Mortgage companies court illegal aliens:

[MercutioATC]

Does anybody else see the wrongness of this?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05189/535094.stm

[leveymg]

1. You mean that they can get a mortgage, or that the company grabs the

house if the unfortunate borrower gets deported?:eyes:

[MercutioATC]

3. Ooooh...I see where this is going...

I mean that people who are breaking the law are being rewarded by private corporations (banks) and the government (by issuing ITINs).

If you want to allow more open immigration from Central and/or South America, fine...work for that. It seems counterproductive, however, to encourage people to break immigration laws.

[leveymg]

8. They're here, and they're not leaving. So, what are you going to

do about it? Turn them into a permanent criminal underclass? Great public policy choice.

[MercutioATC]

10. Let's just stop enforcing laws because people will always break them.

In fact, let's REWARD people who break laws.

Is that the gist of your position?


My "public policy choice" would be to either change the law and grant current illegals legal status or deport them.

What's YOUR solution?

[leveymg]

13. The least problem (politically) is to do nothing. Maintain status quo.

Of course the deferred decision approach aggregates other problems, legal, policy, social, economic, you name it.

Welcome to the real world of U.S. immigration policy-making.

[MercutioATC]

14. I'm just advocating consistency.

If we want them here, make them legal. If we want to enforce immigration laws, let's do THAT.

Facilitating mortgages for people residing in the U.S. illegally seems to be encouraging people to break the law, though. That seems counterproductive to me.

[Fescue4u]

12. They ARE a criminal underclass

If they are illegals. By definition.

[MercutioATC]

15. Do you have a good Nomex suit on hand?

I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying...

:)

[leveymg]

16. They are civil status violators. Do you want them to be criminals?.

Illegal entry or overstaying a visa is not a crime, they are civil infractions.

How many billions of dollars would you like to spend to round them all up as criminals? How many cells should we construct? What other public priorities would you like to forego? These are real questions that have to be answered in a sensible way by the restrictionists before anyone will take them seriously.

[MercutioATC]

17. That's just semantics.

They ARE breaking the law. By common definition, that means they are committing a crime...thus the "criminal" label.

[leveymg]

18. Clarification on last post.

8 USC § 1325(a) (illegally entering the country)- is a federal misdemeanor offense. See, below. However, illegal presence(immigration status violators) generally are not.

8 U.S.C. § 1325(a) (1994) provides:
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under Title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under Title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.


It all boils down to this. Do you want local and state policemen spending their time chasing down undocumented workers, or performing other law enforcement functions? Do you want to turn mortgage officers into Department of Homeland Security auxilary officers?

[MercutioATC]

19. I want the law enforced.

It generally costs money to enforce laws (especially when you go out of your way to reward those who break them). Aren't we increasing the size of the problem by NOT enforcing immigration laws? Doesn't this send the message that, although we SAY there is a process involved to becoming a resident of the U.S., it doesn't matter?

If that's going to be our position, what is the purpose of having immigration laws at all?

[leveymg]

20. That has been our position for more than half a century. The

immigration law enforcement system works best when it works least.

If you want to enforce a law that is cost-effective, put resources into enforcement of IRS corporate tax audits.

[MercutioATC]

21. But that's not "working", it's ignoring.

Hence, the glut of slave-wage laborers and the businesses willing to pay them slave wages.

[leveymg]

22. I don't really mean that this system works. I'm saying that's how it

works. Immigration enforcement efforts have merely produced secondary and tertiary opportunities for organized crime and exploitation, such as alien trafficking, smuggling, sweatshops, document counterfeiting, identity theft, etc.

It has also produced a swollen bureaucracy, and given the federal gov't another excuse to pry into our private lives, monitor us, and fund the prison-industrial complex. Do you want more of this?

[MercutioATC]

23. I think we're running in circles here...

Of course I don't want that, but that's the product of not enforcing immigration laws in the first place. Actively encouraging people to continue to break immigration law doesn't seem to be the answer to me.

[leveymg]

24. Your argument is that the social ills are caused by a lack of enforcement.

My argument is the opposite, that enforcement of immigration restrictions has caused a host of negative consequences.

An objective analyst would look at the existing ills we both acknowledge, and attempt to trace them back to causes: 1) strictly immigration related; 2) strictly enforcement related; and 3) mixed. The analysis would then rank order these problems in terms of the damage to society. One can apply a variety of criteria: cost-benefit, being the most common. That would create a decision tree.

We would then do a second separation. The worst problems that are amenable to public policy solutions would be separated from those which have little or no potential for solution by application or change of law, regulation or program.

I strongly suspect that one would find that the most serious problems that might have some chance of solution are to be found within the category 3, problems of mixed cause - at the intersection of immigrant flows and law enforcement. That suggests to me that a reasonable approach would be to shift resources away from law enforcement into programs -- such as education, job training, workforce development and wages/hours protection -- that ameliorate the bad side-effects of a partially regulated immigration system.

[Fescue4u]

11. foreclosure isnt profitable

If foreclosure were a profitable mode of business, getting a mortgage would be easier than getting a car loan.

[demnan]

2. $54K for a house?

I think I'm moving to Wisconsin.

[MercutioATC]

4. I once bought an investment property in Cleveland for $10,500.

After $4,500 in rehab, it was a decent 1200 sq. ft. house.

Lousy neighborhood, but what do you expect for $15k?

[melissinha]

5. you have no idea

I remember seeing a co-worker's mortgage in Iowa was $30k.

But my parents' house was like $45k in 1990. Yeah its so cheap.... Their current condo-house in Las Vegas is $215k and they don't have a yard!!!

Yeah... you ever notice that midwest states are purple? One senotr is Republican, one is Democrat.
I miss being represented.

[demnan]

6. My condo in the outer D.C. suburbs is worth about that now.

[zbdent]

7. Funny, wouldn't the banks have an obligation to notify the govt

about the status and location of said illegals?

Isn't that a point of the Repukes?

[MercutioATC]

9. Considering they can get drivers' licenses, I don't think that's an issue.

...yet ANOTHER topic for discussion.