How did amnesty undo history? Seems to me that it merely confirmed it.
Fact: We have immigration laws, which were in effect at the time.
Fact: People snuck into our country and others overstayed their visas, in violation of those laws. This was supossed to result in them being deported.
Fact: It didn’t.
That’s how.
On top of this, there were/are people waiting, with great frustration, to gain legal entry into the U.S. Th benefit of their patience was that they would be able to enjoy our country above board and legally, while others would not enjoy that privelege. Amnesty did and does makes fools of those people. And fools of us for having laws we are not willing to enforce.
The history is that those given amnesty were in this country. They still are.
What you say is true about people waiting to get in getting screwed. Trying to help them by starting the immense task of throwing out those who have been here for years as a result of our inaction is foolish nonsense. The logistics, the history and the facts all are against it.
Let the translators be supplied by advocacy groups. We do not have an official language, but we should. And I venture to say that what is happening now will, thankfully, re-energize the movement to do so. This page speaks to the financial costs.
It was crafted and passed in the representative democracy called the U.S. of A., in accordance with its Constitution. Therefore, it is legal and binding. Are you implying otherwise?
In a very broad sense, yes. But by your logic, if there are places that Spanish is NOT a characteristic—a state or a municipality—then those places should be able to ban Spanish, right?
You asked how Reagan’s Amnesty Bill undid history. I explained that. Now you contort things by moving the clock forward so that the amnesty is history.
It helps in a discussion if the goalposts do not move.
The logistics, make it difficlut, yes. The history can be construed any way you like. The facts? What facts are you alluding to that are not included in the logisics and the history?
You think it foolish nonsense. Good for you. Very constructive debate fodder.
The main obstacle is a lack of will on behalf of the American people, and more specifically, our elected leaders. There has been an unhealthy alliance between the two parties for too long now, in which each was happy to not bring the issue to the fore, albeit for different reasons. 911and the Border Patrol guys have focused eyes on the issue and now it will not go away. The recent marches have made me ecstatic, as they have forced less engaged Americans to see the scope of the problem. The preponderance of Mexican flags and the American flag flown in distress (by the way, what a great way to show a love of a country you want to be a part of) will do more to create the will that we need than all the newspaper articles, magazine pieces, books, and message board debates could ever do.
Please, MORE MARCHES.
Are you aware of the significance of remittance payments by immigrants, both legal and not, to the countries of the families they send the money home to? For Mexico, since you single it out for some reason, it’s on the order of $13 billion a year, with the obvious multiplier effects on the local economy there. With no illegal immigrants, there would be much less money flowing there, no matter what government-to-government aid was still going on. But who would benefit?
responces in bold
Would you kindly cease from your method of responding by simply bolding everything. It makes it difficult to read, but even more of a hassle to respond, like I was just going to do to your retorts to me. While you may make it easier for you, you make it more difficult for others.
Regarding the Reagan’s Amnesty Bill, yes, it is history now, as it happened. But the point was that at the time of it’s enactment, it changed history, as I described. This was simpy a reply to LHoD.
I’ll try something else on replies. How did the Amnesty change History? Yesterday, they were illegal, today they’re legal. Yesterday didn’t change.
I’ll rtry this one more time. We had laws. They were broken. The people who did so were supposed to be sent back. Some people were here fro 5, 10, maybe 20 years. THAT history was a reality. The amnesty bill changed that reality.
If you’re still unclear, please reread the exchange with LHoD. But that is enough on this very small tangential, semantical issue for me.
All, is it possible to get back to the question in the OP?
It changed their future from that point, not their history.
WHen you’re talking about what’s supposed to happen, by definition you’re talking about what hasn’t happened. Changing what’s supposed to happen doesn’t change the reality of what has happened.
This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that anti-immigration forces are living in an imaginary world and mistaking it for the real world. People are supposed to get along, sing Kum Bah Yah, and dance the hokey pokey. We liberals prefer to deal with the world as it is ;).
Daniel
(Okay, that was a cheap shot at conservatives; my apologies. The OP, however, is about a fantasy world, not about the world that we live in).
What we need here is a little famine to hit the States. With food shortages, the people of the US will naturally come together to single out and expel the illegals. We already got the ICE camps to handle the teeming millions. All we need is something to smoke 'em out. That’s what I see happening soon.
This comment is well within the rules as typically enforced for this Forum. However, I have already suggested that, given the volatile nature of the topic, I think it would be better if we kept personal remarks regarding other posters (including, in this case, personal observations of the views of other posters) to a minimum.
Thank you.
[ /Moderating ]
It used to be a fair assumption that laws would be enforced. I guess not so much any more. So much for a land of laws…
And wouldn’t you say that “getting along” means respecting each other’s rules, boundaries and laws? I’m sure that if there was some hot sweltering day in Ashville and you had a cool, delicious-looking pool, that I might really, really, really, really want to take a dip in that pool. And why not, it’s right there? So I’l just go get my towel, out it out on a lounge chair, maybe bring a book, and dive right in.
No problem, right. And hey, what’s that I see through the window, a nice big refrigerator. I bet there’s some nice cool drinks in there? Maybe I’ll just walk in a take a look. Great, Snapple Peach Ic ed Tea. I’ll just leacve a buck and a half and go back to my towel, book and heat up for another dip. Ahhhhhhhhhh.
No problem, right?
Instead of diving in, how about sliding in? You’ve got such a lovely slippery slope there, after all.
Daniel
Slippery slope!!! I guess you don’t know what a slippery slope argument is. I suggest Wiki. I presented an analogy. Address it. Don’t try to be so…slippery.
Given that illegal immigrants make up a large proportion of the US agricultural and food-processing workforce, I’d say that responding to food shortages by rounding up and expelling the people who are providing our food would be pretty damn suicidal.
The reason there are so many illegal immigrants in the US workforce is because US employers want them here and can get away with overworking and underpaying them. (And also because the economies of their own countries are in such bad shape that even being overworked and underpaid in el Norte looks like a good deal by comparison.) If we don’t like that, then we need to deal with the problem at the source, rather than just constructing fantasy scenarios about sending millions of people to detention camps.
If we got serious about enforcing US labor law, so that all workers had to be paid at least minimum wage, had to follow proper safety and health procedures, couldn’t be fired for trying to start a union, etc., then employers couldn’t make so much money out of employing undocumented immigrants, and there would be less incentive to encourage them to come here.
All workers do have to be paid a minimum wage. Everything else is against the law. Hiring an illegal is against the law. Working off the books is against the law. I do think that any solution starts with two things: going after the employers (drying up the demand) and securing our borders (preventiing the problem we have from becoming an even larger one.)
As far as you’re analysisl, I think you have it backwards. Raising the cost of doing business will just tempt employers even more to hire illegals and save a buck. But now because you’re raised the cost of doing business, the employers will be willing to pay illegals more than they have been, because they would be paying less than they would for legal workers. So the disparity between the illegal wage a person could get here and what he could get in a country like Mexico becomes greater. And the greater that disparity, the stronger the lure of those higher paying jobs in the U.S.