No. Part of the pull for illegal immigration is getting advantages for the kids. We should not reward illegal activity. Yeah, it sucks for the kids who didn’t have a choice as to whether or not they’d be part of an illegal activity. But we cannot reward illegal activity if we want to stop it. Imagine if a cop pulled someone over for speeding, and then handed that person a hundred dollar bill. Do you think that the speeder would STOP speeding, or speed even more? If people get rewarded for an activity, they are far more likely to keep doing it, and to recommend it to their friends.
I believe they do, although it might vary from state to state. If no one comes up with a definitive answer soon, I’ll ask a friend of mine who was a legal immigrant (now she’s a US citizen) who went to a public university in the state in which she grew up.
Analogies don’t equate, they point out a relationship. The one we’re talking about it works from one view, but fails from others. such is the problem with analogies, though I don’t think that renders them useless. I simply think that borders need to be respected. And when that fails, protected.
I agree with Lynn’s reply to this.
Undocumented workers come here because American corporations and wealthy individuals, including lawmakers, hire them to work for substandard wages with no benefits and no legal protection. It exploits the immigrant and undermines American workers. What makes the entire situation truly sinister is that the same people hiring the undocumented workers and recruiting temporary workers in developing countries are the same people launching the public hate campaigns intended to scapegoat undocumented workers and grossly misrepresent the issue.
The media driven illegal immigrant hysteria seems like a big con when one considers the profit motive of Halliburton’s private prisons housing undocumented immigrants in the isolated Texas desert, the same corporation that hired undocumented workers during the reconstruction of New Orleans.
If Americans want to protect their labor rights and income, I believe the best solution is to demand that undocumented workers earn the same pay and have the same legal protection as American citizens —which isn’t much, anyway.
Non interventionist would imply just letting things be, in other words every human being on the planet being free to settle anywhere in the world. Both the Sudan lottery, or drawing imaginary lines and devising complicated legal frameworks for determining who gets to be on each side, are interventionist. Of course the Sudan lottery is absurd. I’m not suggesting it. The point is to think about the arbitrary nature of the rules as if you were someone on the wrong side of them. It is unrealistic to expect a specific person who is suffering in desperate poverty to see the border and immigration policy as less arbitrary or absurd than the Sudan example. How would one even begin to make a case against it to this person: “Well, uh, you have to live in poverty and doom your children to a hopeless existence because you see, if you cross the border your presence there will have a negative effect on wages. Oh sure, they’ll still be much higher than where you are now, but they’ll be slightly lower, and that won’t do. Oh well, got to run, I see Macy’s is having a sale!”
The funny thing is, reading your posts, I don’t even think we would do things that differently if immigration policy was up to us. I recognize that the United States can and should defend its borders. I just hate it when this is phrased as a moral issue. It is not. It is a practical issue. The United States needs to limit immigration to maintain a high standard of living. This is necessary, but there is nothing fair or just about it. There is no moral justification for who gets in and who doesn’t.
You’re absolutely correct: it’s a matter practicality. You and I agree. We can’t take everyone in. Hell, we can’t even take a small fraction of the world’s poor in without changing the U.S. for ill. So, our borders must be protected. Period. That will suck for some people. Not to seem callous, but that’s life. Many people born in the U.S. are dealt a shitty hand in other ways: born to a 16-year-old crack mother in Newark or Baltimore, or Harlem; born in the poorest parts of Appalachia with no education or healthcare; born with some birth defect that deprives one of any kind of normal life. We can’t solve all the world’s ills. But the good thing about statehood is that it allows people to improve life in their corner of the world. We’ve (our forefathers) have done that. We benefit. Yes, we’re lucky. I think the obligation we have is not fucking up what they created for us. I’m all for helping other nations, particularly one as corrupt and screwed up as Mexico—that we live right next to! But our first responsibility is to our own citizenry. Pining about the unfairness of who is born where and how and to whom is, in my opinion, ponderation for ponderation’s sake. And like you said, this is a practical issue.
If you detect any ire in my posts it’s actually for the Dems who are willing to turn a blind eye to their duty in the hopes of future votes, the Reps who do the same thing because they want a steady stream of cheap labor they can exploit, and the open borders crowd that are just in their own little utopian world of Kumbaya.
Great plan—if your goal is to encourage more illegal immigration. Maybe we should give people who don’t pay their taxes new cars, too.
Is there something special about people from Mexico that means we should allow anyone of them who wants to live here illegally do it? Isn’t that a little racist to my Chinese friends who want to work here? Or people from India, Africa, Jamaica, etc? We need to decide as a society what our immigration policy is and then enforce it like all laws. If you think the right policy is to throw open the borders and let anyone in, then debate your point and convince voters. The situation we have now is nuts.
I have little vitriol towards illegal aliens. I reserve my vitriol for those who think it’s good policy to let people who enter the country illegally stay here. I’d be happy to trade 1 for 1 Mexican immigrants for illegal immigration advocates. Ironically, Mexico deports illegal immigrants so we’d probably just get them right back.
I can’t speak for others in the thread, but my attitude to illegal immigrants remains the same whether they are Mexicans who walk across the border, Chinese who stow away in container ships, Jamaicans who arrive by boat, or whatever. It just happens that geography results in more poor Mexicans being able to physically arrive in the US than people from those other places.
Cool, so my Chinese friend with a PhD in Computer Science can overstay his visa and stay here. Can he apply for a job at Microsoft or Google, or does he just get to pick fruit?
It takes away the incentive to hire undocumented workers, protects American workers, and holds the people who hire them accountable. It should be a crime to hire illegal immigrants and even more criminal to exploit them.
I never said he could stay here. I said that my attitude to him staying here is not affected by the fact that he’s Chinese rather than Mexican.
To be quite honest, i don’t care very much if Google or Microsoft want to employ him. But he has to make the same sort of calculations that i would make in similar circumstances: is it worth the risk of getting caught?
For the Mexican farm worker, the risk is worth it because the worst punishment he can suffer for getting caught is to be sent back where he came. And he can then simply try to re-enter the US again and go back to what he was doing.
For someone with a PhD in computer science, getting caught will result in deportation, and will probably also result in never again being allowed to come to the US to seek work. That’s probably a bigger deal for a professional with post-secondary education than it is for an uneducated agricultural worker.
I jump through all the hoops in my attempt to become a US resident, not because i have a particular love for bureaucracy, or a special affection for US immigration procedures. I do it because i want to live with my wife and have a career here, and staying illegally would put all that in jeopardy. If your Chinese friend decides that he’s willing to risk permanent deportation for the chance to work here, i’m not going to lose any more sleep over that than i do over a farm worker.
Exactly. Plus, the Mexican government used to encourage its people to get into the US. I don’t know if that government has changed its ideas or not. I know that they SAY that they have, but the Mexican gummint used to disseminate information on how to get across the border more safely. After all, those remittance payments won’t be made unless the II has made it to the US and landed a job. And make no mistake about it, remittances are a HUGE factor in the Mexican budget. The Mexican government knows that the IIs will send money home. It also knows that by encouraging illegal immigration, the rabble rousers, the ones who would want to shut down corruption and oldboyism, are the ones who are most likely to take a chance to earn a living in the US.
I think that we are going to have this problem until the businesses who hire IIs are fined, and quite possibly have some jail time for those who hire IIs.
When you’re arresting someone for stealing a loaf of bread for his family do you:
- let the kids finish their sandwiches
- take the sandwiches away as “ill gotten gain”
- break out the stomach pump
A country can support an infinite number of people? Please explain.
So you’d have no problem starting with your region, I presume, to start packin’ 'em in?
OK, I’ll bite… where are the new jobs going to come from?
Read vewwy, vewwy carefully. The answer is cleverly hidden between the words “in” and “the”.
What’s your region? Mine’s visible on this page. Houston’s got lots of immigrants from all over. Most are legal; not all of the “others” are Mexicans. (Other areashave even more interesting ethnic mixes.)
Things are slowing down but we’ve got jobs. But not for you. Please stay away.