But if you hire an illegal alien and he/she accepts the job, only you have committed a crime thereby; the immigrant has not. (He/she did commit a crime by crossing the border, but that’s a different matter.)
That’s not the (national) law either, though some are trying to make it so.
Broadly speaking, citizens enjoy only two classes of rights or privileges noncitizens do not: (1) Residence on U.S. soil. (Citizens can be imprisoned or even executed for crime but not deported.) (2) Political participation (voting, holding public office, etc. – but not free speech, which even illegals enjoy here).
I’m not a Republican, but I am right of center. I do like some of Paul’s ideas, but detest a lot of others, and he definitely strikes me as a bit loopy.
His immigration policy is an example of a policy I hate. I support the free market and to me that includes the free movement of labor. Without that, it’s entirely possible for some countries to have surpluses in workers and others to have shortages. Indeed the US seems to have had a long term shortage in workers, which is why we get people moving here and finding jobs even when it’s illegal. Rather than criminalizing victimless rational economic behavior, it should be legal so that a long term labor market equilibrium can be established. I believe anyone who wants to move to this country should be able to, minus the tiny minority who can legitimately and reasonably be classified as security risks.
So you assume that whomever frequents the Free Republic boards and posts any sort of racist comments stands for the majority of conservatives? Where, dare I ask, do you get this information? Is it simply congenial to your habits of thought to believe that racism is all over the conservative movement? Would it quiet your mind to know the ample and ugly undercurrent of racism which populate the thoughts of liberals? Or is it simply that it enables you to avoid making any substansive argument outside your own personal opinion?
Frankly, I’m a Euro-mongrel (my living ancestors having been among those discriminated against), and my religion and my politics leads me to sympathize with Catholic, values-conservative immigrant voters. That does not entitle anyone to break the law, no matter how poor they are, givent hat the laws on immigration do not target the poor. Poor people, of course, tend to be screwed everywhere, but this is a function of poverty and its ramifications and the sorry state of the INS, not deliberate policy.
Care to explain what you mean? It seems pretty clear to me. If you legally immigrate you’re welcome in my city, my neighborhood, my house. You’re even welcome to marry my daughter if she wants you. If you’re illegal, you deserve nothing but a boot back to wherever you came from. What’s so twisted about that?
I have no doubt that the majority of the illegal immigrants in this country would like to be legal immigrants. But the thing is, if you say "Well, they should just come in legally, we’ll have to change the immigration laws, because right now, there really isn’t any way for an unskilled laborer without family ties to the US to immigrate.
No, racism is only part of it. WRT immigration, many conservatives appear to be more concerned with preserving America’s “language” and “culture” (not always used as euphemisms). Still – that’s just another form of xenophobia, not a concern with “the laws and responsibility.”
Then there are the economic “They’re taking our jobs!” arguments – which is much more understandable, much more defensible, but, still, not a matter of “laws and responsibility,” but more like the hatred union workers feel for scabs.
Then there is the perception of many that immigrants are some sort of economic parasites – which is practically indistinguishable from a certain kind of widespread and false perception of the welfare-dependent native-born poor, of which the less said the better.
I know of few conservatives – some, including some on this board, but, still, relatively few – who come down hard on illegal immigration while simultaneously wanting to relax the standards for legal immigration. If there were more, that might make the “laws and responsibility” position more plausible.
Someone upthread posted that Ron Paul wants to “End birthright citizenship. As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be citizens, the incentive to enter the U.S. illegally will remain strong.” By what means does Ron Paul plan to determine US Citizenship? I mean, how else do you define that? A grandfather clause? I ask this seriously, not mockingly- what does he plan to do?
Regarding Ron Paul’s racist supporters, a possible explanation is an incident that occurre dmany years ago. He had a newsletter that included features which were ghostwritten but which carried his name. The woman who actually wrote the things slipped in some blatantly racist pieces. As Paul quickly disavowed the ideas, and as they are completely at odds with everything else he’s ever said or written about the topic, I think it’s safe to say the articles were not representative of his true beliefs.
The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1, states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Obviously it was drafted to prevent any state from denying “citizenship” to freed slaves, but the courts, reading the plain language “in the United States,” have interpreted it to confer citizenship based on jus soli, “right of the territory,” i.e., birth on U.S. soil. Many countries recognize non-naturalized citizenship based only on jus sanguinis, “right of blood,” i.e., one or both parents are/were citizens, and/or of the ethnicity or nationality the state supposedly embodies (e.g., Israel’s “right of return” for all Jews wherever born). (In Germany the test is jus sanguinis, which is why Turkish guestworkers are not automatically citizens even if they were born and raised in Germany and so were their parents.) If Paul wanted to move us to the latter test, he would have to position some test cases for a dramatic reversal in the courts – highly unlikely – or else push through a constitutional amendment – slightly more likely, depending on the politics of the moment.