Since claiming the top spot among all immigrant groups in the 1980 census, the Mexican immigrant population in the United States has continued to outsize other immigrant groups. In 2008, there were 11.4 million Mexican immigrants in the United States, accounting for 30.1 percent of all U.S. immigrants and 10 percent of all Mexicans. Over half of all Mexican immigrants reside in the United States illegally.
My boss waited 6 years to get approval to emigrate here from India. Now owns a multi-million dollar business and votes Republican. He abhors the notion that millions will get amnesty for coming here illegally when he patiently waited for his number to get called.
The current system works relatively well. Open borders is a lazy answer to the problems of other countries.
I have always lived close to the U.S.-Mexico Border, so perhaps I am biased.
The border will always be a porous place. Even when security is at its worst, thousands of people commute from Mexico to the United States, and from the U.S. to Mexico every day for work, ranging from housekeepers to mechanical engineers. Billions of dollars in legal trade pass through that border in both directions. When I hear people say “close the border,” I have to wonder if they are thinking at all. Yes, lets just cut off a few percentage points of our GDP and put a few million Americans out of work!
Before anyone really cared about the distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants, public health (often with a strong eugenic touch) was the main impetus for border controls. There are a few academic books on the subject such as John McKiernan’s “Fevered Measures.”
Honestly, I don’t really recall entirely. I believe it was almost an aside during a mild rant about the decline of American culture epitomized by us unruly kids. He was just “rationally” pointing out, as a man of “science,” certain realities about the world.
I was only in his class for two weeks because my regular teacher was ill, but this was no shit the favorite teacher in our middle school. He acted in tv commercials on the side in the summer, raised chicks in the classroom as a science project and was the only male teacher. Hence his coolness factor.
I’ve always been rather proud of myself for pegging him as an egotistic douchebag, even at that tender age. But this was in a lily-white, working class suburb of Detroit which was without a doubt the most racist community I’ve ever lived in.
Poor guy. It’s a shame he cannot be proud of his own accomplishments and allows himself to feel lessened by the experiences of others. I hope he can someday find a way to be happy.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
A friend of mine from Arizona, where they are indigenous, has much to say about these beasties. To hear him tell it, mosquitoes are downright benign by comparison.
Thread went off-topic long before I chimed in, but I’ll be glad to share my thoughts:
It’s obvious as all f***nuts that having tens of thousands of undocumented people secretly enter the US poses a broader national health threat. Especially given the deplorable conditions in which they had to endure to get here.
How and why that is a justification for a border-less non-country is the work of those among this thread who advocate such a pedestrian policy.