I have had two cars totalled by unlicensed, uninsured, illegal immigrants (in Texas, but I’m not sure if that matters). Fortunately, I was not seriously injured in either event.
Is illegal immigration really important to me? Hell, yeah. A nationwide law like Arizona’s might have spared me a considerable amount of financial loss and pain.
Here’s an interesting local story:
Local farmer imports Jamaican workers to replace illegals
INS (or whoever they are these days) raided this place and all the illegals scarpered. Then no hard-working out-of-work 'Murricans lined up to take the jobs, and the farmer i now importing temporary workers from Jamaica to do the job.
Clearly the system works…:dubious:
It doesn’t seem to say what the pay rate is. Perhaps most Americans living in that area couldn’t live off of what he’s offering to pay.
As the child of immigrants, I wouldn’t have been born here without (legal) immigration. However, I have a big problem with illegal immigrants using my taxes for welfare, Quest, or public schooling. Imho, I think that illegal immigration is a huge liability to this country…why not have easy legal immigration?
You do realize you’re taking two people who screwed up and using that to judge an entire group, right?
You are also aware that, if these illegals weren’t so illegal, the could actually go to driving school and learn how to not crash into things, right?
In other words, your solution far outweighs the problem you articulated.
Isn’t uninsured motorist coverage a standard part of your policies in Texas? It is in Michigan, and we’re a no-fault state (the uninsured motorist coverage is for when we go out of state). Okay, that’d’ve fixed the financial loss, but not your pain.
(I’m not arguing for illegal immigration by any means; just pointing out the insurance.)
Texas insurance requires a certain amount of liability insurance - that covers you crashing someone else’s car. There is no mandatory level of insurance you must have to cover your own losses.
Of course, there are plenty of people violating that law, too, whether or not they are illegal or legal.
If you discount the crime of being here illegally, various statistics have shown that illegal aliens commit crimes at a lower rate than legal residents, and would seem to lower the crime rate. Yes, I know, they still increase the total number of crimes. But it would take a careful analysis to determine that the problems outweigh the benefits overall.
The world of politics doesn’t seem to reflect my view (but a few individuals have), that we should do more to accomodate people who want to become US citizens, and less to accomodate businesses that want cheap temporary cheap labor. I don’t mind giving a leg up to people in need either, but I’d still prefer helping the people who want to be part of our country to those who just want to come here in order to take something away. In terms of the laws, I don’t understand why the criminal is the poor guy trying to feed his family, instead of the businessman who wants labor at a lower rate than legal residents would accept (especially considering the current unemployment problem). I understand that other factors like ‘international free markets’ have a bearing, but I’m not fond of that either (go ahead call me a ‘protectionist’).
Not at all. I am just pissed that these two individuals wouldn’t have had an adverse impact on me if they had not been here.
maybe we should set up an island and ship all caught-while-driving-uninsured drivers there - that would spare even more people considerable amounts of financial loss and pain. :rolleyes:
(speaking of loss, you’re not entirely blameless for not purchasing uninsured motorist coverage)
can you elucidate for me how a citizen renting an apartment contributes any more to public (primary/secondary) schooling than an illegal renting an apartment?
and how, pray tell, would Illegals live off that same wage? (all the while siphoning off 25-50% of their wages to their relatives back home 
)
No, uninsured motorists should have their lifeless corpses hung from the streetlights on major freeways. 
Yes, I did have uninsured motorist coverage. It still cost me.
Time to 'fess up, I guess. My outrage is partly, um, overstated. The second event was a young mother with 3 kids in the car, two of whom were crying after the accident. Neither car was drivable. I felt pretty bad for her, because she was likely screwed even worse than I was. 
The first time, not so much. Caused a chain reaction pileup - something like 5 or 6 cars involved. Your typical morning commute OMG-why-is-everyone-ahead-braking-look-in-the-rear-view-BLAM. The guy behind me was in a freaking Pinto - I’m glad that thing didn’t burst into flame before I could crawl out the window.
It’s important to the illegal immigrants (and here I’m talking Mexicans specifically).
Since there’s NO legal way for most them to immigrate to the US, there’s a choice between living in abject poverty in a crime-ridden, corrupt hellhole, or living in abject poverty in a safer place where maybe your children might have a better life (and maybe you can, too). In their place, I’d do it, too – in a heartbeat – and the fact that it’s illegal in my new country wouldn’t cause me a moment’s hesitation.
That’s the bottom line. You want to solve the illegal immigration “problem?” Either grant citizenship (or at least resident alien status) in a reasonable fashion that allows immigrants to come in legally, or spend enough foreign aid dollars and other resources to fix things up in Mexico.
Nothing else will ever work, they’ll just make more folks miserable, incarcerated, or dead.