As usual, we sat around on our thumbs and failed to address the issue when it was first brought up. This head-in-the-sand mentality has now put us in the situation where drastic measures are needed.
Slam the border shut. Build a fence, maintain it, man it with troops and shoot anyone trying to cross it illegally.
Round them up and run them out. We might not get all of them but we will get most of them, and that will help. Offer a 90 day grace period where, if they voluntarily, they can stop at a Border Patrol office, be fingerprinted and photographed and then leave the country. If they do that, they get first priority for a green card. After 90 days, throw their asses in jail for a while, fingerprint them and photograph them, then run them out and they NEVER get a green card.
Fine employers $10k per head a day for hiring illegals.
Send the Mexican government a bill for however many billions of dollars it has cost us to have the illegals here. If they don’t pay it, seize in-country assets. Distribute the money to hospital districts, etc.
Change the definition of birthright citizen to not just someone born in the country, but someone born where at least one of the parents is a legal citizen by birth or naturalization. This eliminates “anchor babies”. Unfortunately, it will require a Constitutional amendment.
Eliminate bilingual education in the public school systems. If a legal student shows up that can’t speak/read/write English, they go into special total immersion classes in English until they can.
And what, exactly, will this achieve? High immigration states are among the most prosperous in America. There are plenty of states that would kill to have the economic vibrancy and industry that California enjoys. Far from being a third world country, we have a tech industry that drives the nation, we are the entertainment center of the world, and we grow a huge percentage of America’s produce on our farms. Why would California strive to be more like Montana?
It isn’t unambiguous at all. The 14th Amendment was a direct response to the issue of slavery as was not meant to be interperted as “once your born here you are in”.
How do you know whether or not I would be pleased if the 2nd Amendment was interpreted that way? Stick to the discussion at hand.
I doubt very highly that it’s true that there was a place in the United States which had no crime whatsoever until [insert ethnic group here] arrived, then everything went to hell in a handbasket. For such an incredible statement, I want proof. Prove to me that this place was completely crime free and that since [ethnic group] arrived,* every single crime* has been caused by them.
I don’t know whether they have the will or not. Even if they did, I doubt there’s much they could do without the funds.
Point taken. However, I still posit that the main drain on American health care resources is poor Americans. Yes, illegals add to the problem, but poor Americans are the lion’s share, meaning that there would still be a crisis if every single illegal vanished tomorrow.
Disease is one thing-- the flu and other communicable diseases is another. They may be as healthy as a horse when they arrive, and then catch something while they’re here. Without health care, those viruses mutate.
Secondly, you’re never going to catch every single illegal. It’s utterly impossible. Make all of the harsh laws that you want-- it will just push them further underground. Deny them educations-- it will increase crime. Deny them health care-- they will just go to someone who runs an underground clinic, or spread their illnesses to others because of lack of treatment. Deny them jobs-- they will just work under the table, or turn to crime. They won’t leave-- they have no where to go.
Think of Cubans, for example. As I’ve heard, people who are returned to Cuba can face harsh sanctions, including imprisonment. I think a lot of people would rather take their chances here in the US underground rather than face the certainty of harsh penalties.
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Oh, and “…bleed to death in the streets.” Nice appeal to emotion, as dishonest as it might be. Please point to one poster—or anyone—who as advocated denying illegals life-saving emergency care.
suzeekay did:
She thinks it will make them leave if they get no free health care. I think that’s ridiculous. There are plenty of Americans who have no health care, and they’re not fleeing for Canada.
A strong, caring community is not changed by the addition of outsiders. If people gave up being hard-working and supportive, they did it for their own reasons, not because they saw Mexicans living in their community. Let’s put it this way: if a family moved in next door to me who were poor, lazy and abusive, does that give me the excuse to be the same? Why would I change based on the way others live?
shrug Maybe. It’s not really relevant.
I don’t think that the problems that immigration causes are proportionate to the amount of attention it gets, no. I see far greater problems that are being shuttled aside because this is a hot-button issue that politicians can capitalize upon.
If the issue were truly illegal immigration, we would be worried about Canadian illegals as much as Mexican illegals. From the statistics that I posted earlier in the debate, people who illegally cross the Mexican border account for only 60% of the illegals in this country, but 89% of our resources go to the southern border.
I know the difference. I also know the history of immigration in this country. Ellis Island wasn’t the only way people got here, you know. Illegal immigration has always been present. I can’t find any records at all pertaining to my family’s immigration, and I have strong suspicions that it’s because there probably was no documentation.
She was complaining about American culture being somehow damaged by Mexicans-- how does legal status change that?
Then, my experiences with a huge Hispanic population should be equally as valid, as well as the experiences of my family. None of us have ever experienced any negative ramifications from having Hispanics in the area.
African-American author Lena Williams has called this “the fly in the pan of milk” syndrome. People tend to notice people of other etnicities, and also tend to exaggerate their numbers. They also remember negative interractions more than positive ones. (You notice the kid screaming his head off in a resturant, but not the ones dining quietly.) Thus, if someone goes to a movie theater a couple of times and sees a black person being loud and obnoxious, they will often then say, “All black people are loud in movie theaters” though there were probably a bunch of black patrons they didn’t notice because they were being quiet.
Likewise with Hispanic immigrants. We focus on the problems that we blame them for, but not the contributions they make to our society. Why blame a culture as a whole for problems caused by a few individuals?
France has quite a few problems that would exist even without immigration. I’ve kept an eye on the situation myself, and I see nothing warranting “low-key panic.”
I do see a lot of problems in our own nation which inspire low-key panic in me, and immigration is not one of them.
Just because paranoia exists does not make it rational.
This is just an issue getting a lot of attention right now. Politicians are delighted when there’s an issue that they can use to make you afraid while simultaneously assuring you that they have the solution for it. We were due for a good-ole-fashioned moral panic. In the eighties, it was black crack additcts. In the fifties, it was commies. In the 1890s, it was the Chinese. (I’ve got a cartoon from that time which shows Uncle Sam saying, “I hate the nigger because he’s a citizen, and I had the Chinese because he won’t become one.”) We had a lull there in the 1990s. 9/11 got us stirred up again. The Muslim panic didn’t really pan out, so now it’s on to the Mexicans.
They’re a good target. There’s lots of them. They’re foreigners. They’re conveniently colored so that they’re easily identifiable. They’re poor, and we Americans think being poor is a moral failing in of itself.
In a couple of years, this will all be forgotten as we move on to another issue to get terrified about, and another round of laws meant to fix it which will actually create new problems.
And the way I see it is that racism, xenophobia and prejudice are what’s fueling this fervor. The actual problems caused by immigration are not proportionate to the amount of panic that’s being stirred up. Here we are, thinking of spending a billion dollars on a wall that won’t do a damn thing except uglify the scenery. Spent correctly, that money could go a long way to alleviating some of the pressures on our resources that immigration causes. But, no-- instead we’ll spend it in a way that makes people* think* will solve the problem, and that’s better political capital. By the time folks figure out that it didn’t work, it will be another politician’s problem.
If it wasn’t at least somewhat racially motivated, there would be equal emphasis on the Canadian border (which is a far greater homeland security risk due to Canada’s lax asylum policies.) Poland is a huge supplier of illegal immigrants-- why isn’t there a push to get rid of illegal Poles? Yes, the number of Mexicans is higher, but the reaction is dissproportionate.Why aren’t we working on the problem of people overstaying their visas, which is actually a greater threat?
In my opinion, it’s because Mexicans are a comfortable target and one for which politicians can whip a “solution” out of their ass and make everyone feel better.
Legislation made because of moral almost always ends up causing more problems than previously existed.
The financial crisises which face many communties would still be there if every illegal suddenly vanished. It’s just easier to blame it on them, so people won’t blame their politicians for poor management.
The same words were once used to describe the KKK. People were in a moral panic about black violence, just as dissproportionately as people are now alarmed about immigration.
The Minutemen are a symptom of a greater social ailment. People are scared. They see their jobs leaving, no financial security, and the media encourages them to think that crime is rampant and out of control. The true causes of these problems are complicated and can’t be solved with legislation-- it’s easier just to blame the illegals. They feel that they can do something about that. Politicians are happy about it because it keeps us all nice and distracted from the real issues.
It’s only frightening to me that people would allow themselves to be whipped into this kind of frenzy, and that they believe Congress could “do something” through more legislation.
self-righteous: Righteous in one’s own esteem.
Righteous: Morally upright; without guilt or sin
i’m neither a saint nor an innocent and I am far from having achieved any kind of perfection. I have never claimed any such things. I am not a teacher or a preacher so I need not be patient. I hold your views on immigration in contempt and certainly do not respect them.
What a bunch of bullshit.
California is a lovely state and people move there all the time. Heck, I’d love to live in California. I’m going back there in a month or so and I’m looking forward to it. And wait! isn’t like half of the population there mexican in origin? Why yes it is! There you have it.I think we can safely accomodate another 250 million latinos and be ok.
Further, I may be an idealist but I’m not naive. There won’t be any open border policy here in the forseeable future. And again, you’re just making stuff up. I believe the word is “crazy alarmist”
Racists come in all colors. And YES! If everybody stopped being selfish and hypocritical, things would be better. Almost by definition…
Anyways, what I said remains true. In my mind, pablo, mamadoo, ling-ling , jurgen, avi and lateefa have just as much right to the pursuit of happiness as you do. Their children should have the same opportunities as yours and those of the governor of California. It doesn’t matter where they were born or raised. Any law that says different is wrong. This is what I believe is right. Period.
Are you suggesting I start respecting greed, selfishness or hypocrisy? Yes, I do hate those things. I do not hate greedy, selfish hypocritical people. I know I am greedy, selfish and hypocritical and I’m pretty sure I don’t hate myself. I don’t try to justify such traits though and I do not glorify or advocate them either.
One heck of fence. It’s going to expensive. Way more so than the “costs” of illegal immigration IMO. And take for ever.
And let me get this clear, you wan’t the US Military to stationed at the border to kill men, women, and children who try to cross the border? Or do you want more Border Patrol agents to participate in the mass killings of men, women, and children?
Killing illegal immigrants, especially brown ones that speak Spanish, seems easy on the internet, but IRL I think that it would be a bit harder. I have hard time imagining that the legality of using lethal force to stop illegal immigration would be upheld by US Courts or that you could actually hire enough people willing to kill potential illegal immigrants. Who would want to make a living doing that?
It would be fine, it would just require a name change. Something like Mexico or El Salvador might work.
250 million more Latinos, ok then, ever hear of the Balkans because with those sorts of numbers that’s exactly where we are heading.
At the moment, we are basically importing our helots to do our work for near slave wages. Clearly you see no limit to the number of immigrants that a country can sustain, I find this point of view as contemptible as it is stupid.
Has anyone studied the affect this is having on low-skilled Black-Americans or should we care?
There are and will continue to be significant social and economic costs to the importation of large numbers of non-English speaking, low-skilled laborers. I just wish I could see the world as you see it, through rose-tinted glasses.
No offense but your post is weak. Go tell a native american from 300 or 400 years ago that north america can support 400 million people with mind-gobblingly better longevity and average quality of life. He will laugh at you as I laugh at you now. Of course, if 250 million people move into the country tomorrow, it would be a big problem. Not catastrophic, mind you! It would still be possible to provide everybody with enough food to avoid a famine, enough potable water to avoid cholera and basic healthcare to avoid epidemics (in other words, not too many deaths). But yeah, a big problem with serious and lasting consequences.
Fortunately, it cannot happen. 250 million people take a while to move into a country.
You think I’m a blind, naive idealist who doesn’t know what the real world is like ?
I laugh loudly at that. You have the wrong guy in mind. I’ve seen the world and it’s ugly. it’s cold, it’s indifferent, it’s stupid, it’s cruel. Our world is not the world we want it to be. Not by a long shot. I have no illusions about this world. I’m also normal enough that I try to make the best of it because that is what will make me happier. I happen to have been taught or told some things. I embraced some of those things and some others. The result is a person who wishes to embody all those seemingly universal human virtues. Ya know…not harming my fellow man in any fashion to improve my lot, acting for the greater good, that kind of stuff. Now I’m weak and I screw up plenty but I do feel bad about it. Many people are like me, believe it or not. They are the ones who inspired me. Some of them are my own countrymen, many of them are not.
Let me try and offer you an image that you might understand on a more fundamental level. Imagine for a second that all all americans were Jesuses. Yes, the “Bible Jesus” kind, not the spaniard name. You KNOW they wouldn’t build a wall and post guards to stop the mexicans from coming in. They’d open their arms and welcome them. And shouldn’t we emulate Jesus’ example? Heck, I’m not christian. Never was, never will be but who can possibly say that their actions are better than those of Jesus? I mean REALLY?
Now, I know there are some of you who will say: " Screw all that, I don’t care about it. I am eminently practical and I will pursue whatever serves me best", ethics and morals be damned. I understand it. Part of me agrees with it. It’s in our genes, the survival instinct. Become rich and powerful, be able to impregnate many women and have lots of offsprings and be able to protect them both from harm. Let everyone else fend for themselves.
That is not the level now, the reality is that if we do follow the draconian measures the extreme anti-immigrants want, then the virtual state of slavery will become real, that is because knowing history and things like the drug war, I can see that the head in the sand mentality will be just institutionalized.
As I already posted before, the reality is that by keeping others in an illegal state you actually lower the wages of everyone, make them legal and the employers can not do underhanded things to get cheap labor.
It all depends on were you are, on NPR the Pew Research just mentioned that the majority of Americans in zip codes were more illegals or immigrants are don’t see them as a problem, but people in zip codes were there are less of them do show lots of concern (IMO something else), in the end it is just monumental ignorance.
And let’s not even get in to the great culture wars of Switzerland!
Few countries have a homogenous populace. Few countries support only one culture. America is unique in that it has managed to remain somewhat monolingual for so long. Can you name a country without more than one significant culture?
I don’t know where to begin dispelling the ignorance in this thread, and frankly I just don’t have that kind of time. But I just need to mention one thing, because it’s come up a couple of times; under current U.S. immigration laws, *there is no such thing as an “anchor baby.” * Yes, children born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens by birth (and not by naturalization, as someone erroneously stated; naturalization is when one becomes a citizen after birth). However, U.S. citizens cannot petition for their parents to immigrate legally to the U.S. until they are 21 years old. More info can be found here.
Also, have any of you actually read the text of the proposals currently being debated in Congress? Yes, the bills are changing day by day, but before you form opinions you might consider informing yourselves. Here’s the restrictionist one from James Sensenbrenner that has sparked all the recent demonstrations; here’s the Frist bill.
What are you talking about? You whined and I offered clarification.
Do you think it’s just possible that there is room below American wages and above China’s? One where it might cost companies more than if they sent stuff to China, but that the transit times and shipping costs would make it worth it?
You might as well propose addressing the immigration problem by waving a magic wand. Neither solution will have any chance of doing anything at all. You are proposing we do nothing.
That’s because my sentence was almost unintelligible. Sorry. But you made a good guess and got the gist of it.
Don’t you think you’re setting the bar here unrealistically high. So if there was one robbery in five years, her point is invalid. How about 10 years? 20? 50? There are many communities that had no/very little crime until a lower socio-economic class grows in a neioghboring community and starts to spill over. When I grew up in a suburb of NYC, no one locked there houses at night or when they went out for the day. And we left the keys in the ignition. Then they built a large very mixed high school a few blocks away. I remember the amazement in the neighborhood when my brothers bike got stolen. Up until that point no on had a bike lock. Her experience doesn’t surprise me in the least. It’s not a brown-skin thing, but an economic class thing.
Would you agree that they need both—the will and the money to do it. I commneted because you commented only on the financial aspect. The problem is that Mexico is corrupt, it’s poor (as oyu point out), and they benefit greatly from immigration, illegal or not: they send a bunch of low-skilled people out of the country, relieveiing themselves of the burden of cariing for them. PLus, they get billions sent back an put into the economy, not to mention the right pockets.
In some areas you are correct. In other’s the lion’s share are illegals. And guess where that is? Right, areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Something like 20 hospitals had to close in the past few years because of the problem
And it is one thing for poor Americans to be a drain on American health care resources, it is quite another for that burden to me non-Americans. Just as your poor brother or sister may be a drain on your resources, but mine would have a hard time knocking on your door for assistance time after time.
The fewer the people the less the odds of that happening. And the fewer illegals that are her, the easier the it would be for the American health care system to absorb them when in need. We should shoot for zero.
Where they go is no concern of ours, but one idea is for them to go home. If I was in a foreign country (especially a neighboring one, and got kicked out, that’s what I would do.
What are you talking about? Cuba is a completely different story than every other country. (It should not be.) People return to Mexico all the time. And then sneak back in. I think you have your facts wrong on this.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
She did not say anything of the sort. Feel free to popint it out if you think I am wrong.
She’s talking about removing one of the perks. Logic would say that the fewer the benefits of sneaking in to the U.S., the fewer people who will do it.
Like what? PLus, if the sheer numbers of illegal immigrants were much smaller, you’re right, it woldn’t be that big opf a deal (practically, no; morally, yes). And we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
Those numbers surprise me. Do you have a cite? Still, if 60% is coming from one spot, wouldn’t you think that’s where the majority of money would be spent?
Assumiing you are correct and great numbers of people snuck in in the past, that makes it okay and we should let people sneak in now? I don’t think so?
Now you’re changing things. My post was based on you statiing:
which I maintain mischaracterized her position greatly.
