You’re not thinking about the complications. So, anyone can come in and stay? No more visas of limited duration, all who enter can stay as long as they want as long as they keep their nose clean? There’s a good reason no one does that. They’d be swamped in short order.
They aren’t harming our country much given current restrictions and the fact that all things considered, not too many people violate our laws. 12 million or so. Open the gates to all, and it’s not 12 million anymore. It’s 120 million. Maybe 1.2 billion.
TimeWinder: Yes, and, as we’ve gone over many times, the crime rate among non-citizens is only a third of the rate for citizens, and the undocumented ones pay taxes and Social Security/Medicare without getting the benefits from them.
Too many, including some on this board, have shown themselves to be simply susceptible to fearmongering and outright lies told by a tinhorn-pol party whose only route to power is rabble-rousing. Nativism is a cheap trick, done many times in many places with never a positive outcome, but it keeps working - because so many are willing to let it.
Well, the crisis is over. Children are now back their partners. What types of parents risks losing their children is a better question?
The journey to illegally cross the border is a perilous one, some die, others are the victim of crimes or scams during transportation from other Mexicans. A lot to risk with a small child.
Who does the issue of illegal immigration benefit? Most Americans are for better border security, very few will ever openly admit they want no borders.
The debate now should be why are we spending so much money on Illegals, while neglecting our own? If we had border security over the course of time, you won’t have to spend as much money on non-USA citizen’s welfare.
Your first assertion is accurate as far as it goes. Your second is suspect. Whether or not they pay taxes depends on the circumstances of their employment and how they illegally acquired it. Migrant workers paid in cash are unlikely to be going to the trouble of doing their taxes and their employers often don’t even document them at all. Those who outright knowingly commit identity theft and use that identity for more than employment are also very likely to be practicing tax avoidance as well. Just check the “exempt” box and it’s someone else’s problem when the IRS figures it out. It happens:
Sure, but much like “open borders” accusations, accusations of nativism don’t really hold water for most people. I think we all agree we’re going to keep some people out, probably a lot of people out, and then we have to get rid of people who evade authorities for awhile. Controlling immigration is as legitimate as regulating trade in goods and services.
You’re overlooking the maladministration’s statements that they aren’t going to put any effort into returning the children already removed from their families. Expect followup reports, occasionally interspersed with whines and complaints from Dotard apologists about how terribly terribly unfair it is to keep bringing the subject up in late October…
Nope! See above.
No doubt you’ll be among the whiners and complainers I mentioned. Allow me to respond in advance: Womp womp…
You were probably a person who felt border security was a nonfactor during the 2016 election. How did that work out for you? By putting a camera and recent news on this problem, you play into one of the Trump’s stronger suits. That sinking feeling you may be experiencing now… Great, lets talk about the issue. The money spent, crimes committed, etc…
This sounds like campaign pablum – there have been Democratic bills put forward to overhaul the immigration system, but they haven’t gone through. It’s just as much an issue in the reverse – Republicans can’t get together a political feasible reform to the system any better than Democrat can.
It’s a tough and complicated problem. It’s reasonable to want control over who comes in. It’s reasonable to advocate that the current numbers coming in are harmless or even advantageous to the country, even though that doesn’t mean that there should be no limit.
It’s also entirely reasonable to point out that a significant portion of Trump supporters are motivated by some form of bigotry/racism/xenophobia.
I’d have no problem having a debate minus the extremists – get rid of the true open borders folks (who I think are vanishingly rare – like less than 5% of the Democratic party) and the bigots (who I don’t think are vanishingly rare – they might be half of the Republican party or more). But that won’t happen, because Republicans need the extremists to be viable. And you shouldn’t kid yourself that, without the bigots, the remaining anti-immigration pols and voters would be “overrun” by the some variation on the various moderate proposals that have been put forth over the years – solid but humane border security, a path to citizenship for the non-criminal already here, relatively easy hiring for industries that rely on immigrants, etc.
As to your “better question”: “What types of parents risks losing their children[?]” let’s try some questions for you:
(1) Could refugees know that that Trump had suddenly and spitefully shut down refugee processing centers?
(2) Could they know that the U.S.A., renowned for “Give me … your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” had decided to commit atrocities instead?
Note that most of the refugees at issue, having crossed the border “illegally”, deliberately presented themselves at immigration checkpoints rather than attempting to escape into the hinterland.
Sorry, but those bills were dripping with bad faith. Democrats have a long history of voting for tough immigration laws and then condemning enforcement. Up until 2014, we could at least rely on Democratic Presidents to faithfully enforce the law as best they could, while being angrily criticized by Democratic legislators, but Obama pretty much ended that and Clinton ran on a promise to only deport felons. Further, Democrats voted for biometric entry/exit systems and border fencing, but then refused to fund them. It’s a scam.
You’re right that we need to have this debate sans extremists, but we also need to have this debate actually implementing what is agreed upon. In a functioning democracy, we debate a policy, a policy is agreed upon, either through compromise or majority rule, and then that’s the policy until it gets changed. Instead, we have written law that is mostly what the public wants, but enforcement that is what the elites want. That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.
If Democrats didn’t know what to do, then why was Obama more effective than either Bush or Trump? And he somehow managed to do it even without committing atrocities.
Certainly, there needs to be a full accounting of the various detainee-processing contracts and the brib–, er, “contributions” offered in order to obtain them.
You’d have to define atrocity first. Abuse of kids? Check. Separation of families? Check. Mass deportation? Check. Trump does it more, but that’s like comparing Marcos vs. Pinochet.
Given that there is no apparent political will on any side for locking up illegal employers (beyond the very occasional token example), which is the only thing that could actually make a lasting dent, I suppose it will just have to be left at that.
I’m not sufficiently familiar with Marcos and Pinochet to identify which one presided over occasional abuses in the process of doing a difficult job and which one used the promise to systematically inflict abuses as a rallying issue for his political base.
Trump is doing exactly that. There’s also e-verify, which is pretty close to a silver bullet. The only way to beat e-verify is to steal the identity of a baby or something, and even that can be fixed if it becomes a problem. Just add age verification to the database.
While I’d love to see people who hire illegals as a business model locked up, in practice they often get their livelihood taken away because their business model becomes kaput due to losing most of their employees and the authorities watching them afterwards.