# Close the borders. CLOSE THE BORDERS! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 1, 2004, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760 "2004-04-01T17:06:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![iamme99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/57b2e6/32.png) [@iamme99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamme99)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/41 "2004-04-05T08:11:32Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > However, while they are both issues that might concern a U.S. citizen, they are separate issues that are not connected. People who attempt to connect them, using the words “immigrant” and “foreign” to create an imaginary linkage are simply engaging in xenophobia. > > Automation? Let’s discuss it. > > H-1B visas? Let’s discuss them. > > Offshore hiring and outsourcing? Let’s discuss them. > > Illigal immigrants? Let’s discuss them. > > Linking them all together? Go sit in the corner with Pat Buchanan and the rest of the neo-Know-Nothing Party and think hateful thoughts. Xenophobia is not a good basis on which to determine public policy. > > Given that the hardest-hit sector of the economy is manufacturing and that the majority of the jobs taken by illegal immigrants pay less than McDonalds or The Gap, illegal immigration has the _least_ effect on the ability of the typical out of work citizen to recover a decent paying job (which makes the cries about illegals and jobs that much more suspect). Please, don’t give me your BS about “hateful thoughts”. How about “mean spirited” also? Do you live in the San Francisco area by chance? If not, you should consider moving here - you’d fit right in since these are common statements used around here by all the bleeding hearts. I don’t have anything against foreign people so don’t try to make it out like I do. If you go back and read the first post I made in this thread, you’ll note that I am against ILLEGAL immigration. If foreign people like our country and opportunities so much that they want to live and work here, then let them apply for entry through the usual legal process. If they can’t or won’t do that, then I consider them fair game to get booted out when/if they are caught. You don’t like that? Tough… The solution to this problem is simple - fine companies and people who hire illegal’s heavily. Make it economically unfeasible to employ illegal workers. Set some examples and most other employers would fall into line. Not only would this solve the illegal’s problem but it would then force these employers to pay at least the minimum wage and perhaps more if market forces required them to do so to secure help. btw: Did you take the time to read the link I provided in my first post??? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/42 "2004-04-05T09:52:40Z")
**SS:** _Likewise, maid service is accessible to many people who are of middle class (we use maids ourselves because we both work), if weekly maid service cost $800/mo instead of $400, we would do without maids and just have to work harder to keep our home up. We couldn’t afford it._ You mean, your maid service uses illegal immigrant workers? Wow, I didn’t know the trend had reached as far north as Alberta. _So if you cut off immigration tomorrow, all you’d do is deprive a large swath of the middle class with some services that they value quite highly. Those jobs would simply be lost._ That’s a point, although if they’re not jobs that American workers are willing to do at those wages in any case, then it doesn’t really matter to American workers if they’re lost. (Except insofar as the people who do the jobs consume goods and services that provide jobs that American workers **are** willing to do.) Personally, my beef is not at all with immigration, but with exploiting the economic desperation of other people to depress their wages and working conditions. The short-term financial incentives are all for keeping illegal immigrants’ wages and living conditions at what we’d consider an unacceptably low level, and for keeping Mexico poor enough that those low levels are still attractive to Mexican workers. I don’t see how an economic system dependent on that kind of exploitation is something that we should feel proud of, no matter what its practical advantages or disadvantages are for ourselves. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/43 "2004-04-05T10:58:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Please, don’t give me your BS about “hateful thoughts”. How about “mean spirited” also? > . . . > btw: Did you take the time to read the link I provided in my first post??? Yes, I read your contributions, but it appears that you have not actually read my posts. I have not made any argument that we must accept illegal immigrants. Aside from a couple of factual observations, I have not actually taken a position on the issue. What I _have_ done is point out that there are two separate sets of employment situations regarding jobs and immigrants that are, in fact, not related. Linking the two disparate situations is rather clearly a matter of xenophobia rather than economics. The laid-off factory worker in Michigan or Illinois is not going to suddenly move to the Bay area and become a below-minimum-wage housekeeper. And if the laid off factory worker did, he or she would still need to sell off most of his or her possessions to survive. The amount of “pressure” on the work force from illegal aliens in menial tasks has such little effect on the hiring practices of GM or Westinghouse as to be laughable if people did not seriously propose it. Argue agaunst illegal alien labor to your heart’s content. I object only to the false issue linking underpaid nannies to H-1B programmers and help desks in India. Hateful or mean-spirited? Read the tripe that Buchanan and Dobbs and Tanton (the founder of FAIR) have proclaimed on numerous occasions. Do you not characterize their rhetoric as hateful or mean-spirited? I can think of any number of arguments against illegal immigration that do not resort to the name-calling in which they constantly engage. ---
**Author:** ![TwistofFate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@TwistofFate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TwistofFate)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/44 "2004-04-05T11:19:20Z")
> [@](#): > > Do you live in the San Francisco area by chance? If not, you should consider moving here - you’d fit right in since these are common statements used around here by all the bleeding hearts. Hey Tom! why not just move back to Red China with all the other Pinkos! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/45 "2004-04-05T11:25:48Z")
Nah! I have an emotional attachment to the Great Lakes. ---
**Author:** ![Erasticity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3e96dc/32.png) [@Erasticity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erasticity)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/46 "2004-04-05T12:52:20Z")
OK, Draconian solution: Incorperate Mexico into the US as the 51st (and perhaps 52nd) state(s)! No more immigration, legal or illegal! More tax-payers to cover this aging (and obviously statistically childless) retiree pool spreading about our feet. Sure the sub-minimum wage beni for the corperate employer would fall by the wayside, but the increase in taxable income would help counteract the new Natl’ Deficit. –Just a thought-- … wild thought… untamed thought… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2004, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/47 "2004-04-09T17:20:24Z")
> [@HumptysHamhole](#): > > For instance show me how the crime rates in neighborhoods with high populations of illegal immigrants are higher than crime rates of economically comparable neighborhoods of US citizens. Well, there this from a [report by the Center for Immigration Studies on the underreporting of crime in immigrant neighborhoods](http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/crime/underestimated.html#14) which references information from the San Diego association of Governments: > [@](#): > > The Mexican Commute: Yet another reason for underreporting lies in the fact that criminals from other countries, almost inevitably Mexico, cross over the border to commit crime and then return home to escape prosecution. Police officials in the San Diego area have complained that organized groups from Mexico cross over from Tijuana and commit robberies in middle-income neighborhoods. Indeed, criminal activity along the U.S.-Mexican border in San Diego County led local officials in the 1980s to conduct a study of arrest rates according to legal status. In the City of San Diego 26 percent of all burglary arrests and 12 percent of all felony arrests involved illegal aliens, who are estimated to comprise less than 4 percent of the total city population. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2004, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/48 "2004-04-09T17:43:14Z")
> [@scotandrsn](#): > > Well, there this from a [report by the Center for Immigration Studies on the underreporting of crime in immigrant neighborhoods](http://www.cis.org/articles/2001/crime/underestimated.html#14) which references information from the San Diego association of Governments: Except the language of your cite suggests that the people committing the crimes are people who reside primarily in Mexico, not in the United States. If they reside in Mexico and cross to the U.S. to commit crimes and then leave, they probably aren’t “stealing American jobs.” ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Cymbeline](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_cymbeline/32/9244_2.png) [@Green\_Cymbeline](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Cymbeline)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2004, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/49 "2004-04-09T21:18:16Z")
> [@](#): > > Quote from article posted by **iamme99** : > > But occasionally, I saw some contradictory research and heard stories from my wife, Dr. Barbara Nemko, the Napa County Superintendent of Schools, about how challenging it is to meet the immigrant children’s learning and health needs while not shortchanging the other kids. This is a good point. I live in an area where there are a lot of Hispanic immigrants. I know that Fairfax County, VA, Public School have to pay a ton of money to educate the non-English speaking children of immigrants (legal and non-legal). By law, every child residing in the state, whether legal or illegal, is entitled to a public education. So our taxpayer dollars are going to paying for their schooling, which is more expensive because of the language barrier. Each school in the county has a ESL (English as a secong language) program…imagine how much that costs! Also, in my area, some Hispanic immigrants have brought with them gangs, particularly Mara Salvatrucha, known as MS-13, which is a well-known violent gang in this area. ---
**Author:** ![Nightime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Nightime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightime)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2004, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760/50 "2004-04-10T02:09:18Z")
Both my parents are teachers, and they often tell me that they have to spend huge amounts of time on students who speak english very poorly. They realize that many of the other kids in the class are going much, much slower than they could, and that it is hurting their education. But the classes are big, they don’t have aides, and there is no real solution. I also find that **iamme99** ’s description of the employment issues holds true in reality, while the rose-colored glasses view is a fantasy. I’m not saying I am happy with the process for legal immigration, and it is quite likely it should be changed. But there need to be limits, and we need to stop illegal immigration. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/close-the-borders-close-the-borders/237760.md?page=2)