Except that under Islamic sharia law, which the Democrats are determined to foist upon an unwilling America…
In the instant case, that’s a pretty good point- although people rarely get deported if agencies other than ICE catch them. They’d just be denied benefits.
In more general terms, government agencies/schools/medical providers/whatever may be prevented by statute (or practicality, or even just procedure) from investigating whether recipients of certain benefits are present illegally.
Are you two actually defending spending $736 billion to improve the lives of Iraqis, in Iraq; while simultaneously decrying spending $7 billion, some fraction of which may or may not pay for medical care for foreigners who worked in this country to clean up the World Trade Center site after 9/11?
Seriously?
The illegal immigrant amendment wasn’t intended to prevent waste, it was intended to guarantee that illegal immigrants don’t benefit from government spending. So that was its place in the bill. If you think that illegal immigrants shouldn’t get benefits, if you’re passing a law providing people with benefits, you need to include a provision to exclude illegal immigrants, because otherwise they will. Now, you may think they should, but there are those who think they shouldn’t, and that’s one of the provisions of the Republican party. There’s a similar provision in the health care bill that got passed.
Cite that there are illegal immigrants who would/could benefit from this, and justification for the party of “Christian values” leaving the poorest and weakest among us out in the cold?
How many illegal immigrants do you think are likely to expose themselves to any investigation at all? A claim for medical benefits pretty much demands some documentation, no? So how many such illegals are you expecting will try to sneak into the pie, and risk deportation? If an illegal immigrant is denied benefits, what’s he gonna do, sue in Federal Court? I wouldn’t give much for his chances, what do you think? Maybe with a liberal activist judge applying sharia law?
It is clear that the problem is far bigger than 3 illegal immigrants. The law is stupid as written (anyone working any ammount of time in the 2 years after), but also, if it specifically gave benefits to illegals (who could benefit without being explicitly mentioned) it could open a can of worm vis a vis equal treatment and demands for similar regulations all over the place.
[quote=“Cisco, post:145, topic:548816”]
You can only help so many poor. You shold be able to choose which destitutes you want to help. You may want to prevent “good intentions” from actually harming more than benefitting.
I have no idea if there are illegal immigrants who could benefit from this or not. I assume there are, because otherwise, there’s no reason for any Democrat to object to a provision not allowing them to benefit, but I have no idea. In terms of justification, I’m not sure why you’re asking me. I’d assume that either the Republicans don’t see their attitude about illegal immigration as contradicting their “Christian values”, or that they do see it as contradictory but realize that there’s a lot of anti-illegal immigrant sentiment in the county that they feel that they can politically benefit from, and that gaining such political support is more important to them than “Christian values”.
I was more putting it out there to anybody who wanted to answer, because I’ve already asked in this thread and was responded to by crickets.
It didn’t specifically grant benefits to illegals. It just didn’t specifically exclude them.
Yes.
Now you do the math. Go ahead. First tell me how much each life murdered by Uday Hussein is owrth. Actually, let’s start even easier: this 14-year-old girl. How much money is it worth to prevent her attack? $10? $20?
Tell me, and we can start counting from there.
And also: why are you saying that the bill is for “foreigners who worked in this country to clean up the World Trade Center site after 9/11?” That’s not what the law actually said, is it? It provided benefits to anyone who worked in the area of lower Manhattan, for a period of two years after the attack, for even one hour, selling hot dogs or painting tourist souveiners.
So why did you make that claim about the law?
No, it didn’t. It offered initial health evaluations to such people, subject to the following limitations:
It only guarantees treatment to such people found to be suffering from the following conditions:
Oh, and how many people do you think worked in lower Manhattan between September 12, 2001 and September 11, 2003? Bet you it’s more than 25,000.
Is an health screening not a benefit?
Yes. And if a person dropped by to install an new sign in a candy store in Battery Park, two years after the attack, and spent an hour doing it, and happens for unrelated reasons to have asthma, he may claim benefits here. Yes?
Even better. The jerk who worked an hour on the sign and has chronic asthma gets benefits, but the newspaper vendor who worked outside Building One and got a lungful of ash can’t… because he’s number 25,001 to qualify.
Another reason to rework this bill.
I know, that’s why I used the third conditional.
It’s your argument; you tell me what you think the facts are that support it.
One of the concerns that opponents cite about this bill is that it doesn’t specifically exclude illegal immigrants, which is the point I’m addressing. The broad scope of who is elligible is another, but that’s not what I’m getting at.
Further, I said that some fraction of the money for this bill may or may not be spent on foreigners. I don’t know if there were any illegal immigrants who worked at the WTC site. Opponents of the bill seem to think that the mere possibility of such is reason enough to vote it down.
Why I am trying to get at is this: Why is the U.S. government justified in helping some foreigners (via the Iraq War), and not others (as may be covered under this bill)?
Under a general heading of waste, spending money in areas they shouldn’t qualifies as waste, but I see your point. It wouldn’t qualify as waste to someone who believes illegal immigrants should get health care.
Still, It seems like a serious complication just to target illegal immigrants. How do you sort through thousands of applicants in NYC to know if they are legal or not? As someone said, it’s priorities and IMO also being realistic about the work involved in applying such an amendment. Are you willing to exclude real citizens who have a hard time proving their citizenship? How much cost are you adding to the bill by making such a demand? There are costs associated with researching citizenship. Any way you look at it it seems incredibly and obviously impractical to implement in real world terms. IMO that makes it bullshit and unnecessary.
Starting from a basic premise,
“We don’t want government money spent on illegal immigrants” you still have to decide on how to execute real world programs and the costs. You also have to consider potential harm done to actual citizens in a mixed culture.
So WFT is the point of introducing an argument against the bill that you explicitly know is not true?
The war in Iraq was in no way started because of anything Uday Hussein did and it had nothing to do with any 14 year old Iraqi girls. It was started because Saddam had WMDs in the areas north, south, east and west of Bahgdad and he was going to use them at any second.
So spare us the goal-post-moving glurgy bullshit about how it was all a mercy mission to save the poor mistreated Iraqi teenagers.
Do you think mthe Iraqi’s getting killed and maimed by American soilders and bombs were grateful they weren’t being killed by Saddam? Remember the videos of Ali? Should he be grateful his arms were blown off by the good guys?
Considering the thousands of Iraqi’s we’ve killed and maimed emotional pleas about 14 year old girls won’t be very convincing.
Neither of us has said it was a mission to save innocent Iraqi teenagers. That is how people of your ilk choose to phrase things in an effort to your opponents look silly. :rolleyes: What we are saying is that freeing millions of Iraq citizens from having to live with the attrocities committed by Hussein and his sons and having to live with the 24/7 fear that results is one of the reasons that the war has been worth the cost, both in terms of money and casualties. No one has said that freeing Iraqi citizens from Husein’s reign of terror is the sole reason for the war, but it’s certainly one of the reasons and it is for these reasons that ‘competent’ people can find both the war and its price tag reasonable and worthwhile.
And cosmosdan, this is one of those occasions where unfortunately you have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet. Despite the casualties that have occurred to Iraqis because of the war, far fewer people died overall during the war than were dying or being killed by Hussein and his policies before the war, and millions and millions of Iraqi citizens now and in the future no longer have to live in fear of Hussein, his sons and his henchmen. We take casualties in every war because we know they’re necessary for the greater outcome, and the same holds true for the Iraqi citizens who’ve unfortuantely been killed or injured in the war. The deaths of thousands of Iraqis is the unfortunate price necessary to allow millions to live free of Hussein’s arbitrary and random reign of torture, rape, murder, intimidation and the constant, constant fear that its citizens had to live wth.