Are you kidding me? Ooooooooo, it’s such a big number!. You have to look at what it means to each person. According to you that’s a whopping $2.25 per month, almost 8¢ per day. JEEPERS!
But you want to look at the big scary number, okay. But then you have to look at others, too; look at the money saved. How many billion would we save if we weren’t education illegal children in our schools? (Not to mention having smaller classes with fewer non-emglish speaking students). And how many billions would we save by not having our emergency rooms used as doctors offices by the illegals?
A question you might want to ask yourself is how you can refer to a human being as “an illegal.” It’s dehumanizing. To me it is 100% equivalent of referring to someone as a nigger. Probably worse in 2009, honestly, because it’s so much more widely used and accepted.
:rolleyes::rolleyes: Nope. I showed how your own ill-thought-out position was at odds with itself. Try answering the question. Go ahead, make believe you have a real argument and let’s see where it goes. If you’re right, maybe I’ll learn something. If you’re not, maybe you will. Why in the world do you find that so frightening?
Yes, I just argued that if the illegal immigrants conquer america, they would then own our stuff. For the sake of this particular discussion though I don’t think this hurts my position.
I disagree - the rights are conceptually the literal same thing. Citizenship defines a group, and that group collectively owns the country. (Admittedly, ownership within the country is not distributed evenly, but that’s irrelevent to this discussion.)
So, citizenship is ownership, in much the same way owning stock is ownership of a company. Which means that citizenship isn’t a matter of “qualification” at all. It’s irrelevent. It’s a red herring. It’s a smokescreen. It’s white noise.
Aside from not being an owner, I’m “qualified” to receive dividends on the stock I don’t own. So what? Doesn’t mean I get to, or that I should.
I find much of this thread troubling. it seems self-obvious to me that civilization requires “boundaries” of one sort or another. We need some process in place by which we classify who is part of our social compact and who is not in order to enforce laws, collect taxes, and protect the public.
If we get rid of the concept of borders and countries then how do we enforce basic civil rights? What gives us the right to say that sleeping with 12 yr old girls is not OK, or that you can’t own slaves, or that honor killings are not acceptabl,e unless we draw some line around a set of people to whom our laws apply?
At the very least there needs to be geographical constraints on where laws apply or else the law is moot. Yes the borders are often the result of military might, but how far back do we go to say what and what is not legitimate? Do we push Homo Sapiens back into Africa because they took Europe away from the Neanderthals who emigrated there first?
I’m not willing to put my rights and privileges under the control of the rest of the world who are even more fucked up than we are. I don’t want our women to be required to wear Burqas or face stoning, or our children to be subjected to genital mutilation, or to think that poutine is food.
So yes, we draw an abitrary line around a geographic area and call it a country or state. Within those borders a set of laws apply. There are priveleges and responsibilities that stem from being born there. When you are an adult you can move, or find a like minded group of fellow citizens that will peacefully or forcefully change the laws with which you disagree.
If people can wander back and forth across political borders without restriction, then we cease to have civilization and revert to the system of clans and tribes like they still have in the middle east. If you think it’s hard to immigrate to the United States, try joining a clan determined by bloodlines and intermarriage.
That’s not my point. It’s not a scary number, it’s a large number. Making any sudden, extensive change is going to have major effects. Even if over a course of 20 years that is on average a positive effect, for the first 5 years of that, it’s going to kill the economy as some massive number of people are fired, and some other massive are hired and re-trained for a different set of jobs supported by the new economy. That’s going play to hell on the stock market.
Illegal immigrants are a large enough sector of the economy that any change in regards to them is going to have a major effect on the US economy. It would be like freeing the slaves all over again, which if you’ll recall depressed the economy of the South for decades.
Whoa. I thought I was with you, but I guess not. You can’t just say disparate things have a moral component and then make them all equal under the banner. Also, the person in China has not done anything even questionably wrong, whereas the illegal immigrant has. I thought you were taking a moral stance on US, the people who allow jobs to be outsourced or to be done by illegals.
I’m not getting you here. Maybe there’s a typo. Is one of those "legal"s supposed to be something else?
I do think we’re stuck with outsourcing, but I don’t think we need be stuck with illegal immigration. We can make a huge dent in it simply by enforcing laws against employers, which would cause many to leave on their own. You know, turn off the magnet. And you’re wrong about me be unwilling to pay additional taxes. I view control of our borders as an issue akin to providing a military. For an effective military: whatever it costs. For closed borders that we can open as we see fit: whatever it costs.
Thanks for clarifying your point. But I think you underestimate 1) how much the gradual nature of the change (20 years) would help the transition (unlike the freeing of the slaves) and 2) the degree to which the economy would be helped by putting the unemployed to work.
(By the way, I do fully support a guest worker program if we see the need.)
Of all the arguments used by advocates of unrestricted immigration, this is the most disengenuous of all. If you want to nit-pick on language, then we can just call people who are in this country illegally “criminals”. Does this somehow make it better? If enforcing immigration laws is racist, then we are in good company. Mexico has immigration restrictions, so does the EU, and almost every other country in the world. If they are all racists, then the word has lost all descriptive meaning. Far from de-humanizing people, the laws surrounding citizenship and immigration are what allow us to enforce human rights. Our record is far from perfect, but as citizens we get to join together as a political entity to make things better.
Immigration laws do not just protect the powerfula agianst the weak, they also protect the weak against the strong. Without immigration restrictions rich Americans and Europeans could move into Mexico and buy up all the coastal properties and aerable land. Or the entire populaton of the US could move there temporarily and vote for Mexico to become part of the United States.
That is why this time I composed three simple questions for you, so we do not talk past each other.
Your post #17 is what sparked the questions. Your post #33 did not answer them. It seems that you are the one being disingenuous. But given your flimsy position and how this has progressed already, I can’t blame you looking for some kind of out. Oh what’s that you say…you’re being called to dinner? You gotta run? Don’t worry, I understand.
Three questions. I don’t know how to make this simpler or clearer.
:rolleyes:
I literally laughed out loud at this post, thank you! You called my post disingenuous and then wrote an incredibly disingenuous post. Where did I say enforcing immigration laws is racist? Get out of town with this garbage.
If you say so. I say it’s an accurate description, even if it takes a little liberty. If those to whom it refers don’t like it, they can cease being here legally by going home.
Possibly the [checks forum] l*east smart *thing I’ve ever seen typed on these boards. I wonder what black people would think this position of yours. I think they’d find it extremely offensive. Heck, I do! One group earns a descriptor due to voluntary behavior on their part. The other is labeled as subhuman with a word given to them by people who equated them with animals. And you equate them!!!
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
On preview I see that Dan Blather has responded to you with an excellent post. Will it have an effect? Based on your posts thus far, Vegas is not optimistic.
Ok, just to shut you up, let me answer your questions with things I’ve already posted.
This post clearly shows a fundamental disagreement with the idea that you should be able to keep people out of an area of their own planet. You can agree or disagree but stop acting like I didn’t explain myself.
That could not be more clearly spelled out for you.
So, are you saying that if we “check out” people before they come in (presumably for violent criminal convictions and virulent communicable infections) that you’re otherwise ok with anyone and everyone being able to waltz on in? Somehow I don’t think you believe that but that seems to be the issue you’re baiting.
I think it really depends on how the market reacts to it. For instance, I once worked out how much money was at risk because of the subprime loan market and Bernie Madoff. The end result was that it all could have been paid off by raising the average tax rate by 0.084% for the next ten years. And yet, we’re in “the biggest recession since the 1930s” because that’s how the market took the news.
If our big aggro conglomerates start saying that their numbers are going to be 9 billion lower this next year, people might well ignore that another market is saying that they’ll be getting 12 billion the next year.
I mean, personally, I think that we should entirely do whatever we can to reduce the number of illegals. But, it needs to be a plan that gives the market time to adjust. For instance, instead of getting rid of the minimum wage, have it start lowering by 50¢ per year until it’s at 0.
I don’t disagree with this. Naturally there’s a smarter way to do it and a dumber way. Hopefully we can devise a smarter way and mange the process, and the perceptions.
Actually there are very few restrictions against foreigners buying coastal property, acquiring immigrant status which can lead to nationalization in a relatively short period of time. Mèxico has a large amount of foreign retirees moving into the country. If they wish they can become landed immigrants and citizens. There are no quotas limiting the amount of people from different countries. Mexico is also very liberal in giving foreigners work permits which need to be renewed yearly.
Many retirees enroll in our public health system, IMSS, at a very minimal cost, whether they are permanent or temporary residents. I am talking like the equivalent of $500usd a year for complete coverage.
I have employed up to 30 people at one time.By law I pay all of their costs for health coverage. It is 37% of their wages. They and all of their immediate family recieve full health care coverage and other benefits such as free child care.
I pay more into the system for each of my employees than the American or Canadian retirees pay. I hear no complaints from other employers over this fact.
