So, you’re an advocate of breaking the law you don’t agree with rather than changing the law you don’t agree with?
How did you possibly come up with that when it’s exactly the opposite of what I explicitly stated? You even quoted the part where I wrote it.
No. We would rather change the law we don’t agree with. But absent such change, we are willing to continue its traditional lack of avid enforcement, considering we never agreed with it in the first place.
I understand that this probably flew over some of your heads, as it requires an understanding of word order & other features of English grammar. So I’ll try again in mathish terms.
Status quo ante = border with Mexico officially closed, federal immigration laws written on strict end of spectrum, but states & localities allowed to ignore this according to local economic needs & attitudes.
Proposed new régime = border with Mexico stays officially closed, some states which were on liberal end of spectrum move to more consistently follow putative federal law, illegals redefined as felons, those who hire or offer aid to illegals also defined as felons.
The liberal view (embraced by right-wing classical liberals as well as equality-seeking racial minorities & various civil libertarians):
More open border with Mexico preferable to Status quo ante.
Status quo ante preferable to Proposed new régime.
Clearer now?
Not really, but I’d prefer an open border between Canada and the US like it is in Europe. But then are cultures are essentially interchangeable.
But if that is what you want then get your politicians to agree with it and change it. Unless you think you should be elected dictator for life and should make the laws without having to get a consensus like everyone else has to do.
Desire? I don’t think so amigo. Willing, yes. Desire, no.
Something people in your country aren’t willing to do.
nonsense. This is a tired old argument by now, and unless you’ve actually done a poll of everyone in the country you should stop making it. There ARE U.S. citizens who would be grateful for a job cleaning toilets in this economy, but they’re not going to get one.
Actually I don’t know anything about picking strawberries, but once upon a time I did clean toilets for a living (and vacuum, and do windows) and I loved it, one of my favorite teen jobs ever.
Can’t get hired as a maid now though because I don’t speak spanish, and neither do most low-skill-only-a-high-school-diploma American girls which is what I was at the time.
It wasn’t a bad job at all, and I think with all the yammering about how we should be training more people in the trades and not everyone should be going to university, it would be good to also remember that not everyone who doesn’t go to a 4 year college can be a plumber or an electrician.
Even those jobs are too high skilled for some people, and that’s not a bad thing, it’s just a thing, but what is an American citizen with no real skills or education supposed to do for a living?
You don’t know anything about picking strawberries yet you are capable of voicing an opinion? Let me clue you in. Strawberries grow at ground level. You spend all day, and I mean all day bent over at the waist in the hot sun. Now tell why an American strawberry grower will not hire any Americans to pick them. Are you saying he refuses to hire Americans? Or is it a fact that few if any Americans will apply for the job?
I have worked in the salmon canneries of Alaska, and I can assure you there are no jobs Americans will not do. Employers prefer illegals because they can pay them less. That is the only difference.
I don’t know about picking strawberries, which is why I didn’t spout an opinion about that job. I do know about cleaning toilets, but you ignored that part.
Then it appears that the American employers are the ones to blame and not the undocumented workers. But it is much harder to demonize American employers. Undocumented workers are a much easier target. No matter how you look at it they are abused.
On that we agree. I have no sympathy for illegal employers; if they were targeted instead of the workers, there would be no immigration problem. They should be subject to property seizure; vehicles, machinery, real estate, bank accounts, lock, stock and barrel. The illegal jobs would dry up, and the undocumented would deport themselves. But you are right; there is no political will to oppose the big agricultural donors.
there’s really no need to demonize anyone, except maybe an economic system that rewards greed above fairness. The bad guy isn’t really a guy, it’s just a set of ideas.
My hours were cut last year by quite a bit. I’m one of those people that Obama thanked in his speech for taking a cut in pay so none of my coworkers would lose a job. And I love my job, but now I only take home about $30,000 per year, and that sucks.
It’s pretty hard to live on $30,000 per year, and if I heard of a place where what I do paid $100,000 per year and employers in that place were willing to hire workes who had entered the country…quietly…for $60,000 per year you better believe I would go there and take that job. And then I’d get a bunch of roomates and live cheaply and send money home to my family.
Would that make me a bad person? No, but I would certainly understand if the citizens of that country were pissed off that I’d undercut them and taken the job for almost half what they would have been paid.
We’re all in this together, and I’m not sure any of us is having fun.
The reason is simple: Americans think the job is worth more than the grower is paying. Do you really think that Americans are incapable of doing the job? They’re not. They just want to get paid more to do it. And they’d be offered that if there was no illegal workforce that allows the grower to pay less then the market would normally support.
If it all so simple then can someone explain why when the unemployment rate was low just a few years ago there was still such an uproar about undocumented workers taking jobs away from Americans.
If, as many of the more fanatical anti-immigrants try to argue, that this has nothing to do with race but is strictly an economic issue with immigrants taking away job opportunities or in magellan’s case, deflating wages, therefore creating undesirable jobs for Americans then I don’t understand the low unemployment rates.
And what would happen to your economy when your unemployment rate was below 5% and you remove 10 million workers from the labor pool overnight?
What does it matter if someones motivation is racial. That is besides the point. Does it make sense to protect the border or not? If it does, do it. If not, don’t. I don’t see why people can’t focus on the goal instead of the irrelevancies.
Protect the border from what? An invasion of brown people?
Then open it up. No controls at all considering how effective the current ones seem to be. What do you think the consequences would be?
Why not come up with a sensible immigration policy that will benefit both countries?
Quit pointing fingers or looking for scapegoats? No more racist play soldiers hunting brown people in the desert as if they are animals.
And how do you do that if people can just ignore whatever you put in place?
How is this different than FoolsGuinea idea that you should ignore laws that don’t make sense? He wants a more liberal policy, these numnuts want a stricter policy. You think you are right, they think you are wrong. Ignore the idiots and decide to control the border. That means blocking it to those who don’t follow whatever rules you put in place. You can’t effectively manage what you don’t measure, monitor, and control.