Sorry that last post was really unreadable.
Look, basically I’m trying to find a fair & moral way to treat illegal immigrants that would be acceptable to the underclass (let’s say black) who’ve been buttfucked by the system for generations.
You can’t just give blanket amnesty to these people when 1/4 of black males (or whatever the statistic is) have been imprisoned for - similarly - committing a felony in order to better their economic lot & provide for their family.
My proposal? Look, there’s too many people here. We can’t arrest 'em all. It disrupts life in towns when we do.
Amnesty. For a period of eight years. Similar to the proposal this year, except they don’t migrate home. Five-seven grand as a fee. Then, after the eight years, if they havn’t filed? Sic the full fury of La Migra on them.
Way I see it, a lot of them are sending money home. This’ll make that less attractive, so fewer will come over, because they’ll have to focus on la mordida once they’re here. Furthermore, a lot of them will have to get loans. Where there are immigrants, there are short term lenders and check cashing places. The loans will encourage them to work even harder, and also pump the local economy.
So, after those eight years, we should be down to many fewer illegal immigrants. Then we apply routine police procedure, welcome our new citizens, and watch the effing borders without wasting resources on the ones already here.
“Against this” as in against both of the ideas mentioned above, or just against the idea of not requiring some kind of penance? I haven’t seen any stats on the latter, but the stats I’ve seen on comprehensive immigration reform as the Senate “Grand Bargain” proposed suggest that most Americans favor comprehensive immigration reform.
It all depends on how you define “penance,” of course.
Most of those polls were of less than 1,500 people and about half were exclusive to people in CA and NY, which happen to have large populations of illegal immigrants. I think you’d need polling of a much broader scope in terms of both numbers of respondents and locations of said respondents to credibly reflect what “most” people think about immigration.
I hate the OP’s idea because it rewards wrong-doers over people going through proper channels and will most likely worsen the illegal immigration problem by encouraging more people to enter illegally now that they’d know there was little threat of deportation. What possible motivation would there be for people to continue to work through proper channels if they know there are no legal consequences to not doing so?
I’d favor more radical solutions than fee which will inevitably result in loans that will often be defaulted on. No one else likes the idea of 1:1 trading our current illegal immigrants for those patiently waiting to enter the country legally, so perhaps we could offer a deal like this: to earn citizenship for one’s immediate family, one member of that family would serve in the military at an overseas post for a term of say two years. Citizenship has often been tied to military participation, so why not try it in this case? They get citizenship, the military gets warm bodies without having to instate a draft and the US public sees them as having earned their citizenship fairly rather than being handed it, so it’s win-win-win.
As we recently discussed in another thread, there is no way for an average Mexican to immigrate to America legally. I think a good first step towards stopping illegal immigration would be to offer a legal alternative.
Because then you might as well open the Borders and say “come on down” and the American Environment simply won’t support that extra pressure.
We already had a limited Amnesty a decade+ ago. If we are going to have one every decade or so, why bother with Immigration policies at all?
And remember, every immigrant made “legal” means his entire family can now come here. So, if we say yes to say, 20 million currently here(that’s one reasonable estimate), that means we have just said yes to a total another 60 million or so. That adds 20% to our population: that’s 20% more pollution, 20% less housing, 20% less jobs, 20% more trash, 20% more traffic, etc. Sorry, that’s a dealbreaker for me.
Amnesty generally means they all get Green cards. Citizenship comes later.
There’s no simple solution.
I have a few: step up enforcement, especially against employers. Allow a generous “guest worker” policy, where certain businesses (like Agriculture) can employ a set number of aliens and offer then temp worker permits, for maybe 6 months. This way, the businesses that really need “migrant farm workers” can get them. Guest workers do not get to bring family with them, and can only stay for a season or so. We could add they get electronic implants for tracking. Yeah, liberals would scream. But since it’d be entirely voluntary (if you want the permit, you get the implant, no implant, no permit).
I’d set stricter limits on cash being sent to Mexico, etc, with the data being available to ICE/INS for searching for “illegals”.
I’d make the border stronger- that’d prevent a lot of drugs coming here, too.
Finally, I’d have a very limited amnesty: as of now- allow illegals that have been here for ten years with a clean record and ten complete years of filing taxes to get a green card. The cost would be set to what the average “illegal” sends home in a year, say $10,000 or so. As a WAG, that would allow 2 mil more residents, with maybe another 2 mil family. (If they have been here for ten years, most of them have already brought their wife and kids, at least).
Hardly perfect, I know.
Note that I know we have a number of illegals here from other nations besides Mexico.
It seems to me that every illegal immigrant takes the right from every immigrant who wants to come here legally. Why are they any different than a person who writes a bad check or steals so their family could have a better life?
The laws are broken. A bad way to start out in a country.
Monavis
Sorry, this doesn’t make any sense to me. 90 years ago, the US population was around 100 million. Since then, a 3 fold increase has led to greater prosperity than America of 1915 could ever have conceived. Even accepting your 20% number, what evidence do you have that things would be worse? That’s 20% more workers pumping money into our economy, 20% more workers to build houses, 20% more consumers creating jobs, 20% more people demanding land development. Immigrants bring with them their own economy, skills, and new ideas. Plus, the more people you have, the more niche markets you can support. I think history backs this up… with your estimate of 20 million illegals, plus however many millions of legal Mexicans are here, our economy seems to be better than ever. Unemployment remains extremely low. Populations in big cities are high, but it’s not hard to find a right-sized town in this country. Things just seem great, despite having all these people here. In fact, I would argue that things are great partly because we have all these people here.
The laws are broken. It’s time to fix that. Sometimes, you have to make a short-term injustice in order to fix a problem permanently. It’s like surgery. You have to cut people to heal them.
I did forget one element in my proposal. Proof of residency before the amnesty.
90 years ago, no one had even heard of Global Warming. SMOG wasn’t even a word. Few owned cars. The economy isn’t the issue, it’s the environment and crowding.
If that’s the case, then wouldn’t you prefer that Mexicans be here in this country where we have strict environmental regulations, rather than stay in Mexico where regulations are much more lax? Hell, they were manufacturing brand new 1964 volkswagens down there up until 4 years ago. I’m sure their power plants aren’t as clean, either. Better to get them up here in the states so they’re using cleaner American power. If smog and crowding bother you that much, there are plenty of smog-free cities of all sizes that you can choose from.
Personally, I’d prefer they took the initiative to clean up their own country, thereby obviating the need / desire to leave it.
Quite a bit of that money is sent back to the immigrants’ home country. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=265936092878927 is just one of the many interesting and informative articles one can find by typing Mexico immigrant remittances into Google.
Yes! I like your idea and I think we need more out-of-the-box type thinking on issues such as this.
Well the true long term solution is to improve the situation in countries like Mexico so that its population is not forced to come north to look for work.
At the moment, it suits Mexico to dump its working poor to North America. It maintains a corrupt, racist social and economic system as many of the people who may protest or try to change Mexico are shunted north.
At the moment it also suits American business who can pay dirt-poor wages to illegals. Are those savings really passed onto the American consumer? It’s debateable. Are those savings worth the social cost of illegal immigration (health care, education, over crowding etc. etc.)?
What about American Blacks? Is the sheer volume of South American immigration a good thing or a bad thing for them?
It’s an issue that needs to be debated and debated openly. Overall, I am not convinced that open borders and/or an amnesty is really good for anyone save an elite few.
If those people had the same opportunities you had to come here legally and they chose not too then your complaints would be valid. They simply don’t though, i don’t know what your situation was but for illegal aliens legal inmigration is simply not an option.
90 years ago people were poor but not as in debt as they are now. I heard on a TV program that a good percent of Americans are deeply in debt due to easy credit and few truly own anything as they owe on their cars, homes and etc. I know a lot of people who are in that situation, as they live beyond their means and even a rich man who earns over a million dollars a year is in debt if he lives on a million and 1/4.
Maybe some one has the statistics.
Monavis
This would probably reduce the total number of new immigrants. 2) and 4), assuming they are doable, and in conjuction with 1), should give us much more control over the influx of foreigners than we currently enjoy. And, of course, the plan is very generous to our undocumented present neighbors.
I don’t think I like the specific plan in the OP, but it is the kind of idea that’s going to be needed. If nothing else, there will have to be some way to assuage the moral ‘indignation’ (for lack of a less perjorative word) of those offended by illegal immigration.