimum wage so Americans will take the jobs. Also, we need to severely fine the employers who hire those workers at lower wages. Not only is it racist but illegally turns these immigrants into non-persons. Also, why isn't Bush pressuring his good friend Vicente Fox to raise the wages in his country so that the workers stay home?

[ultraist]

151. I agree companies should be penalized but they are going to legalilze it

now. And yes, min wage should go up. I think it should be $13 per hour, 60% of the median income, but I realize that wont happen anytime soon.

I also think we need reasonable caps. There is only so much room for laborers and to displace Americans is to throw off the balance.

[lostnfound]

73. The questions revolve around whether to consider them human beings or not?

Or simply as vermin to be stopped at the door..
:Shrug:
The Republicans actually want to import them now, as temporary slave labor with no rights.

Every policy has ramifications -- harder border crossings increase profits for illegal traffickers and risk of death for desparate people.

[barb162]

89. I think this is NOT the question at all. I think there are

several questions, such as how many millions of people do we want in this country, how long will our natural resources last (little problems such as water supply in the Southwest USA), how many people do we want to support in the way of social services who don't contribute a dime to the system, etc., especially when we are already bankrupting ourselves in the world now through massive and catastrophic deficits, trade imbalances, etc.

[pabloseb]

96. Funny how you mix good points with RW spin

"how long will our natural resources last (little problems such as water supply in the Southwest USA)"

So illegal immigrants are responsible for the dilapidation of natural resources? Not the corporations who give a sh*t about the environment and the drivers of SUVs?

"how many people do we want to support in the way of social services who don't contribute a dime to the system"

This pure right-wing myth has been debunked several times in this thread. Illegal immigrants are not a significant burden to SS; most likely they actually contribute to it on average.

[barb162]

97. Funny how you mix fascism and RW spin and who knows

what else, while approving of criminal and illegal acts on a monumental scale. My, my, next thing you will be telling us is that all illegals are paying income tax and that millions aren't entering this country every year. What you call myths are not myths at all. Facts are facts. You know, a few million people add up to a hell of a lot of people using natural resources and social services with taxpayers like me supporting them bigtime.

Your example is poor...what gays do behind closed doors isn't costing this country any money. Millions of illegals coming here every year is costing the USA bigtime and every tax-paying citizen.

On a micro scale, since you are mixing things badly here, explain how an illegal who doesn't pay income tax but who is sending children to US schools is paying his/her share of the cost of educating those children. And if you can be brave enough to admit the illegals using schools and other social services are not at all paying their share, why should I want to pay it for them.

[uhhuh]

102. Are you interested in backing up your claims

Or just repeating them like a mantra over and over again.

Read these links and refute them if you think you have a case:

http://www.ailf.org/pubed/pe_articles_nw062102a.htm

http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featwise_immigrationexcerpt_p.htm

Edited to add one more link:

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=14332

[barb162]

106. Calling an illegal immigrant an undocumented immigrant is

like calling a burglar an uninvited houseguest.

Checkmate to your mantras, silliness and complete lack of facts below


http://www.cyberessays.com/Politics/32.htm

http://www.alphapatriot.com/home/archives/categories/immigration/index.php

http://www.illegalaliens.us/

[uhhuh]

119. So you can link to term papers and right wing blogs

Congratulations.

Your earlier claims of 20 million undocumented aliens coming from the INS seems to be untrue now doesn't it? It comes from a worst case scenario report from Bear Stearns. I trust those guys. I really do...

[barb162]

123. quit the stupid inappropriate name-calling and go to INS

yourself. I am not your servant doing your research.
I didn't see you support or back up your statements with anything. Did you back up any of your statements (bashing) of the World Bank like it is the evil empire? If you did, I missed it.


By the way, the INS web site did say that Southwest illegal border crossings last year alone were 1,139,282 APPREHENDED and I have heard INS officers in interviews estimate they catch 1 illegal for every 10 that cross successfully.

Who cares if you trust Bear Stearns or not. Not me

[uhhuh]

125. I did

The INS estimates that there are approximately 8-10 million or so undocumented aliens in the U.S.

As far as the IMF and World Bank, Here are a few:


This first one is trying to be really fair to the orgs:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/role/globalact/int-inst/2001/0501blast.htm

Here's where corpwatch lets them have it:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=446

On edit, one more:

http://www.commondreams.org/views/041500-103.htm

On edit: What name calling are you talking about?

Are you saying that alphapatriot.com should not be called right wing?

If that's not it, are you saying that the IMF and World Bank are not raping the evironment and resources of other nations of behalf of American corporate interests?

I was going to sleep, but I guess I'm curious what you're referring to.

Edit again: The most rescent figures that come directly from the INS.gov website are approximately 7 million immigrants as of 2000, the year with the latest figures. I guess I was wrong. Oops:

http://uscis.gov/graphics/shared/aboutus/statistics/2000ExecSumm.pdf

One last edit:

Since these figures DO indicate that this was as of 2000, and they estimate that 300,000 or so cross yearly, I will go back to my original estimate statement at the top of the post....8 to 10 million. that still isn't 20 million, though and the Bear Stearns thing doesn't make it true because they say so any more than the INS claims are necessarily true.

[QC]

133. Stupid, inappropriate namecalling is all some people here have got,

so they have to make the most of it.

[WoodrowFan]

162. nice cjhoice of links

a term paper, a far RW site (compelte with link to groups like the Swiftboat Vets) and a racist site. Next time we discuss race maybe you can "prove" your argument by linking to Stormfront.

[pabloseb]

103. If you want to believe the RW myths, believe them

We're all free here. You have all your facts so wrong that I won't spend more of my time trying to convince you of something you're not ready to accept.

[barb162]

108. watch Lou Dobbs sometime and you may

learn something about facts and reality versus your myths. He does a lot of shows about actual dollars and cents and how illegals are affecting this country.

[barb162]

100. forgot something and that is that I noticed you didn't answer

anything. Since there are about 20 million illegals here (INS estimates) and you don't think they are responsible for anything in the way of depletion of natural resources or social services, would you like to test that? Round up all 20 million illegals and plunk them in the middle of NM or NV and maybe then you will get the point I am making about RESOURCES, as in no water for starters. Do illegals use water or not pabloseb? This is very simple and requires a yes or no answer

[ultraist]

152. Illegals can't get Social Services, that's a RW myth

MANY also pay into Social Security using fake Social Security numbers they have to get to work. They also pay income taxes but don't get the returns.

They also cannot get umemployment.

Illegals are also very mistreated by employers. Check the research on OSHA & workman's comp claims and see how they get screwed.

How long has your family been in the US?

[WoodrowFan]

164. one comment

Many of the illegal's kids do get an education in public schools.. That seems wise to me, we educate the kids, they get good jobs, they pay back into the system.


You can't bitch about somebody not assimilating, then try to lock them out of the society to which you want them to assimilate.

[Astarho]

142. Just a note about the water

Illegals are no threat to the water supply unless you count the golf courses , McMansions, and timeshares they build.

[ultraist]

154. Those big developers do some serious damage

Malls, Lowes, Walmart and other places where they clear cut does serious damage and disturbs the water table.

FL has major sink hole problems from overdevelopment.

Let's not get into the big corps that pollute.

[LeftyMom]

107. Well, my Grandfather was an illegal immigrant

so I'd be a hypocrite if I said other people in bad situations can't come here and contribute to the economy.

Grandpa paid a nice American couple to go register him as thier son for a birth certificate. I assume more money changed hands to get the papers because teenage boys born in Washington state generally speak some English.

Grandpa went on to raise five kids (two not his own) and put them all through parochial school. He paid his taxes, worked hard and was independent until three days before he died, at the age of 92. His surviving four kids had good jobs and his grandchildren all work hard, we've got lots of teachers in the family and my late uncle was a policeman. How many thousands upon thousansd of dollars does the government make off Grandpa's many prosperous decendents every year? How much good would it have done American society if he'd stayed home, since he was underage and Hungarian and Catholic and had less then no chance of entering the US with permission?

[seventythree]

121. and what year was that

when grandpa came? Times have changed and what this country could once support, it cannot support any longer, not and provide a decent life for grandpa's descendants. What we needed in 1910, and what we need in 2010 is not the same. No one here has talked about assimilation -- that doesn't appear to be happening like it once did -- we have pockets of immigrants who never even learn the language. A country is melded by a common identity/language/experience, and that is being lost. Are we only to be a marketplace? Or are we to remain a country? How long will it take to roll back the egalitarian victories that we have achieved and continue to struggle to achieve when we are flooded by cultures which don't share those values?

[barb162]

124. I was on public transport recently and started talking to the

woman next to me. She could only speak Spanish so I started talking in her language. After a bit I asked how long she was here and I figured it was only a few months as she knew no English at all. She said 30 years.

In other words, I totally agree with the points you are making about assimilation.

[ultraist]

155. I strongly disagree with assimilation and forcing our culture on others

Celebrate diversity!

My mother in law recently was on a rant about how people should learn the language, and spewing out all of her racist talking points were straight from FAUX news. She ONLY watches FAUX.

I do think that school children should be provided ESL classes but for adults it should be optional.

Could you imagine what NYC would be like if assimilation was forced? What a shame that would be.

[WoodrowFan]

163. well, that proves it.

a woman who still speaks Spanish after 30 years, WELL, THE NERVE!


For your information, it's typical of the 1st generation of immigrants to not learn much English. And there is much less foreign language press now than there was 80 years ago. There used to be newspapers in numerous languages in every city of any size in the US, and voter information used to be in even more languages than we see now. As the new generations assimilated the need and desire for such services declined. it'll decline against as the current Spanish-speaking immigrants raise kids in the US.

[QC]

135. My grandfather used to get drunk and whoop up on the wife and kids.

I guess that means I can't express reservations about alcoholism and domestic violence.

[LeftyMom]

136. They two aren't comparable

My great-gradparents looked about themselves and decided that the future looked dark in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, so they took thier son to Italy and put him on a boat to the safest place they could think of with what little money they could scrape together. While my Grandfather's immigration was legaly wrong, it was morally right. It probably saved his life and benefited the county he immigrated to because he became a productive citizen and raised more productive citizens.

The immigration system in this county is still racist and classist, so I can't condemn people who have no choice but to bypass it if they wish to enter this country, especially since most of them come here and work thier asses off to build a good life for thier families.

[QC]

139. Of course they're not comparable. The point is that

the "if my grandpa did something then it's OK" argument doesn't really hold up.

I've worked with migrant farm workers and know them to be good, hardworking people trying to give their families a decent life. That's undeniable, and it's why I believe that immigration is a good thing. But mass, barely-controlled immigration, like we have now, is one of the tools that Bush and his class are using to push down working-class wages. Our party's refusal to acknowledge that is yet one more reason why we are seen as removed from the concerns of working people, or at least the working class people who are already here and have been taking a real beating for over thirty years.

[LeftyMom]

140. We can't keep determined people out

I agree that illegal immigrants undercut American workers and it drives wages down. Since there's really no effective way to stop illegal immigration maybe it would be better to improve the immigration system so more people can enter the country legally (or legalize thier status after the fact) and get legal jobs at the usual wage. That would be better for everybody.

[QC]

141. We could also, of course, take action against those who knowingly hire

illegal immigrants. Jail for a second violation and forfeiture of the business for repeat offenses would do wonders for making employers more conscientious. As it is now, the whole thing is little more than a new form of indentured servitude.

[Solly Mack]

126. Just one story

Chicken Plants in Georgia

Union workers...meat packers.

Wages/benefits fought for by Union.

Huge influx of illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigrants go to work in chicken plants. Willing to work for less...way less.

Company "sponsors" ads run in Mexico "come to Gainesville - find work"
Company "sponsors" illegals (with claims of citizenship)& by fronting them cash to send to their families (which comes back out of their pay), giving them days off to go home and visit..with job waiting for them. (company store is reborn)

Time passes..word spreads...more come....willing to work on the cheap.

Union loses hold, wages are lower, benefits are cut....union goes kaput...because new (illegal immigrants) employees vote against union..

Workers with pro-union ties are out of a job because they can't afford to work for lower wages and slashed benefits.

They get angry at Mexicans and claim "they took my job"

But "they" didn't...corporate greed and anti-union business owners took their job.

but these angry Americans still vote republican by and large

the immigrants, some of which are still illegal(despite promises by company of sponsorship), are still getting poor wages with slashed benefits....and still being attacked for taking jobs they never took...

some immigrants that have become legal think the "company did them a favor"...and support republican candidates...


:::scratches head:::::

[seventythree]

137. read you loud and clear

near my community -- hog processing. Bring them in and turn them over -- can't get enough at any one time to fill out the union cards, and fear keeps them from signing -- they could be deported if they don't play employer game. The turn over has run as high as 300% -- no job, no skills, but in the community, now. Trailer cities, and on and on. Kids in schools, parents at pantries, property taxes minimal, cost of education not so minimal.

[Darranar]

144. It is important to remember the history of illegal immigration...

in this region.

There was a time to stop illegal immigration. It was the year 1492.

But nothing was done, and so the illegal immigrants came to the country, slaughtered its inhabitants, and ethnically cleansed them from the land they wanted. A history of butchery and repression has continued until this day.

You want to stop illegal immigration? Fine. Let's get rid of NAFTA. Let's stop using the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank as proxies to fight a war against developing nations. Let's start a serious attempt to have global economic progress beyond the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

But for now, as the United States and the other rich nations fight a class war against the majority of the world, we have no right at all to demand for it to stop.

You want to avoid wage depression and unemployment? Fine. Let's raise the minimum wage. Let's really reform welfare - make it a force to make corporations raise wages, instead of a tool for forcing the poor into badly-paying jobs that hurt wages. Let's create government programs to hire unemployed workers.

But how selfish is it of us to say, hey, you, stay in your own country and starve, thanks in part to our government's policies, because we don't want wage reductions that could be easily fixed with a bit of progressive legislation?

[PowerToThePeople]

160. Bravo

I love this post.

[Strelnikov_]

148. Deal With Immigration By Addressing Demand, Not Supply

Like the drug war should be pursued.

All the current immigration policy of this country does is create a black market for labor, exploiting those who are here illegally, and driving down the wages and working conditions for legal residents.

What we need a guest worker program to stop the exploitation of immigrants and end the flooding of the labor market due to uncontrolled immigration. Penalties for hiring undocumented workers would be severe. Foreign nationals in this country without proper documentation would be quickly returned to their home country.

Hiring of guest workers by businesses would be coordinated through workforce development (unemployment) offices. These offices would maintain a set of procedures/surveys to verify a shortage of labor in a classification before guest workers could be hired. A wage rates system would have to be maintained to prevent low wages from being used as way to create a labor shortage.

All labor laws, including minimum wage rates and social security payments, would be enforced for guest workers. After participation in the program over time, the guest worker would be eligible for a retirement SS annuity based on what they paid in.

Uncontrolled immigrant labor fills a void that it perpetuates, low wages that make the jobs undesirable due to an oversupply of labor, the classic supply/demand relationship.

As an example, meatpacking jobs (in the midwest) paid a middle class wage ($20/hr+ in 2000 $) in the 70's. These jobs provided good health care and retirement benefits because they were unionized. As was related by a worker from this era, the social contract was that it was hard, dangerous work that left most workers crippled when they retired, and the compensation was commensurate.

Over the 70's and 80's non-union plants were opened, and the unionized plants closed or the unions busted. As compensation was much lower at the non-union plants, U.S. citizens abandoned the industry, and the labor void was filled with immigrants. Since the supply of this labor is virtually unlimited, compensation and workplace safety has plummeted.

The 70's era worker, in the interview I heard, indicated that there would be no problem attracting U.S. citizens to the industry if compensation and workplace conditions were similar to the 70's.

Others in this thread have posted similar stories to the above.

Some thoughts on immigration policy from John Sayles which sums up my feelings on this issue.

John Sayles
From:A People's Democratic Platform
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040802&s=forum

"The Democratic platform should call for an end to the hypocrisy of our immigration policy. Our current policy, an enormously expensive cat-and-mouse game, most notably on our southern border, calls on the INS to enforce immigration laws that are openly expected to be ignored by countless US industries and private employers. Some sort of regulated guest-worker program is needed.

Once it is in place, if immigrants continue to enter the country illegally and can't find work, word will filter back and the numbers will decrease dramatically. While in our country, however, those guest workers need to be protected from exploitation--to be assured they will be paid for their work, that their working conditions will meet state and federal safety standards and that they will receive no less than the federally mandated minimum wage (which needs to be raised).

Employers would be required to withhold some percentage (perhaps the equivalent of federal taxes and Social Security) from wages to help defray the costs of the program. Penalties for hiring foreign workers outside of the program would be high enough (and sufficiently enforced) to end the black market in labor that is thriving now.

Protecting all workers in this country is an important first step toward the amendment or abolition of NAFTA and the protection of workers throughout the world."

[RevolutionaryActs]

161. .