imagine if you changed the word illegals to human beings ....

[RB TexLa]

Such as



We have a big problem with human beings in this country

Those human beings are stealing jobs

I don't want my tax dollars providing health care for those human beings

I don't think so and so should be promoting human beings like that

And we have to educate the human beings' children

[Bridget Burke]

1. They used to be called "deportees"....

Ask Woody Guthrie.

[obreaslan]

15. "You won't need a name when you ride that big airplane...

All they will call you will be...Deportee"

Oh how we repeat the same cycle over and over. :(

[LisaLynne]

2. Excellent point.

Words are powerful. The way we choose to refer to another human being can dehumanize them in our minds, allowing us to continue our false idea that they are some how different or not as good as we are.

[Ignacio Upton]

3. But they ARE illegal immigrants

They are here ILLEGALLY. While I agree that some of the most vocal critics have a xenophobic streak, it IS serious issue, and I'm concerned about it from the LEFT (ie. corporations exploiting their labor and to depress wages, while at the same time they're competing with minorities such as blacks and second-generation hispanics, and working class whites for the jobs that they once held or are simply clinging on to.)

[Coexist]

4. my concern is the "cheap labor" factor also.

They are treated very poorly in Florida (those who travel picking fruit). It is shameful, but they have no real recourse as non-citizens. They have to stay hidden so they are not deported.

(on edit - please don't flame me - I don't know as much about this issue as I should. I am just going by what is reported in my local papers).

[catabryna]

6. I completely agree with you...

I am NOT anti-immigration (after all, my son is an immigrant), but I am opposed to ILLEGAL immigration. You have stated all the reasons behind my position on this issue, so I won't rehash them here.

Edited to add: My issues are not with paying for education, health care, etc... my problem lies with the depression of wages. To those who will speak of jobs that citizens don't want to do, please explain to me why the farmers in California are unable to attract immigrant laborers? Perhaps, it is because those workers have moved on to other low paying jobs such as those provided in the construction industry, which pay just a little bit more. These jobs provided a good wage in the past: What happened? These are not "bottom of the barrel" jobs that no one wants. It's just that no one can live on the low wages being offered by these companies.

[Dhalgren]

13. You are absolutely right.

I hate it when spewing mouths say, "They are doing jobs that Americans won't do". That isn't true; they are doing jobs that Americans won't do for that level of pay! Americans wouldn't work in a bank for $1.50 an hour, no health insurance, no benefits of any kind, no over-time and no set working hours. "Americans won't work as slaves" should be what is said. This is unfair to the immigrants and to Americans needing work.

[EFerrari]

7. Yes. And it was once ILLEGAL for women to own property.

It was once ILLEGAL to teach black people to read or to offer them succor when they escaped the slavers.

We've passed plenty of oppressive LAWS.

[Booster]

23. But your key words are "it was once illegal", this is STILL illegal.

Big difference in my opinion, and the road we're going down with this is not good for America, only good for Vicente Fox since illegals send 8 BILLION dollars back to Mexico every year. You do the math; if they are making a lot less than minimum wage, just how many are really here? They have to pay to live here, they have to pay for food, etc., yet they can still send 8 billion dollars back? I think the problem is a lot more than we're being told. I am all for people coming here legally and becoming citizens, but I'm not for what is happening now.

[EFerrari]

32. So, if Jim Crow laws were still in effect, you'd support them?

Think this argument all the way through? Because this is essentially what is happening right now.

/spelin'

[earth mom]

17. Agree with you and others who replied to your post.

Framing this as racism is absolutely ridiculous. It's exploitation of workers on both sides of the fence. Wages are stagnant, the minimum wage hasn't risen in years, higher paying jobs are getting outsourced.

This hurts everyone and was systematically and diabolically planned to do just that. :grr:

[Bridget Burke]

18. Don't worry, President Fox says things will chagne.

U.S. will clamor for Mexican workers in coming years, Fox says

By Kevin G. HallKnight Ridder Newspapers

ABOARD THE PRESIDENTE JUAREZ - Flying high above the Yucatan peninsula, Mexican President Vicente Fox leaned forward and pointed a finger to make this point: In a few years, he said, the United States may be begging Mexico for the very workers it's now trying to keep out by building a wall along the border.

With the looming retirement from the work force of the U.S. baby boom generation, and with Mexico's population growth-rate declining, immigration from Mexico will slow just as demand for workers in the United States will be growing, he told Knight Ridder in an interview aboard his presidential jet.

"I am absolutely convinced that by 2010, the United States will have a great demand for workers and laborers to sustain its economy and to sustain its population of retirees and pensioners," the president said. "And in that very year, Mexico will need its young people to help its own economy and to attend to its own retirees." ......

Demographic experts said Fox was at least partly right. The rate of Mexico's population growth has slowed, from 1.4 percent annually in 2000 to 0.99 percent today. That means that fewer Mexicans will be joining the work force in the future, making it easier for them to find work in their own country. Fewer will feel pushed to the United States.

"What Fox is saying is that the supply push will go down, for demographic reasons, and that's correct," said Philip Martin, an agricultural economist and expert on immigrant labor at the University of California-Davis. "Instead of a million people turning 15 every year it will drop to somewhere between 600,000 and 650,000 by 2015."

www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/13993091.htm

[catabryna]

25. And, if only citizens...

are available to take those jobs... Imagine that, supply and demand; all our jobs and those who fill them, from top to bottom, will be worth something again!

[Ignacio Upton]

29. The economic cycle will work things out

If there are fewer illegal immigrants coming into this country, then there will be fewer people to meet the demand for labor, ergo, employers will have to RAISE wages! Imagine that....:think:

[sandnsea]

20. If they were legal

would all those problems you mention go away??? No. Lack of a strong labor movement is the problem, not this group of human beings.

[catabryna]

21. Probably not...

and I agree with you that the lack of a strong labor movement is a problem. The labor movement brings nearly everyone up. But, a company that hires a large number of illegal immigrants isn't likely to be threatened in the least by the unions and they will continue to keep the wages low and the benefits non-existent. In the end, the illegals will continue to remain in the cycle of poverty and if they do manage to move up to something better, another illegal immigrant is there to take their low paying job. That old supply and demand thing will continue to bite us all in the butt.

[sandnsea]

22. Or another woman, or black, or teen

Either we stand up for a quality standard of living for people all over the world, and against corproate exploitation, or we keep letting them pit worker against worker, just like they did during the civil war.

[catabryna]

24. Yep...

I agree. You aren't going to get an argument from me on that.

[blondeatlast]

26. They are also, undeniably, human beings. Language is powerful;

ask the conservative PhDs in English at the Heritage Foundation.

You better believe they are there.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Tsk, tsk. How dare you refer to the "enemy" as human.

Those sneaky "aliens", "illegals", empyting the bedpans and mowing the lawns are a real danger to REAL Americans (preferably blond and blue eyed) and are stealing all the those wonderful high paying jobs from eager REAL American workers who are being deprived of the joys of doing all the dirty work for a few bucks.

[EFerrari]

9. Those people should just go back to where they came from.

Oops.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Yeah! Back to Africa..er, Mexico..er, Japan..er, China.

[EFerrari]

12. Arizona, Nevada, California, Nuevo Mexico. n/t

[BushOut06]

16. Didn't they use to say the same thing about slavery?

We NEED the slaves, because they do the work that whites won't do!

Just because most Americans don't want to do such menial labor as these immigrants do, doesn't mean they wouldn't - especially if you paid them a decent wage and gave them decent benefits.

[UTUSN]

8. Ding Ding Ding!

Dems in the running for '06 and '08 are about to be caught flat-footed AGAIN, swift-botted and binLadened, because the wingnuts (O'LOOFAH, MALKIN, TANCREDO, the Minutemen, HANNITY) have been framing the issue as "illegal aliens" and "national security" for the past three years, raising hysteria of "invasion" and demanding militarization and WALLING of the (Southern) border.

Dems have to be FOCUSED on OUR frames: Social justice, civil rights, and humane treatment. We are NOT for "illegality" and we ARE for "national security".

Flat-footed, here we come again.

[Ignacio Upton]

30. Republicans have no credibility on this issue

Illegal immigration will not become the 2006 equivalent of gay marriage because their libertarian corporate wing wants cheap labor. Also, with people like Lou Dobbs on tv attacking businesses for hiring illegal immigrants, I doubt that the voters will turn to the GOP. However, we have an opportunity to present a PROGRESSIVE case for tighter border security (other than that it's common sense to have a sovereign country patrol its borders and decide who comes in) that includes the depression of wages and how other minorities (and working-class women and teenagers looking for a first job) are being pitted against the illegal immigrants. Combine this with, say, repealing the Taft-Hartley Act, and you could win over a lot of the blue collar voters who have been voting on social issues for Republicans.

[Solly Mack]

11. I always do

I might read the words illegal, detainee, POW, enemy combatant but I "hear" human being in my mind.

I even hear "human" when I read republican, Bush, Cheney, anti-women....but I know that some humans aren't very good humans and that they are, in fact, a danger to all humans.

But I still recognize that they are human.

Even though I will speak harsh words of anger, I am tempered in how I would actually treat them because I do hear "human"

Someone being in America illegally in no way means they aren't human - and they should be treated as any human. I would not deny them health care and I would not deny them food or shelter or anything else. Even if they're to be deported eventually, I would not be cruel to them. Breaking the law does not mean you stop being human.

Even though I think Bush deserves a fate worse than death - he's still human. I wouldn't torture him or kidnap him away to a secret prison. I would jail him for life and I do expect prisons to treat people humanly.

[RB TexLa]

14. .

[sandnsea]

19. Ahem,

Insert blacks, women, chinese, irish, and you've got the white male mantra down to a tee. That's why there's a Republican Party.

DU white males exempt, of couse.

[formernaderite]

27. I'm with you...there is no such thing as an illegal human being

I am having a hard time listening to both dems and repubs on this subject. For Pete's sake, people are coming here to make a better life for themselves. I wish everyone would stop acting like they're crashing the party.

[PsN2Wind]

28. What better way to bring those "Reagan Democrats"

back than to tell them that we advocate that anyone that wants into this country to compete for their job is to be welcomed.
It's called trickle up economics. You lose your unskilled job to someone willing to work for less than minimum, so you hit up the boss of someone that you can do his job ,maybe not quite as well, but for a lot less. Then he or she can try to bump someone else from their position by offering to do it for less and soon those at the top have a helluva lot more money as the entire work force competes on who will work the cheapest.
I've worked years as a journeyman roofer, and spent a couple of summers working in a packing house, so I say citizens, even Gringos, will do those jobs.
Importing labor has more cost than exporting jobs. We here in Arizona spend a lot of our tax dollars to educate, medicate and incarcerate people that are here illegally.
Dress it whatever terms you want, they broke the law when they made the first footprint this side of the border.

[mbee]

31. Exactly - whenever I see a bumper sticker as Pro-Life I

want to say are you really Pro Life or just Pro-Birth? The people who claim to be pro-life seem to be against helping those in need which really doesn't make sense. I wonder if they are really just pro-American and anti every other human being. It is hard to understand?