lol. yes, merely “techincally” guilty of illegal residence.
being technically guilty of illegal residence is overstaying your visa because you’re comatose, not knowingly residing in a country out-of-status.
Many people complain about illegal immigration with no racial overtones in their thinking at all. But if someone opposes legislation that would help illegal residents -of whatever classification- pursue a path toward productive citizenship, they need better grounds than:
- Preserve the rule of law
- It would be unfair to other classes of illegal immigrants, or
- Some of my best friends are Hispanic
Otherwise, I don’t feel unfair at all in wondering what they really want. I’d love to see an argument against the DREAM bill that isn’t circular or doesn’t rely on some false concern for fairness that the respondent apparently doesn’t apply to already existing criteria for immigration.
why do you feel that being fair to all types of illegal immigrants is an insufficient ground?
what if the DREAM act only applied to illegal immigrants who had a college degree at the time they were illegal (and that those types of illegals were overrepresented 10-1 by eastern european immigrants)?
I’d be happy to help people apply for citizenship. Give them all the fliers for the process that they want. But legalizing their illegal actions isn’t helping them on the course to becoming legal citizens, it’s just legalizing crime. People who broke the law don’t get to jump to the front of the line. If anything they shouldn’t even get to go into the back of the line, but that is at least acceptable.
You’re never going to get a perfect bill, and there’s always going to be a sense of unfairness about letting someone cut in line. But practical reality has to have a place at the table, too, and I have to agree that this bill should pass.
While I’m not 100% happy with it, I think it’s fine. The one real problem I have with it is that it really makes no sense to have it just as a one time deal. If it’s good for America to do this now, it will be good for America to do it every year. Personally, I wouldn’t lose much sleep if we did do it every year, but I’m sure lots of people would.
I’d view either version as the sort of thing where it encourages people to come illegally. They know that we gave in once. Why shouldn’t we again?
The practical reality is that people who are here working illegally aren’t suffering. They aren’t getting education and they aren’t getting medical attention, but they wouldn’t be getting those things in their home country either. They are earning more money, so overall their lives are improved. And so far as I know, for most of them, their intent is to earn that money and take it back to Mexico. Some percentage stay of course, but most people don’t and don’t intend to. Adding incentives for them to stay, like making it an easy route to citizenship, would cause a massive expansion of illegal immigration not because more people would head North over the border every year, but because fewer would head back South.
Theoretically speaking, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with people moving over the border and working for a few years, but really no ones best interest is served by it.
- American low-income workers can’t compete. They have to work for minimum wage, they will probably have a family to support since they’re here for the long-haul, they have to pay taxes, etc. While the American consumer saves money for buying stuff made by cheaper illegal workers, they then have to pay more on welfare and unemployment.
- Everyone in Mexico who just wants a stable place to work, leaves the country and doesn’t return until they’re middle-aged or older. There’s no need for Mexico to improve and become a place where people can do a day’s honest work and earn something from it because everyone who wants that leaves as a young man and doesn’t come back until they don’t care anymore.
- While we’re paying less on products that were made by illegals in the US, we’d pay even less if those products had been produced in Mexico.
- While people are here illegally, they have questionable legal status in the event of being the victim of a crime. They’re liable to become prime targets for anyone sociopathic or corrupt.
- Letting anyone who can move into the US become a citizen is non-sustainable. Those people will vote for others to come in, then they’ll vote for aid for themselves, which will draw more people, who’ll vote in larger numbers, etc. Eventually, you become a welfare state.
And note that item #5 isn’t an argument against immigration, just of unrestricted immigration. Legalizing illegals helps with item #4, to be certain, but it doesn’t help any of the other items. And of course, stopping illegal workers from entering helps with item #4 as well.
(I added italics above.)
We’re talking about adding a process for citizenship for a special subset of people who haven’t as adults broken the law.
Your concern about adding another incentive for people with children to immigrate illegally is a valid one. But it shouldn’t be considered in isolation of the other incentives and disincentives those potential lawbreakers encounter. Nor does that practical concern negate the moral and legal question surrounding the children who’ve been raised and educated in this country (and yes, most of them do participate in US school systems) and would face major hardship if forced to return to a country they don’t even remember.
Say that you find a family has been living in your basement for the last year. Would you tell the police to throw the entire family out, or say, “No, the little kid isn’t at fault, so I guess they can all continue to live out of my basement.” ?
Bad analogy. We have social services that are set up specifically to take care of people like that. Children of illegal aliens don’t-- not when they become adults.
But I also don’t see this as some huge incentive for illegals to come here. It’s such a narrow ruling and there are so many other incentives for them to be hear that it can’t be more than a drop in the bucket.
Since we’re doing 'what-if’s, what if I’m not the sole owner of the house? What if I have a few hundred million co-owners, and several million of them not only knew that family was living in our basement but encouraged them to live there because papa’s a good bricklayer and mama cleans their rooms without complaining, and both of 'em work for the change they find underneath the cushions? Does that change the moral calculus for you, or are the added factors of the size of the house, the complicity of the owners and the skewed labor value of the basement dwellers all irrelevant?
Very possibly true. I’m not particularly antagonistic to the Dream Act, but I would worry that it’s the start of something we don’t want to get into.
Like what? We’ve got several millions of them here already (eleven million?) and we are not, simply not, going to round them up and send them home, that is fantasy. So then what? Wouldn’t it behoove us to make some attempt that those we end up keeping, and it likely will end up being most of them, shouldn’t we make an effort to improve their education and value as potential citizens?
What we really need is a program that looks brutal, mean and punitive but actually moves these people along the path while improving their value as potential citizens. And no, I have no idea.
They had no expectation coming over that they or their children would become citizens. They came expecting to be illegal, remain illegal, and never have any right to do anything but take their children and go. That was their choice and I have no particular issue with letting them bear the consequence of that, particularly seeing as the consequence is that they live a better, illegal life here than the legal life that they would have lived in Mexico, and particularly seeing as they already accepted just that result.
Actually, people start leaving on their own accord once you tighten sanctions on employers or employ legislation like Arizona.
But surely it is logical to consider racial factors when a group is entitled to special privileges based on their race (ie. affirmative action, minority contracting). Also, if the group is quite ethnocentric itself (La Raza) then why would you welcome another group that will put its own interests first?
There is also the point indicated by Richwine above, that they have a long record of academic underachievement (hence the need for affirmative action). Lynn finds an average iq in Mexico of 89. That is surely a reason to restrict immigration.
I think the OP (IIRC DSeid is a pediatrician) is better qualified to discuss the dubious science used by Dr. Lynn and Dr. Vanhanen to estimate “national IQ’s” of the various nations. I’ll just suffice it to say I disagree that non peer reviewed scientific theories should be used to formulate national policies.
As far as the opinion article in the National Review goes, I’m unconvinced that the academic performance and average incomes of 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation Mexican immigrants have much to do with the innate abilities of the genetic grouping, and in fact are much more closely correlated to the relative economic advantages of those families.
If you want to make an argument based on some supposed racial inferiority of selected immigrant groups, I’d suggest that this merits its own thread. I’d further suggest that if you pursue that thread you put the OP in Great Debates to limit the amount of heat you will surely bring upon yourself. (Sorry Marley and tom…)
Well, their figures are increasingly being used by economists who find they predict productivity pretty well (see IQ in the Production Function:
Evidence from Immigrant Earnings by Joel Schneider & Garrett Jones, or papers by Ram & Weede). Redirect Notice
Even if the outcomes described in the NR article are purely due to economic advantages, the reality is that they’re persistent over time. So tightening entry critieria to favour more skilled migration might be a sensible move in the meantime.
So, in other words, children should be held responsible for their parents’ crimes? This isn’t about the parents, it’s about their children. The Act isn’t giving anything away, it is letting adults who came here as children earn their right to at least temporarily reside in the US legally.
Eleven million people are not going to leave the US to go back to Mexico. Perhaps tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in Arizona left, but it is likely most of them simply moved to other states, not back to Mexico.
Well, it highlights how the anti-immigrant sentiment is exactly that. Its not rage at lawless border jumpers, its simply anti-immigrant sentiment.
The Republicans can kiss the hispanic vote good bye for a generation.
Say that you’re born in Somalia. You grow up in Somalia. You die in Somalia.
Obviously this is a horrible thing.
Did you do anything to deserve this horrible fate? No, you were just born into the circumstances that you were born into. Do you deserve a chance at a better life? Theoretically, yeah, but life doesn’t work like that. You’re not being punished, you’re not suffering the wrath of your parents crimes, you were just born into a situation where there’s no reason to expect more than you’re getting. The world isn’t a perfect place.
If we lived in a Christian world then yeah, the rule would be that we all must give away every single good thing we have if that means we can lift up other people out of their misery. But we don’t. If you’re born in Somalia, tough. Maybe a rich Hollywood woman will come and adopt you as a baby, but don’t expect it. And by no means is that rich Hollywood woman obligated to come and adopt you. If you personally want to give away all of your posessions and live like a monk so that you can send everything you have to the poor, go for it, but I suspect that you’ll find that most people are quite happy to keep their refrigerator, internet, and 3 pairs of shoes, and just worry about their own family. Nobody actually considers themselves obligated to take care of other people, and despite what you might say, there’s really nothing wrong with that. Somalia is its own nation. Mexico is its own nation. In both cases, I’m sure that if the country came to us asking us to help them figure out how to become modern, stable nations, that we’d give a lot of advice and support to turn them around. But until they do, we’re not punishing them nor their people by not helping out. It just isn’t our concern.
Ultimately, we aren’t obligated to illegal kids living on our land. We made no promise, we never intimated to them nor their parents that they’d get anything by coming up here. We specifically said, “There are methods to become a citizen. If you aren’t one, don’t come over the border, don’t bring your kids, you aren’t getting anything from us unless you go through proper procedures for citizenship, and nor are they” They’re citizens of another nation. The kids are the responsibility of their parents and of their home nation. That the kids are on our land isn’t particularly relevant. They’re not our burden and we don’t them to be our burden. That’s why we told them not to come. Continuing on the path we said that we were going to follow isn’t being cruel and it’s not punishing anyone.
So, we hunt them down? Ferret them out? How many people do we have to hire to do that, do you figure? How much active resistance are they likely to face? Of course, some people will actually volunteer to do the hunting for you. They’ll even supply their own guns.
Won’t be long, there will be an underground hiding kids like that. For solid Christian reasons I’d be hard pressed to fault them for. Of course, won’t be long before other people offer to take in these undocumented children, children who have already pretty much disappeared, that no one will miss.
Maybe we could set up opportunities for some illegals to prove their sincerity by providing us with crucial information! Say, turn in ten other illegals, get a pass to a very probationary green card! Just the kind of law-abiding citizens we want!
Gonna need snitches. Otherwise, we just send the National Guard searching door to door, checking documents. Might be kind of stressful for Pfc. Garcia and Sgt. Alvarez, just back from Iraq. Course, we do have those eager volunteers, just brimming over with patriotic zeal. They’ve got their own guns, did I mention that?
And what might I do, if they come to my door, seeking my aid? Will I be stern enough to remember that I have no special obligation to these people? Perhaps not, I’ve failed such tests many times before. I fear if forced to choose between betraying the terrified and helpless, or betraying the law, I might make a mistake.