It’s not like this isn’t a nation of immigrants. We’re nothing but immigrants. We want them. We just don’t want all of them.
Or too many of them at the same time. I’m all for revamping our entire immigration policy. I think it should be much easier to come here legally and near impossible to come here illegally. But we need to control how many and when, and open the gates accordingly.
In response to the op (have not read the whole thread to date, just offering my personal responses, as requested).
Well, my late DH and I lived back in our home-area of Texas from 2000 to 2006 or so (S.E Texas, Houston and Pasadena, also now known as Northern Mexico:rolleyes:). The population in our immediate area just outside of Houston proper was app. 80% “Hispanic” with app. 80% of that percentage being in the country illegally. This according to a city government funded survey, and I say they were, if anything, a bit conservative in their figures.
As a result of my time there, I can say I really don’t care for Mexican culture overall. (And unlike some of the Texas racists I know, when I say “Mexican”, I don’t just mean a Latino/a person but a Mexican national/citizen). I want to make it very clear that I have nothing against ANY “race” or ethnic group, but I DO hold certain biases based on culture/national origin and habits resulting from said.
The rudeness, most of it based on race, imo (knowingly cutting in lines, blocking me intentionally with carts in stores, dirty looks and comments…I’m Anglo…I encountered a LOT of racism from these folks, as did most Blacks I knew…it is a very racist society, even compared to Texas, which is saying a LOT :eek: Look how they treat THEIR “Indians” and the very small Black population in Mexico, for heaven’s sake. Most Mexicans are a blend of European and Indian, but they have the NERVE to call ME a “Gringo” :mad: My Mexican friends, and I had several, said as much themselves…they didn’t agree with or like that tendency either.)
The littering. Wow. We lived across the street from a park and every weekend, the Mexicans would descend for some 5 yr old’s birthday party (hey, this was a joke I heard from a Latino comedian…what’s up? Man, every week someone is turning 5?!!
s’true) which was cool BUT they’d always leave behind tons of trash, ignoring the trash cans and just leaving it on the ground for the city workers to pick up.
Dirty diapers left in store parking lots or the street, trash tossed out of car windows, furniture and trash dumped illegally in vacant lots and on street corners at night…I saw it all.
Yeah, I KNOW this is common in Mexico…people just dump their trash in the street for the “government” to pick up (or not). Just one of the bad habits they tend to bring here when they come. A cost to clean it up on the taxpayer’s dime AND an eyesore.
Shitty and/or blood soaked toilet paper left in public restrooms (in the trash can or on the floor). See, in Mexico, the plumbing, like the garbage service, is notoriously unreliable. So they are in the habit of not flushing paper. And the women often use half a roll of tp instead of pads. So, that’s a cost, not only to my delicate sensibilities (and I spent a few years of my life using an outhouse!) but a health risk (hepatitis, etc.) AND a cost to the businesses that have to clean it up and replace the rolls of tp used in place of maxi pads. Many businesses have resorted to putting up signs in Spanish asking people to PLEASE flush their paper!
The culture of corruption…everyone is on the make all the time. Their politicians, police, military, public officials are often corrupt and it has trickled down to the general citizenry.
Had a Mexican man park VERY close to me in a parking lot one day, then, when I brushed his car as I was trying to back out of my space, accuse me of damage. I got out, wet my finger, and rubbed off the tiny mark of rubber left by the guard on my car. He went on and on about how, “Oh, MAN, I just got this FIXED! Man, now I gotta go fix it again!” :dubious: I gave him my insurance info. Said, “Hey, call them and I will call them, too. They will take care of any damage.”
He goes, “Aww, no, man, you don’t wanna do THAT! Let’s just take care of this now. Give me, ummm, like $300 and we’ll call it even.”
I said, “Nah. This is why I have insurance. They can pay you” (of course, he HAD no damage, so…;))
A few days later, he called me and asked for money again. I refused. He said, “Man, I’d hate to have to call the cops and tell them you hit me and fled the scene.” I said, “I’d hate that too, since it would be a LIE.” :mad:
Not the only time that sort of thing happened either.
And this sort of thing (scams, bribery, kickbacks…all common in Mexico) is leeching into politics and law enforcement in border towns to a disturbing degree, not to mention the increases in kidnappings for ransom in the US.
OK, little shit maybe (but it all adds up).
Some more serious stuff.
I was rear-ended turning into my own driveway by a guy who turned out to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico with NO driver’s licence, NO insurance, and Mexican plates on his truck. He was going 40 or so in a school zone and fled the scene.
Since the kids were out walking home at the time and the adult overseers were on duty, one of them called 911 right away AND a passerby who witnessed the “accident” followed him to his house not far away.
He came back (only because he WAS followed and confronted). The cops came. His wife/other family members came in another car, parked on MY lawn, and rushed over to see what was going on with him…never bothered to ask about me or my then 2 yr old daughter who’d been in the car…she was fine, thank God…in a car seat, unlike most of their kids I’ve seen on Houston roads…but I had whiplash and later back problems as a result.
He did over $5,000 worth of damage to my almost new vehicle (which MY insurance paid for and MY premiums went up significantly despite ME never having had an accident or ticket in my life). As part of his penalty, he reimbursed me for the premium. He also paid a $300 fine and had to show proof he had insurance at the trial.
My late husband ended up losing a pretty good paying job supervising a wholesale art supply company to the illegal Mexican immigrant HE trained. A very bitter pill, since he’d been agonizing for a while over the fact that he was expected to ignore false documents on illegals (yeah, a fucking NOUN in this usage) he was in charge of hiring. He didn’t like it, but he needed the job and it was a given that he had to do it or be fired. Ha, joke was on him/us, as it turned out, huh? 
They replaced him with someone whom they could pay a third of his salary. Like they ended up doing to every other legal worker there. (hard economic times and all)
His was just ONE of the supposed “jobs Americans won’t do”. BullSHIT. Like all the once unionized, family wage jobs in construction or meatpacking, right? :smack:
We ended up on foodstamps for a while after that lay-off, and I spent a bit of time at the food stamp/welfare office. Enough to see the Mexican women filling the place, almost all of them in advanced stages of pregnancy, a baby in arms, 3 or 4 more under 6, there applying for medicaid and food stamps for ALL their kids (and themselves if pregnant).
Another thing, I gotta say, I am biased against Catholics who don’t use BIRTH CONTROL! (actually, ANYONE who just pops 'em out one after the other, ESP. if they have to rely on free births, health care and food stamps to afford it. I was with my DH for 23 yrs and we had 2, count 'em, TWO, kids. AND we used fertility awareness method combined with condoms for most of that time. NOT that hard to avoid pregnancy, people!!:smack:)
I ran my own home-based, state licenced Pre-school for a few years. I hold a degree in Child Dev. and have about 15 yrs exp. in the field and I wanted to stay home with my dd at the time. Just 2-4 kids at a time, nice, small, enjoyed it a lot. But I could barely make anything at it due to all the competition from unlicenced (also known as “illegal” according to the law there), mostly Mexican women running baby mills out of their homes. The going rates were so low it was ridiculous.
Same for office work (which I’d done for years elsewhere and made good money at). The pay was at LEAST $4 less an hr than it is here in Oregon and as a direct result of illegal immigrant labor. Trust me, the driving down of wages IS an effect of an influx of cheap, easily exploitable labor. DUH!!! :rolleyes:
The costs of all this, of public education, charity hospital care for births and ER visits, increased public safety costs, etc…etc…it ADDS UP to a crisis level for many areas. Most do NOT pay federal or state income taxes even IF they are paid above board because their income bracket plus the number of kids they can claim puts them in the refund category. They DO (if above board) pay SS and Medicare taxes, which is one reason our government prefers to allow them to be here, since many will never be able to collect on the SS and it helps balance the books)
SOOO, I feel a bit strongly on the issue, but let me clarify exactly WHAT it is I feel/think…I think our government here in the U.S. needs to pressure the Mexican government to get its shit together and reform itself so that it can employ and otherwise give its own people a decent standard of living. Most I know would much prefer to be in Mexico, but feel they have to come here to survive. I don’t blame them. Shit, I would in their place!
I feel it is a human rights issue for BOTH the Mexican nationals coming here to be exploited AND the U.S. nationals seeing their pay decrease or stagnate and their taxes increase/services get cut as a result of illegal immigration.
Our government needs to go after the COMPANIES, not the workers.
And we need to ensure that EVERY WORKER is entitled to a decent, living wage, benefits and protections and enforce it so the incentive to hire illegals and exploit them is removed.
And we need a rational, reasonable policy on legal immigration, though as long as Mexico is a fascist state, we can never really afford to take the numbers they need to send us to avoid a democratic/socialist revolution at home. (good, imo…our policy should protect those fleeing extreme political and economic persecution, protect our native labor population AND encourage reform in Mexico).
Just my opinion and just my report from the front lines. For whatever its worth.
I will add that I think the law in Arizona is unconstitutional and idiotic to boot in the specifications. I do not think the police or anyone else should be actively LOOKING for (profiling) people based on physical appearance or economic status.
They should not, for example, be pulling over long-haired men dressed in hemp to search for pot. 
BUT, as poorly written a law as it is, I DO think states have a right to legislate that police enforce immigration laws.
If someone is pulled over or arrested or convicted on some other crime/offence, the legal system, incl. the cops, SHOULD be able/required to document their residence status and at LEAST report it to the federal authorities, if not take state level action on the violation.
The guy who hit me fled the scene because he feared deportation (same reason his family showed up freaked out soon after he came back to the scene to face me and the cops after he was followed by a witness). He needn’t have worried…the cops in Houston have a standing policy of NOT sharing info with INS re’ illegal immigrant status.
There are cases in which illegal immigrants commit murder and either flee the country into Mexico (which hesitates or refuses to extridite or even cooperate in death penalty cases) OR get caught in the U.S. and get sent to jail (in which case the Mexican government, who actively encourages illegal immigration into the U.S. while gunning down illegal immigrants on THEIR southern border, complains loudly about violations of the Mexican national’s rights). That is bad enough.
But worse is the case in which someone here illegally commits murder or some other horrible violent crime and it turns out that they have a record of incarceration for other crimes, including felonies, in the U.S. that they have served jail time for and were released back into the U.S. as free people, NOT deported. :eek:
One of them was a guy who participated in the rapes and murders of several girls and women in the Houston area and, at trial, it was disclosed he had been incarcerated before but never deported despite being an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. His immigration status was not even considered an issue. That information was never shared with the feds. It was ignored. And this guy was just released on our streets like he had a legal right to BE here.
THAT SHIT is just MESSED UP, imo. :mad:
I would totally expect that if I were arrested/convicted for some crime, violent or not, that any OTHER crimes/violations of the law I had committed and which were discovered in the course of the procedings would be pretty much up for grabs. I would fully expect to be charged and prosecuted and suffer any penalities due if convicted.
But that is not how it works in most states.
The Feds. are in charge of immigration, and they are failing to enforce the laws already on the books AND the states often fail to communicate with them on particular incidences. The states cannot really argue that the feds lack of enforcement amounts to an unfunded mandate when those very states fail to alert the feds to violations as they find them.
The Arizona law is stupid, racist and unconstitutional. They simply need to enact a law which requires the reporting (and/or DEporting) of illegal immigrants detected in the course of other encounters (ones justified by existing causes). Given the law of averages, they’d detect quite a few illegal immigrants in this, entirely constitutional, manner. And THEN, if the feds still failed to enforce the law, they might have a beef.
Interested Observer.
That was a great post !
There is a reason that Mexico is a toilet, it is their culture and habits that cause it to have the problems that it does. Why do we want a bunch of their problems in our country ? Why do we want them to drag us down to Mexico’s level ?
The best and brightest of Mexico do not go to America illegally.
The best and brightest in Mexico stay there and have jobs and raise families.
It is the poorest and least educated that go to America. Why would America want the bottom of Mexico’s barrel ?
The majority of legal immigrants either have the money, education, ambition, or intellect to better their lives.
In my opinion, the majority of Mexicans that travel illegally over the boarder do not.
Mexico’s boarder with Central America has the reputation of killing, beating , and raping illegals that try to cross into Mexico. Mexico obviously does not want Central America’s illegals. Why should we want Mexico’s illegals ?
It is not America’s responsibility to solve Mexico’s problems.
Mexico should take responsibility for Mexico and solves it’s own problems.
If America opens it’s boarders and tries to “help” every third world person that wants to get into America, then America will very quickly become just another third world country.
If PEOPLE weren’t here, crimes wouldn’t happen. Littering wouldn’t happen. etc. I know, let’s kill all the people - then NOBODY would have to suffer any negative effects of interaction with any other human being regardless of immigration status! That’s the solution.
Yea, no.
They are here because they are here. Citizens are here. So are immigrants, of all types. Immigration status in most of these examples is irrelevant. Citizens also do the things that most people here are bitching about.
And I find it telling that the illegal immigration anecdotes in this thread are all about brown people - nobody’s assuming that if some asshole white guy hits their car and runs away, that he’s an illegal Canadian or European. It’s just those nasty brown people that we have to worry about.
Not only that, but Magiver is assuming that the anecdotes are accurate. The question that springs to mind is: how do you know (vis a vis available data) that any of the hit-and-run accidents were perpetrated by illegal aliens? Isn’t the escape of the driver of a hit-and-run accident implied? Who was able to check their immigration status?
I know a lot (I mean, a lot) of Mexican immigrants who came here illegally and have since legalized. Which one are they?
Were they legalized due to amnesty ?
I was referring to immigrants that originally entered the USA legally.
The OP asks how we have personally been affected by illegal immigration.
I have lived and worked in 4 different third world countries.
Those countries only allowed me entry because they wanted my money or skills, and of course I entered legally.
So, I have seen first hand how horrible living conditions can be in third world countries.
The pollution, starvation, filth, corruption, overcrowding, crime, etc.
Illegal immigration affects me personally because I do not want America to become the desperation that is most of the third world.
Billions of people in this world live in devastating poverty, and they all cannot be helped.
Opening America to all these people, in my opinion, can only result in a disaster for America.
For whatever reason, much of the world lives in an impoverished mess that they themselves made. If they cannot be responsible and improve their own countries, how can they improve America or any other first world country ?
Immigrants that enter legally, in my opinion, are the ambitious ones that want to improve their lives. Illegal immigrants, in my opinion, are the desperate ones that are just seeking easy money, and just do not give a damn about America.
So, it’s ok for poor white trash to use food stamps, but if Hispanic folks do it, fuck 'em all, yes? Got it. :rolleyes:
Think about it: if where you lived was predominantly Hispanic statistically, then of course most of the people in the welfare office (which you, m’lady, were in, so I don’t really understand why you’re casting judgement on those who need those services) are probably Hispanic. Just like most of the people at the mall are Hispanic. Or most of the people at the grocery store. That’s just the demographic you’re in. Stop falling victim to confirmation bias of your racism.
Hand to god, every immigrant I have met (every one, and I’ve met a lot from a lot of different countries) were working to better their lives. That entailed working all the time to save money to buy a house, to send their kids to college, to give their families a better life. I haven’t met any that struck me as particularly stupid. Uneducated? Likely. Stupid? Nope.
I know adults who came here illegally as children with their parents. They have college educations. They had the intellect and the ambition.
The immigrants I met had the courage in all cases to risk their lives to get here (and I’m not just talking people who had to sneak across the border). That required money in some cases, certainly resourcefulness, and intellect for sure. Add ambition.
I got to know a college educated woman from Burma who escaped with her life via a tourist visa her parents bribed the authorities for. When I met her, she was applying for political asylum and was illegal because she’d overstayed her tourist visa. She was working at Intel or Dell or some computer something. She was bilingual. She had intellect and ambition. Her parents had money, it’s not like she was completely poor in Burma.
My experience directly counters your belief. I’m just sayin’.
ETA: All of the people I met would have entered the US legally if they could have. Even my Burmese client would rather have not had to overstay her visa. I believe your equivalency between legal and illegal is simply false.
While we disagree on much of this, this is also true for the vast number of immigrants I have met as well. I’d say most of them have a work ethic superior to the run-of-the-mill American. Now, I don’t that justifies illegal immigration in any way, but most immigrants—legal and illegal—do seem to be quite diligent.
Burmese client ? Are you an immigration attorney ?
If so, my guess is that you are probably coming into contact with the top 5% .
You may not coming into contact with the other 95% or so that only enter America for money and , IMO, frequently do not show respect for the country that can provide them with a better life.
95 percent of illegal immigrants “only” enter America for money and frequently do not show respect for the country?
There’s so much garbage assumptions buried in this statement that it’s hard to know where to start.
Immigrants, whether legal or illegal, are first of all people. It’s very hard for most people to leave a society where they grew up. It’s even harder if you have little education and experience of the world outside. Illegal immigrants do it anyway, because they’re desperate, and they’re willing to take great risks, physical and legal and financial risks, in order to get a chance to do better for themselves and their families. This is more or less the same reason that any immigrant in history has taken risks to move to a faraway place.
To label this as being “only for the money” shows not only a fundamental misunderstanding of one’s own ancestry but also a fundamental failure to recognize the basic humanity of the people we’re talking about. Seeking to move to a place where one has a better chance at survival and improving one’s life and one’s children’s lives is a basic human instinct and it should be respected as that, because every single one of us owes our very existence to this instinct. To pile onto it such utter garbage as is implied by this kind of statement is really quite shocking.
Yeah, I have to say this jumped out to me, too.
Again, it’s only my personal experience, but the vast majority of the immigrants I know (legal and not) are some of the most patriotic folks you could ever meet. They don’t just like America, they love America. After all, it is America that has afforded them the opportunity to live and support their families. Hell, my Mexican friends are far more serious about 4th of July than any “real” American I know.
That is a willfully stupid thing to say. just how hard is it for you to understand that if you remove X number of people who shouldn’t be here then the percentage of crime associated with them goes too.
Every society has it’s poor. We have poor people from every walk of life. Why you think the United States is responsible for the poor of other countries needs an explanation. I’d also like one for your bigoted use of the term poor white trash because as far as I can tell you’re the complete opposite of your board name.
You’re right that America has poor from every walk of life, my friend. That’s my point. How can the poster I was responding to tell me that she knows as a matter of fact that the folks she was sitting right along side- folks who were as down trodden as she and her family were in that moment- were not also American citizens? Because of the color of their skin, she made a large assumption about these folks. Folks who might be just as much of an American as she and just as entitled to those services. Why must we assume that because someone isn’t white that they are not an American? That, friend, is bigoted.
And you are correct. I am an ugly demon. Please don’t let others know this.
I’d imagine that especially in the west and southwest, a lot of those Hispanic people have been around for longer than most of the whites that are there. Something about it, y’know, actually belonging to Mexico for a long time before we got it.