Well, Frank’s previous post to this thread was “Oh, fuck off”, he’s not exactly a model of clarity, but it is fairly typical for him to resort to stupid profanities when his position is indefensible.
Still, I actually agree with the proposition that the US should vastly expand legal immigration, and we should streamline the process and make it easier for people who want to to immigrate here, we are a nation of immigrants after all, and that is our greatest strength. That being said, illegal immigrants are criminals, and I would like to see every singly one of them summarily deported to their country of origin, businesses that hire them should be heavily fined, and the 14th Amendment should be amended to read: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, to parents who are citizens of the US or to legal resident aliens, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” to remove the disastrous “anchor baby” phenomenon. I want immigrants who are going to be solid citizens of the US, and who come here with that purpose in mind. Anyone who doesn’t want that, who wants to come here and leach off our prosperity while retaining a loyalty to another country and sending large amounts of money back to their home country and out of our economy…anyone who wants to that can just stay the fuck out in the first place.
I’m not sure I want to get into this debate but this
made me think.
I work with a lot of legal immigrants to the US, mostly from the Phillipines, but some from other countries in Asia or Africa. They are good solid citizens/green card holders. They pour lots of money into the local economy. They buy or rent houses, and pay for food, clothes, etc. They get the same tuition assistance that other citizens get for their children. They also send lots of money “home” to their country of origin. One of my coworkers has been here for fifteen or more years, and organizes charity for communities in the Phillipines. Others send money, or bring lots of people’s cast off clothing and other items when they return to visit.
People in the US illegally may not buy houses, but they still pay taxes and they still have to buy food, pay rent, and other necessities of being in a certain place at a certain time.
I recently read the book The Devil’s Highway because it was the common book at the college I will be attending in the fall. One of the interesting things I learned from that book is that the Border Patrol will try to save people without arresting them, so that the government will not have to pay their hospital bills; the hospital is then responsible, and releases immigrants into the community. And only about a quarter of the defaulted hospital bills are the fault of illegal immigrants. Of course, I take the stance that it is inhumane to let people die in the desert if they can be rescued. I don’t know exactly how I feel about illegal immigrants; I think the book is worth a read and that the author did a good job getting both sides of the debate, especially considering that I think he came in biased against the Border Patrol.
ETA: I don’t know if it matters one way or the other, but a lot of the guys who took the trip outlined in that book were planning to come in, pick some fruit, and go back to Mexico with extra cash. Most had never been over the border before.
To get back to the OP, I think the immigration aspect is a bit of a red herring. It’s a valid debate but not really applicable to the ordinance cited by the OP.
Many types of businesses create public nuisances and a litany of city ordinances are created to deal with them. Some of those nuisances include illegal activities and some don’t, but I think it’s foolish to argue that creating a rule to deal with them is tantamount to sanctioning them. That’s essentially the same wrong-headed argument that fundies make in regards to birth control education and condom programs.
A few examples of other businesses that create nuisances:
[ul]
[li]Bars often have drunken disorderly customers exiting after hours creating noise complaints, littering issues and public urination. Most municipalities have ordinances that require a certain level of security outside of the premises and require them to clean up their surroundings beyond their property. [/li][li]Shopping centers and fast food joints can create major traffic issues and are required to conform to tight guidelines and are burdened with the costs of adding new traffic controls. [/li][li]Sporting Venues have a combination of both issues above and numerous regulations are passed in order to place the burden of minimizing their impact on the venue. Any Wrigley Field neighbor knows about this intimately.[/li][/ul]
I’m sure that some thought could uncover many other examples that are even more apt. The fact that the City of LA has decided to address the nuisance that Home Depot and other similar stores cause and place the burden on them to address it is in no way unique or uncharacteristic.
Incidentally I don’t find it to be a humanitarian issue even if the NDLON wants to couch it that way. It reads to me as if it’s nothing more than a somewhat pragmatic solution to a municipal nuisance. How they apply the ordinance and word the regulations will be important.
Incidentally, the more you legitimize the “day laborer sites” the easier it will be to police them for illegals and give legitimate contractors a location where they can hire legal day laborers. If all the illegals are congregating in the Home Depot parking lots and everyone knows this, I’m not sure why people are pissed at Home Depot and not the local law enforcement. If you aren’t willing to stamp out a problem it’s wise to at least contain it.
No. He’s not perfectly free to immigrate to America. There’s virtually no procedure for an ordinary Mexican to legally immigrate to America. They have to do so under some extraordinary procedure (like marrying an American citizen). That’s my point. We use to let people come to this country for no better reason then they wanted to be Americans. It seems to have worked out. So why did we stop doing it?
I keep asking why it should be illegal and you say because it’s against the law. I keep asking why it’s against the law and you say because it’s illegal. Those aren’t answers; they’re just circular reasoning.
I’m saying we should repeal the laws that make it illegal for Mexicans (or citizens of other countries) to immigrate to America. I’m not saying we should have completely open borders but I favor the idea that we should generally allow people from other countries who want to immigrate here to become Americans to do so. I base this on our history; we’ve had a much higher percentage of immigrant population in the past and our country prospered as a result of it. I figure a lot of our success as a nation was build on our ability to attract ambitious people from other countries.
If you don’t like immigration and think it should be illegal, explain your reasons for this.
This is entirely oversimplifying the issue. Your statement assumes our Mexican has not already searched far and wide for a job in Mexico. Finding a job there is incredibly difficult. The unemployed and underemployment rates there are sky high. Over half of Mexico’s citizens live in poverty. These people wouldn’t be here if they and their families were not starving to death. A man who steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving child is still breaking the law, but can we honestly compare him to a man who steals a DVD from Circuit City? There is a world of grey to be found in this incredibly complex issue. Let’s not pretend otherwise. I have the feeling a lot of people in this country would break the law in a heartbeat, if it ensured their family’s survival and they had no alternative.
(FTR, I think the scenario the OP describes is crossing a line. I’m not defending it.)
The most obvious answer that occurs to me is that we needed the cheap labor then. It’s arguable that we’ve taken in all the immigrants our economy can handle. I don’t believe immigration has much impact on our unemployment rates, but it demonstrably impacts our ability to provide health care services to the impoverished citizens of this country. There is no question that we have an immigration problem. The question is how we cope with it – by treating immigrants as criminals (thus far that has proven both ineffective and IMHO immoral and hypocritical) or by seeking out long-term solutions that attempt to fix the problem, not treat the symptoms.
There are serious systemic patterns that contribute to the immigration problem. Our economy is so intertwined with Mexico’s that from an economic perspective there really is no border. You can’t tell a maquiladora on one side from a maquiladora on the other. (The only real difference is that the working conditions that horrify us as Americans actually are pretty good by Mexican standards.) A great portion of our industry is dependent on illegal labor. Current trade agreements make it so that Mexicans can buy most products cheaper from the U.S. than they can be produced in Mexico. The U.S. undercuts Mexican production prices in everything from corn to salvaged garbage. That means Mexicans cannot compete within Mexico. Mexico is largely dependent on foreign investment and production within the U.S. It is cheaper to export raw materials to the U.S., have them produced with Mexican labor and shipped back, than it is to produce something entirely within Mexico. Because of trade policy, there have been very rapid changes in Mexican economy over the last 15 years or so, many of which have contributed to the immigration problem we now face.
It is IMHO blatantly irrational to ignore the reality of the above when discussing this issue.
If you legalize it, (the people who are currently) illegal immigrants will be subject to the same minimum wage, insurance and OSHA regulations as everyone else. It will no longer be cheap to hire them and entire sections of the economy they prop up will collapse.
The system is fine the way it is (in an economic sense, not necessarily a moral sense).
To the best of my knowledge, all labor - regardless of legal status - is subject to minimim wage, insurance, and OSHA regulations. As a matter of fact, we recently had an employer lose a lawsuit here over paying Worker’s Comp to an undocumented worker.
It’s cheap to hire them because the employer knows he can flaunt the law - many laws - and get away with it. In return he gets a hard working, cheap labor force that will put up with the worst jobs who will not organize or complain.
All that stuff theoretically applies to illegal workers. It’s a polite fiction, though. If an employer knowingly hires an illegal, it applies. No employer will admit such, though, and it’s very difficult to prove that an employer knowingly hired an illegal. Moreover, illegals rarely understand their rights. Few have access to counsel, although there are quite a few attorneys who make a living catering to them.
We must need the cheap labor now - millions of people keep coming to this country looking for work and finding it. As for the larger economic aspects of immigrants, it’s actually a plus for the overall economy. Immigrants are more likely to be young people with a job - so they’re going to be paying taxes into the system but not collecting benefits from public health care or retirement systems.
Well, they’ll be paying secondary taxes like sales tax, but probably not payroll tax, so the benefit to the economy there isn’t quite as pronounced as you make it out to be.
If it’s go great for Home Depot, why do we need a law? Why doesn’t HD voluntarily put up their own hospitality suite?
I haven’t read the details of the new law, but does this mean that if any business has loiterers in their parking lot, they need to provide restrooms, etc., or is it only hardware stores?
Benefit to the economy is hotly debated, of course, but to the issue of payroll tax, an employer is only required to make a good faith effort to verify documents. Sure, a lot of workers are paid in cash under the table, but a lot - especially here in Nebraska where meat packing relies on Mexican labor - of employers have them on their official payrolls.
Anyone renting an apartment is also paying property tax via their rent.
Nothing is going to happen re: immigration until it is no longer beneficial to the employers (large and small), ICE, the politicians, and the Mexican government/society itself. So many expect a Mexican to make the kind of ethical decision that is not in his interest, yet no one else is expected to make. There is more than enough culpability to go around. Turn your ire to the US government and watch how they ignore you. But they’ll take your vote over this convenient bogey-man, no problem.
Okay. So you are NOT advocating completely open borders. Good, as we can start on some common ground. I’d ask you, though, why you do not advocate open borders.
For me, a country’s immigration policy is one that they’ve determined best serves them. If a country is jam packed full of people they are completely within their rights to curtail and discourage—or stop—immigration as they see fit. Conversely, if a country is trying to grow and needs people, as was clearly the case in the early days of the U.S. (or Australia), they are within their rights to make relax immigration rules or to even eliminate them, although that will only be temporary from a practical sense.
A country, particularly a democratic one, is a group of people that have formed a society. Laws are part of that society. What those laws are up to the discretion of the citizenry. If—for whatever reason—they want very lax or very stringent immigration laws, or any laws for that matter, they are free to craft those laws in a way that they feel best serves them.
The people of the U.S. have crafted such laws. And like all laws, they need to be obeyed. Now, one can not agree with the laws and want to change them. And they are free to work to do so. But that is a job for the citizens. Foreigners are free to petition the U.S. government, as well, but their voice should not take precedence of that of the citizenry.
Now that U.S. has been inconsistent in their immigration desires. And the one hand there are laws on the books. On the other hand these laws have been regularly ignored by the very governing bodies who have passed them, albeit some time ago. Both parties are guilty in this. To use a broad brush, those of a republican bent became infatuated, and then addicted, to cheap labor—labor that can be gotten for less than the market would normally offer them. Democrats have bee all to eager to turn a blind eye to millions of criminals (people breaking our immigration laws) because they see every new immigrant as a potential vote.
I think you might agree, as you don’t advocate open borders, that a country needs to serve its citizens first. So if people are coming in a taking jobs, that should only happen if there is no one here to do those jobs. You often here, 'but they’re doing jobs that no one else will do". This is simply a lie. A truer statement would be that “they’re doing jobs that no one else will FOR THOSE WAGES”. A few decades ago NYC had a problem with waste disposal. There weren’t enough garbage men. No one wanted the job. But then the dramatically raised the wages for garbage men and there were waiting lists to get those jobs. And it still exists (I’m pretty sure).
So, these jobs that illegals take are jobs that most of which could and would be done by Americans. For those jobs that we still would need to fill, non-Americans will, in fact, be needed. This can be done in to ways: a more open immigration policy and a guest worker program. And they shouldn’t be confused or conflated. If we simply have need of workers, that can and should be addressed by a simple, efficient guest worker program. At the same time we can and should see if our immigration laws are serving us well. We may indeed benefit from allowing more immigration. We may not.
I personally think that in the long term that we would benefit from greater immigration. But in the short term I would curtail it dramatically—until the illegal problem we have now gets fixed. So, I favor a quick passage of a guest worker program, much like what I understand canada has, where workers can come in for (I think) eight months at a time. They are completely legal, pay taxes, etc., and can travel back and forth to their home countries at whim.
Either way, the process needs to be simpler and faster for everyone. And that brings up amnesty, in all it’s forms. I truly find this despicable. We have two groups of people, both of whom want to emigrate to the U.S… One group respects our laws and waits and waits in order to come here. The other sneaks into the country with the full knowledge that they are breaking our laws. I don’t see how one can morally justify rewarding those who sneak in (or overstay their visas). It is a clear slap in the face to the people who have shown a higher respect for our laws.
YIKES! I’ll get off my soapbox and leave it there in hopes that I answered your question. If not, feel free to ask for clarification on any point.
So in other words, they’re being exploited. Any time desperate people are being exploited, I think it’s not so much of a good thing. That’s leaving aside the countless deaths and rapes resulting from attempted border crossings, immigrants being sold into slavery or their safety being completely disregarded under hard working conditions. Whether you approach it conservatively or liberally – bemoaning the burden on the health care system or the unjust exploitation of desperate people – we’ve got a problem.
ETA:
Spot on. So spot-on it actually made me tear up a little bit.