It’s odd that you would latch on to that. It’s necessary for the person in the analogy to be poor and not have a house for it to make any sense. If they were rich they would not have a demand for a place to sleep. They would just buy a house of their own. Just like how illegals wouldn’t be hopping the border like they are if there were opportunities for them in their own countries.
The context for that whole discussion is “market based” solutions for immigration and how they basically can’t exist.
OK. So you dispute my dispute of your claim? Give me a cite, then.
You claim that there is a “prevailing political will” that prevents the last several presidents from doing anything about illegal immigration.
Can you prove it?
Because I say that the opposite is true. Taking meaningful action to stop the millions of illegals would be overwhelmingly popular politically for someone of either party.
While some of the things you say may be true, this is obviously the opposite of truth. What you are describing is a situation where the market is allowed the freedom to set wages at a normal rate. What you want is a situation where wages are artificially HIGH, by virtue of the government interfering in the market (by cutting off supply.)
I’m not saying that’s good or bad, just saying you’re mistaken in what is actually the artificial wage level.
As I’ve already said, it’s because businesses like illegals. It’s cheap labor for them. Plus Democratic strategists love illegals, since it’s new voters for them.
But the voters? They don’t like the current situation one bit.
I’m just giving you a bit of a hard time over your choice of word. Many discussions of public policy leave me with the feeling that conservatives tend to view being poor as a moral failing. As though a lack of money itself made folks unworthy of respect.
So, instead of saying that you don’t some jerk stealing your couch, you say that you don’t want some jerk with less money than you stealing your couch, and I couldn’t let it lie.
Returning back to a market based solution, do you feel that it is unreasonable for our immigration policy to, in some way, reflect the economic need for immigrant labor? Do you think it currently reflects our economy’s need for immigrant labor?
How would that make sense? It would be another generation before it pays off in votes, and the political divisions a generation from now might be entirely different; nobody in politics can afford to play that long a game.
In the short term, fraud. Many of them steal identities because they have to in order to work. It’s not unreasonable to think they can also be voting. Especially since we don’t even ask for an ID at the polls most of the time.
But that’s small potatoes compared to the long term. Once they are given citizenship they will have the right to vote. First you get them here, then you give them amnesty and then they vote.
Is there really any doubt in your mind that those 160 kids in Lynn that I posted about will be voting democratic in their lifetimes?
Where do you get the idea that it will take a generation to pay off in votes? A path to citizenship is something that is being pushed for all the time. It’s something both Bush and Obama both seem to have wanted.
Why such a long time horizon?
This isn’t theoretical. It’s already happening with legal immigrants. The 1965 immigration act has already paid off in spades for democrats. If this country had the same demographic makeup in the last election as it did in 1965 then Mitt Romney would be president.
Were you talking about only children in that post? Because that would make sense. Then you’re playing a long game.
But most illegals currently in the US aren’t children. They’re just one amnesty law away from being voting citizens. That’s why I don’t think any crystal ball into future decades is needed to see the potential opportunity for democrats.
According that article, the “current wave” of illegal children is 126. Lynn has a population of over 90,000. Do you expect us to believe it’s being “overwhelmed”?
126 is the number of illegal minors from one country alone, Guatemala.
The article states clearly that the number of foreign born children has doubled in the last two years. That is indeed enough to “overwhelm” a school system.
But I suppose you know better than the mayor of that city?
“But now it’s gotten to the point where the school system is overwhelmed, our health department is overwhelmed, the city’s budget is being sustainably altered in order of accommodate all of these admissions in the school department.”
Newsflash: It’s been that way in Lynn for several generations now. Loss of manufacturing jobs, white flight, low tax base, endemic and extensive municipal corruption, the whole rust-belt story. But, despite significant overall population losses over the years, it’s still filled its traditional role as a landing spot for new immigrants. Nowadays they come mainly from the Dominican, Haiti, and Cambodia instead of Ireland and Quebec, and work in the Boston-area services industries instead of the shoe factories, but it’s still the same American story.
IOW a hundred or so more Spanish-speaking kids in the Lynn schools won’t make a bit of difference really, but it’s still a mayor’s job to try to get outside funding wherever available.
Now, what are the Republicans doing to show the newest Americans that they deserve their support? And what makes you think it automatically goes to the Democrats? Are you saying they’re incapable of making their own decisions?
“Potential” is a Latin word translating as “imagined”. Your allegation that that is what truly motivates Democrats (it’s capitalized), not humanitarianism and Americanism, is so contemptibly false that it colors anything else you may have to say on the subject.
You also need to learn that voter ID laws do nothing to prevent illegal voting. You have to register first.
Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin,
You’ll never come out the way you went in
What looks like gold is really tin,
The girls say ‘no’ but they’ll give in
Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin
I know all about Lynn. Yes, it’s a poor city. That makes it less able to absorb an influx of new illegals who don’t speak English, not more.
Does no one actually read cites?
It’s six hundred. Not one hundred. Not one hundred or so. Six hundred.
It’s good to know that you know better how dire their situation is than the Mayor of that city, though.
Maybe you should drive over there and educate those kids. Since I’m sure it’s that easy.
Reasonable people can debate on the whole whether illegal immigration is a good thing or a bad thing for the US. Myself and most Americans thinks it’s a bad thing.
But to be unable to recognize the problems that doubling the population of non English speaking kids in this manner in an already cash strapped school system is very telling.
Is there any scenario where some of you would admit that illegal immigration has a negative effect?
How about my other example of the Tsarnaev brothers? Can we all agree that maybe, just maybe letting them come here with legal asylum and giving them $100,000 in benefits while they plotted and made bombs was a bad idea?
I get arguing your cause, but at some point it just becomes absurd.