Waving another country's flag, blocking a freeway, without a parade warran

[cantstandbush]

and illegally entering the country is not a way to win friends and influence people. What about all the people who are waiting their turn by applying legally for entry into the country? What about all the illegal immigrants now in prison? Why haven't they been deported is they broke our laws to the extent that they are now in prison? Sorry, but other people have tried to get into the country for ECONOMIC reasons and they were turned away without shame (Hatians, Jaimacans, and remember the Cubans who happened to be poor and brown-skinned, many of whom are still in jails in Texas)? I am against this amnesty and I am against the policy that we have concerning Cubans entering this country without any problems. If they weren't benefiting corporations and helping to break the backs of our unions, this would not even be an issue. They just wouldn't be allowed to remain in the country.

[Blue_Forney05]

1. I use to support illegal immigration based on the belief that these people

only want a better life, but as I've learned about the evils of 'outsourcing", I've changed my tune. Our country can not even support a middle class almost. Yet coperations turn a blind eye and let illegals work for them for peanuts in pay? Somethings wrong with this picture.

[cantstandbush]

3. I agree with you. It's about putting the american worker and families

first. It's a cryin shame what the imperial elites have done to this nation.

[sandnsea]

16. Imperial elites the world around

So why are you picking on the exploited instead of the exploiters?

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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

[saigon68]

20. adios

vaya con Dios

[Swamp Rat]

22. LOL!

:rofl:

Was it Bubba or the other one? :D

[Cleita]

24. Perhaps if you stop blaming the victims and concentrate your

ire on the corporate assholes that are reducing our middle class, we might get somewhere. In order to do this you have to organize into unions to get what you need.

[LostinVA]

32. Outsourcing has nothing to do with so-called "Illegals"

NOTHING... but you know that.

[Horse with no Name]

34. But the "illegal" is a helluva strawman

built to absorb the impact of outsourcing and job loss.

[LostinVA]

36. I almost used the term "strawman"!

Because that's what "Illegals" (ie subhumans) are being made into...

[MADem]

2. Well, this whole business was ignored for years, but now that the economy

is tanking, NOW, it is a problem.

Alot of these illegals have kids who were born here. A lot of those kids have reached the age of majority. Maybe Raul the illegal can't vote, but his kids sure can....

And the blame, if there is any, is on the corporations, who would rather hire three guys under the table at poverty wages, than pay a living wage to a single person. It's all about greed on the part of the bosses, and lack of opportunity in their homelands on the part of the workers.

[BeHereNow]

9. It's NOT just the corporations-

Here in Los Angeles, I don't know one woman who
cleans her own house or takes care of her own children,
with the exception of my neighbor who is a stay home mom
and myself.

If you visit the local park, it is FILLED with brown skinned
nannies pushing blue-eyed babies in the latest model
stroller wearing the latest "Gap" baby clothing.

The same is true of my neighbor's gardeners.
All of them brown skinned. I have ONE neighbor
who does his own yard work. Period.

The majority of these brown workers are
paid in cash because they can't open
bank accounts. And they are not paid nearly
enough- there is a silent agreement between
them and their more affluent employers. "Don't
ask for more money and I wont ask whether
or not you are here legally."

Los Angeles would fall apart without
this dirty little secret.
Who would mow the lawns, blow the leaves
and clean the houses while watching
the children?

Oh, the hypocrisy.

BHN

[MADem]

14. Sure...look UP!!!

The people doing the HIRING are the ones at fault, be it lazy homeowners who buy more house than they can afford to care for, or businesses that want three workers for the price of one. I rather doubt these folks would make a dangerous trek over the border if there were no employers ready to hire them.

I'm sure you saw that film "A DAY WITHOUT A MEXICAN." It's done for laughs, but it does point out precisely what you noted.

[shenmue]

4. Good point

:7

[coalition_unwilling]

6. You're entitled to your opinion, but I'll bet you supported NAFTA

too. Here's what happened: NAFTA allowed for a real "race to the bottom" to commence in the U.S. and Mexico. Many Mexicans were uprooted from ancestral lands and forced to relocate to cities because their agricultural products couldn't compete in the new NAFTA landscape. Once in the cities, there were few jobs to support them. What were they supposed to do, starve to friggin death?

I live in L.A. If you deported all the undocumented workers here, you would have to shut the city down (not sure that would be an entirely bad thing, come to think of it, at least from an environmental p-o-v).

In my experience, they are doing the work no one else wants to do. It's hard, shitty work for very meagre wages. Since California used to be a part of Mexico before we stole it in 1848, I think it takes a lot of gall to ask them to return to their own country. How about we return California to Mexico?

[cantstandbush]

17. Wrong and wrong. I didn't support NAFTA AND those jobs you

are talking about were performed by Americans for decades. And it is not that Americans don't want those jobs, they don't want the paltry pay and no benefits that come with these jobs. However, there are many people in my neighborhood who are Americans who must work two and sometimes three jobs to keep their standard of living that was worked hard for before their jobs were outsourced or eliminated.

[coalition_unwilling]

39. Have you ever visited Los Angeles? If so, you can't fail to notice

that most of the real blue-collar work in this city is performed by people of color, whether they be black or Latino. Whites in L.A. tend towards entertainment and financial service, now that aerospace has been decimated through M&A activity by the giant aerospace firms. There still is a lively defense industry, esp. in the South Bay, and I'm pretty sure most of those jobs are held by documented workers, be they black or white.

Most of the Latinos I know in L.A. also work two to three jobs to support themselves and their families. They have to because they have few legal rights when the inevitable exploitation occurs. That said, the situation for them here is much better than it is in Mexico (at least from what I understand of the situations).

During Kucinich's primary camapaign last year, he wanted to repeal NAFTA and its ilk and replace those treaties with specific bi-lateral treaties with strong environmental and labor protections. Why he didn't win the nomination after Dean dropped out continues to mystify me. Right now Kucinich has some serious bragging rights, as everything he said during his primary campaign has been borne out in spades (except the part about bewaring of changing a Republican war for a Democratic war :)

[walldude]

7. So you want to deport 11 million people?

And then when they are gone you are going to find 11 million people to pick lettuce and do janitorial work for 5.15 an hour? I seriously doubt it.

[BeHereNow]

10. Perhaps the plan is to house them in the new Halliburton

detention centers and make them work for free!
Gee think of the savings! 11 million times five dollars an hour...
hmmm...it would be cheaper to round them up,
house them, feed them prison food and bus them
off to work everyday.
That sounds about right under the compassionate
conservative corporate owned agenda.
BHN

[walldude]

11. Hell I thought that thing was being built for DU'ers.... n/t

[BeHereNow]

13. We're next. They are filling the menial jobs first.

We will be staffing the customer service lines
for the multi nationals.
BHN

[saigon68]

21. And teach their kids how to clean toilets

</sarcasm>

[TheBaldyMan]

8. you need PERMISSION to protest, I beg to differ

you only need the guts to be thrown in jail for protesting in a way that isn't officially sanctioned.

Free Speech Zones are an anathema to the US constitution as are limitations on peaceful protest.

When it comes to economic migration: US grain flooding markets and depressing prices to the point where Mexican farmers can't sell their grain forces them to find alternative employment north of the border. They are the lucky ones; Bangladeshi farmers can't walk a few hundred miles and slip over the border to Texas.

Poverty and economic inequity are driving this mass migration, just as it drove your ancestors.

Blaming the immigrants is easy, far easier than addressing the real underlying causes of the present predicament.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Well said. Blaming the poor is so much easier than fixing the problem.

The problem being that there are millions of hungry, desperate, people around the world who lead lives on the razor's edge of survival. It's much easier to bury our heads in the sand, turn on the big game, and blame them for trying to survive.

[Skittles]

29. yes

I will always sympathize with folk working hard trying to provide for their families

[Horse with no Name]

35. Very well said

:loveya:

[sandnsea]

15. Nobody is supporting amnesty, that's an out and out LIE

That is what right wing idiots are saying in order to continue their racist assault on people of color. They don't want ANY immigration, legal or not. You may think you're protecting labor laws and living standards of US workers by repeating that shit, but you're not. You're contributing to the divide between workers and that hurts us all.

All of us benefit when business is required to pay fair wages and follow environmental and safety regulations. Attacking the immigrant is the equivalent to attacking a slave, they didn't create the plantation system any more than the immigrant created the illegal employment system. Blame business, fight for workers rights. That's the solution. If you actually care about solutions in the first place.

[cantstandbush]

18. I think slavery is quite a bit different than illegal immigration. But

don't let facts cloud your opinions.

[sandnsea]

19. Exploited workers

Unable to complain about any sort of working conditions, no other options available. Alot of illegal immigrants are in the same kind of 15 hour a day sweatshop conditions, in this country, as anyone was in the past. Low income immigrants in the north afraid of slaves taking their jobs. The fear of free blacks fighting for the same meager sharecropper farming in the south. Pitting worker against worker. Exactly the same.

[cantstandbush]

31. Not nearly the same. Illegals come knowing they will be exploited

and they come willingly. African slaves had no such choice and they were killed for trying to escape slavery not to mention the 12 million or more who lost their lives in the "crossing."

It's just a fact of history. It's not that I don't sympathize with both groups but they are not equal situations although there may be some similarities.

[sandnsea]

38. No they don't

The legal ones sign contracts with labor traders. They end up in substandard housing and some have reported the money that was deducted to be sent to their families was never sent. That is LEGAL workers, like a guest worker program would bring in. Desperate illegals don't have any sense of our labor laws, that's just ridiculous.

Besides, here is what I said. I said blaming the immigrant for the economic system they're caught in, which is what you just did, is equivalent to blaming the slave for slavery. I didn't say slavery was totally equal to being an undocumented worker.

"Attacking the immigrant is the equivalent to attacking a slave, they didn't create the plantation system any more than the immigrant created the illegal employment system."

[EFerrari]

40. Undocumented workers come here to feed their families.

Their exploitation is on US and the corporations that we allow to ride roughshod over us.

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeezus.

[Cleita]

23. Another country's flag huh?

What about the Irish flag on St. Patrick's day and the Italian flag on St. Genovese? How about the Cross of St. Andrew at the Highland games? Oh, but those guys are white. No problem! Nothing to see here!

[Raine]

28. All the demonstrators I saw on the news

here in Los Angeles had American flags and were also chanting "USA, USA". I think the thing about other flags is being blown out of proportion.

[RB TexLa]

25. So if you were the child of someone without legal status

and these protests have largely been children, teenagers, you would have full respect for the law when you think the government is getting ready to take your parents away? When your parents told you that part of why they risked their lives say locked in the back of a truck for 18 hours through 100 degree weather in Texas or Arizona or New Mexico to get here so that one day they could have children that would be American citizens by birth. That they sold everything they owned to pay the person to put them in the truck to get here in part to one day give birth to you so you could be a citizen of the US and have the opportunity to become anything you want to be? That they told you that they cleaned bathrooms, that they cut grass and tended grounds for hours upon hours so that you could be born here. After you have seen them hold your birth certificate and social security card to their chest in pride. After all of that you would say, oh I best not hold the flag that represents my family's heritage, and I really shouldn't make any kind of statement about this without first getting a permit, and I shouldn't do anything that would impede traffic, someone getting to Starbucks before the line gets too long is just so much more important than making a statement.

[proud2BlibKansan]

26. LOL

:yourock:

[Raksha]

27. I saw them today in downtown L.A.

They were so young, mostly teenagers and some younger than that. One kid in front of City Hall had his geometry book with him, and there was a girl carrying a chihuahua. There were a few "Fuck Bush" signs but mostly the signs said things like, "Immigrants Built This Country." I wasn't afraid to mingle with the crowd because there was NO feeling of incipient violence, no yelling or cursing or anything like that.

The vast majority of these brown-skinned kids had to be the American-born children of illegal immigrants. It was just so obvious that they were demonstrating because they don't want their parents deported and their lives torn apart, and who could blame them? The injustice of it all is heartbreaking. At one point I just stood there in the crowd and cried, but I don't think anyone noticed.

For the record: I TOTALLY understand what the influx of illegals is doing to the wages of native-born Americans and legal immigrants. The only solution is to enforce the law and fine the hell out of the corporations that knowingly hire illegals. I don't mean a slap-on-the-wrist fine they can write off as part of the cost of doing business, but something that will make them sit up and take notice. That and a clear path to citizenship for those who are here already, such as the McCain-Kennedy bill.

[boot@9]

41. The only solution is to enforce the law and fine the hell

... Amen! But few have the political courage to demand this happens.

[JI7]

30. anyone remember the video of Muslims "celebrating" on 9/11 ?

the whore media took that one clip and tried to turn it into "Muslims the world over" celebrating the horrible attacks on 9/11.

they didn't show all the other things around the world where people were mourning and showing respect for us.

that's what this whole waving another country's flag thing reminds me of.

from what i saw it was mostly the flag of the United States being flown. look at distant wider shots and you see the American flag standing out.

but people take a few close up shots of those with another flag and claim that's what everyone was doing.

[Cleita]

33. That video turned out to be misleading.

The muslims shown celebrating were celebrating a holiday they have not cheering us being attacked.

[LostinVA]

37. Correct n/t