the truly sad thing is, kuk, that you so badly need things to be about you, that you seem to be participating in the debate for the sake of garnering attention rather than proving a point or winning others to your way of thinking.
you’re obviously a smart person, you probably don’t really believe fully all the immigrant hating stuff you’re saying (cause if you did, there would be no reason to be here debating), you seem to simply want to use your ability to be at the computer all day to piss people off.
much like a 7-year old throwing a rock in the lake to watch the splash, then giggling with glee. wheeeeeee! look what i did!
Horray, it is the “i can’t refute you, so i will insult you instead” school of debate! And you couldn’t spank me if you were a hot Asian chick in leather…
The following was written by Mrs. Duality with some contribution from yours truly. She is a legal immigrant and naturalized citizen who gets seriously peeved about illegal immigrants.
Getting Serious About U.S. Immigration Policy
and Illegal Immigrants.
The United States’ immigration policy seems to lack decisiveness and rationality. There is much room for improvement in the formula for deciding eligibility for immigrant visas. The reader will be surprised to learn that, all things considered, immigrants are good for the U.S. economy, but it is no surprise that illegal immigration is a problem. America should get serious about restricting illegal immigration so there will be more room for legal immigrants. The best way to control illegal immigration would be to control the U.S.- Mexican border. America should make the legal immigration process more open and accepting, but minefields should be established along the border to stop illegal immigrants, since legal immigration is economically beneficial.
We must begin with a bare-bones description of the U.S. immigration process in order to give the reader sufficient background to consider the issue. Any foreigner wishing to immigrate to the U.S. needs a specific type of visa known as an immigrant visa. The U.S. immigration laws define a process for distributing visas which could be diagrammed as a flowchart. The decision points in that flowchart would form the elements of a formula which determines the ease and speed with which an applicant navigates through the process. The formula determines different point totals for different visa applicants based on various characteristics of the applicants and specifies what point total constitutes a passing grade. The passing grade can be set lower to allow more people to immigrate or higher to restrict immigration. The current formula has one overriding variable: whether the visa applicant has a close relative already legally residing in the U.S. An applicant who has an immediate family member already in the U.S. gets 100 points and is admitted to the U.S. Other applicants get zero points and cannot immigrate legally (Borjas, 1)
U.S. Immigration statutes are nearly as complex as the tax laws, but sponsor-applicant relationship is how visa eligibility is decided in most cases. Other factors determine the speed with which the visa is granted. The number of points awarded to an applicant usually depends on whether the sponsor is a permanent resident alien or U.S. citizen, and the exact nature of the family relationship between sponsor and applicant.
A parent, spouse, or child will get swifter consideration (one year) than will a sibling (twenty years). Refugees get some visas, and one in fourteen immigrants gets a visa as a result of possessing rare job skill, but family relationships are given the most weight. The U.S. is unusual among English-speaking nations in its heavy emphasis on only one variable. The U.S. is also unusual in that it does not admit to using a formula to determine eligibility for entry visas. Some other countries display their formulas on web sites. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have more sensible formulas which the U.S. would do well to emulate. They include an applicant’s education, occupation, proficiency in the English language, and age, as well as relationship to the sponsor. It is possible that most potential sponsors want to be reunited with their parents rather than their siblings. The INS might think that most people feel a greater obligation to their parents than to their siblings, and desire to give their parents a higher priority for immigration sponsorship. It is true that the U.S. cannot accept all applicants. One could argue that this country belongs to its citizens and they can do what they want. If discouraging immigration is what the U.S. government wants to do, the government should be forthright about it. Not publicizing the rules, like much of U.S. immigration policy, seems to have the purpose of discouraging applications. The U.S. government should be more open about what our immigration policy is, as are other countries. Secrecy creates unnecessary hardship for visa applicants. A person would feel angry if he/she invested time and money in a visa application and then found out it would take 20 years to get the visa, provided one even qualified according to unpublicized rules. The economics of immigrant labor makes the U.S. policy of giving parents and children of U.S. residents preference over siblings in distribution of visas seem irrational. Perhaps the INS sees it’s mission as being restriction of immigration. If this is true the INS should be honest about it. Giving people false hope is not the right thing to do. The INS should have no right to decide wether the siblings or parents get preference. It should be up to the sponsor to decide whom is to be sponsored. Applicants should be judged according to more practical measures.
Other immigrants are a less obvious aspect of immigration policy. Illegal immigrants are a sizeable proportion of the immigrant population. The U.S. government should allow fewer illegal immigrants so there would be more room for legal immigrants. “Mexico [is] by far the leading supplier of immigrants to the U.S.” (Kennedy 1). Latin Americans find it relatively easy to slip across the U.S.-Mexican border. These illegal immigrants would say that they are only coming to take jobs which U.S. citizens don’t want, but this is grossly unfair to people in other parts of the world who must cross and ocean. Legal immigrants should be given the chance to enter this country because they are the ones that have enough respect for the law to enter legally. In the interest of fairness and respect for law, the U.S. government should stop illegal border crossing. There is more than one way to control illegal immigration; we must decide which is the better method. Most people would say we need to strengthen the Border Patrol. The potential effectiveness of the Border Patrol was demonstrated by Operation Hold the Line in El Paso and later by Operation Gatekeeper in Southern California. In September 1993, Chief Silvestre Reyes of the El Paso Border Patrol suddenly closed several breaches in the border fence in his district and redeployed the patrol’s forces to de-emphasize the pursuit of illegal aliens after they cross the border in favor of concentrating on the border itself. Where the border runs through downtown El Paso agents were stationed within sight of each other. Total extra costs for fence repair and overtime were $ 300,000 during the first two weeks (Kennedy 14). Shortly after it began, Chief Reyes announced that the operation would continue indefinitely without new funding. The new strategy is very effective. Detentions resulting from train checks north of the border in the El Paso decreased by 90% (Kennedy 14). Detentions of illegal aliens dropped to about 150 per day from an average of 800 to 1000 per day before the operation began (Kennedy 15). Detentions resulting from train checks north of the border in the El Paso area decreased by 90% (Kennedy 15). Airport apprehensions formerly numbering in the hundreds per day have since averaged 8-15 per day. Of course it is impossible for the Border Patrol to be 100% effective. They can’t catch everyone. Illegal activities nearly always involve large amounts of money which make corruption inevitable. The U.S. should get serious about closing the border to illegal activity. Political correctness demands that landmines be universally opposed. Most countries have agreed to ban landmines. It is true that landmines have been used carelessly in some places and many innocent people have been injured and killed by landmines. But there are some places where no other measures can be as effective as carefully designed minefields. The border between North Korea and South Korea is such a place, and the border between Mexico and the U.S. is another. The idea of placing land mines along most of the border may seem inhumane, but it would relieve more human suffering than it would cause by stopping the predations of border bandits and restricting the northward flow of drugs. The initial investment would be high, but maintenance costs would be low. A more expensive and less reliable solution would be to sufficiently strengthen the border patrol. Minefields would be less expensive in the long run and would be more reliable.
Money is the reason most people immigrate, and is also the reason most U.S. citizens are opposed to immigration. The lowest-paying jobs in the U.S. are preferable to what is available in most other places. One complaint about illegal immigrants is that they take jobs away from citizens. People who are opposed to immigration think of the national economy as being of a fixed size, and they don’t want to share. In fact, immigrants can increase the size of the economic pie. It is true that menial jobs would pay more in the absence of illegal labor, but the resulting inflation would make problems worse for everyone. The biggest reason immigrant labor is actually a benefit to the host society is because it increases the labor supply free of cost. The sending society underwrites the cost of caring for and educating a future worker until the age at which he or she can start working. When the worker emigrates, the source country ends up having subsidized the economy of the host country. ”Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants?” (Kennedy 1). Kennedy explains how “the availability of unskilled immigrants may increase the economy’s overall efficiency… but may at the same time impose substantial hardships on the low-skill native workers… with whom they compete.” (Kennedy 16). If the U.S. government allowed more skilled workers to immigrate, it would be the skilled workers who are already here who would suffer. Another reason the INS should admit more unskilled workers “because that would liberate our skilled workers from unskilled tasks, allowing them to be more productive” (Kennedy 16).
Excerpt from http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/190/Illegal_immigrants_and_the_labour_market.html and the labour market: Does illegal immigration help the underground economy? Who really benefits from the employment of undocumented migrants? And to what extent does their employment affect the recruitment and wages of nationals? To answer these questions, it would help to know how illegal immigration is actually defined. The spectrum is very wide. For apart from those who enter countries illegally, many migrants enter countries illegally, many migrants enter a country quite legally but overstay their visas or fail to get their permits renewed. Also in this group are the seasonal workers who fail to return home when their contracts expire and rejected asylum seekers. ... Being illegal is seldom the migrant’s deliberate choice. When the opportunity to get authorisation occurs, most of those meeting the criteria are only too eager to file an application. In fact, the advantages of illegal migration tend mostly to be on the side of the employer. An employer will benefit from the illegal status of a migrant who is desperate for work and therefore prepared to accept poor pay, usually below local norms. Hiring an illegal worker also brings the employer the advantage of paying less in the way of welfare contributions and other non-wage costs. The “welfare magnet” of illegal immigration is much stronger for the employer than for the worker, whose precarious situation and low bargaining power makes him highly vulnerable to discriminatory practices in the form of longer hours and non-payment of various bonuses, or even of wages."
Governments rarely accomplish anything without the influence of money or political pressure, so a revolution of thought will be necessary in order for drastic improvement in U.S. immigration policy to occur. There has been some political pressure to do more to fight illegal immigration, so the Border Patrol has become more efficient for the last few years. Mine fields along most of the U.S.-Mexican border would be an extremely efficient deterrent. After a few casualties, news would get around of the hopelessness of crossing the U.S.-Mexican border on the ground by illegal means. The public needs to transcend squeamishness and realize that for every injured illegal immigrant, countless drug-related crimes could be prevented.
Works Cited
Its kind of funny. His biggest accomplishment in life appears to be learning to write in color. If he could learn to question the facts, and everything about his preconceptions, then Id give him some attention. Otherwise, he is tiring and has not attempted to prove his case to me. However, others have made good arguments and cited legitimate research, so I now concurr with them.
Mr. Duality, why does Mrs. Duality think the rules for legal immigration are kept secret? Given, they aren’t the easiest things in the world to interpret, but few bodies of federal legislation are. Check out 8 CFR: Immigration & Nationality, the basic starting point; you can find it on INS’ Web site. I’d hardly call that secret.
Apos, you’re indisputably right, but I was merely countering KKK’s tired old “immigrants take away jobs” mantra. It’s wrong. We could discuss the details all day.
—I was merely countering KKK’s tired old “immigrants take away jobs” mantra. It’s wrong.—
Well, it’s certainly misleading. Increased amounts of immigrants looking for jobs does put pressure on the workers already here. But, of course, so would a demographic spike, or women entering the workforce. And the expansion of the workforce is indeed eventually met with an expansion of the job market. However, whether we can say that the fortunes of the average domestic worker will go up or down for a given period is an empirical question: it could do either, depending on things like elasticity of demand and so on. It’s not something you can definitively predict for every case.
But the real question is why the workers here have any more right to those jobs than anyone else.
A similar example is the minimum wage: many conservative economists are used to arguing that it always hurts the very workers it’s meant to help. But this actually turns out to be sort of dubious. Min wage jobs are usually so lousy to begin with that, to someone working a minimum wage job, the possibility of a 10% wage hike with a linked 10% chance of losing your job could actually still a fairly attractive deal. So a minimum wage may or may not be an acceptable tradeoff to the avergage min wage worker.
The real case against the minimum wage is simply that it’s wrong to force employers to pay more for work then they want to. The people most harmed by the minimum wage are the people forced to pay extra. The only reason that’s considered acceptable is because we generally don’t care about the interests of such people, figuring that they’re rich already (which they may well be). But at the very least we could just be honest about what’s going on: we could just tax bussiness owners and then give their min wage workers the money as welfare benefits.
That problem exists with the immigration example too, though less so. The obvious beneficiaries of cheap labor are consumers: but for some reason with think of consumers as being better off (and thus less deserving of gains) than laborers, even when they are the exact same people!
Re: the OP’s “Economics 101”: 15,000,000 illegal immigrants working vs. 20,000,000 “REAL AMERICANS” not working
I challenge the OP or any other poster to demonstrate that they, or anyone they know who is a US citizen or naturalized immigrant, has been specifically turned down for a job in favor of an illegal immigrant, within the past five years. In your description, please note: the location, the date, business name of the employer and the nature of the job.
Depending on the response, I will then consider whether the OP’s assertion that illegal immigrants take jobs away from citizens holds any water.
Eva Luna: Rules are one thing, actual policy and practice are something else. For example, the waiting period for Mrs. D to get an immigrant visa for her sibling would be twenty years. Ridiculous, on the face of it. The obvious conclusion is that unofficial policy is to discourage immigration.
I didn’t see anything about waiting periods at the INS web site. I looked all thru the 8 CFR page, searched on “immigration and nationality”, without success.
Well, the waiting periods aren’t a rule per se, but they are the natural result of one of the rules, which are the annual numerical quotas for various categores of immigrants. I’m taking a long weekend, but when I get back to work next week I’ll post some more links to immigrant visa priority dates. They aren’t a secret, but you do need to know where to look for them.
Hey Kukulkon, please stop with the multicolored posts. That shit is irritating, and just gives everyone one more reason to gang up on you.
But anyway, what price immigration?
I do know that the hospitals out here in California and along the the border into Texas are going broke having to pay for the medical care of immigrants, both legal and illegal.
Also, For those who say that illegals pay their way, the LA TImes did a story in May 2002 which claimed that up to 30 percent of all workers in LA county are working under the table, getting paid in cash, not paying taxes. I’ll try to post a link later, but I"m using this jacked up webtv system and I’m still trying to figure it out.
California now has about a 25 billion dollar deficit. This is one quarter of the state budget. WHile much of this can be blamed on the slowing economy, immigration accounts for much of the rest. Medical care for poor immigrants,both legal and illegal. Welfare for illegals who have kids in America.
And then there’s spending on education. Nearly the entire increase in the student population of this nations schools is caused by immigration. Thats right, when the politicians whine because they want more money for new school buildings, its because immigration has resulted in overcrowded schools.
Saying this doesnt make me want to take you at all seriously.
Red Herring. Do not shrink from a challenge to your argument through changing the topic randomly. You can not win a debate without countering his arguments. You have demonstrated your ignorance in the posible shortcomings of “limited space.”
Another red herring.
You ignored my post asking if the jobs immigrants take are actually jobs that americans would dare work. How many Americans .are willing to go work out in the ifields? Why would they when they can sit around, collect welfare, maybe hit up the fast food joint.
“obviously” does not answer this statement. Why else would you use ethnic slang in a sarcastic manner? If I was hispanic, I would be offended.
I disagree. They can only connect minor benifts from the government. They are not jailed for any long period of time. And no, they dont go raping good Americans nonstop and indiscriminantly. Why would they?
Again, youre ridiculing of others does not make me want to listen to you. Furthermore, your combative nature, your need to not move from your precipice makes you much less credible as somebody that is open minded.
See, here you might have a coherent argument to make. If you could simply frame it in a way that makes you not look like a jerk, I think others would agree with you. Do you really have to add the part at the bottom. Many people here are intelligent, you should listen to things they say from time to time.
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White people do rape nuns too.
Once again, you make another good point, but ya know what, youre not gaining supporters, which, I would think, would be your purpose.
If this is true then you have hit on another good point, once again, however, nobody cares. It affects nobody cause you come across as a combative jerk whose arguments cannote real debate.
Well the argument could be made that spanish speaking people have been there much longer than english speaking people, it makes sense to accomidate them, even if we conquered them. Why should we force a conquered people to abandon their ethnic identities because we want to? Thats what we do when we ask them to abandon their language.
We heard you the first time, bud. Oh and btw…
… how confident are you with using facts from a tripod page that advocates something ridiculous. Why would mexican nationals want the southwest back? Why wouldnt they want to continue to enjoy U.S. benefits. These people put their lives on the line for U.S. citizenship, why wouldthey want it back?
Please cite a study that links migrant mexicans to malaria? Malaria is transmitted by insects, not by people. How do migrants bring malaria into the nation?
In the history of the world, people of european ancestry, through their wars, have killed more people than any other race on earth. Should we kick them out of the nation as well? Americans have done some reeeallly screwed up stuff in the past. Mexicans arent innocent, neither are good ole patriotic americans. People of all races, nationalities, religions, whatever commit despicable crimes, and will continue to.
What does this have to do with illegal immigrants from Mexico? No duh the state dept screwed up. Seeeeriooously screwed up.
Here’s a posible headline “Paranoid American Government rounds up all of Japanese Ancestry, in violation of their civil rights”
“Angry White man kills 6 million people”
Whats your point? Are you trying to imply that all of these people are immoral? Why would you quote crime statistics? These people are not heathens, they are human beings, like you and me. 99% of them dont go around raping the first thing they see. Muslims and Mexicans tend to know the difference between right and wrong.
This is shocking, if there’s enough evidence they probably will shut it down… they better or Ill have to throw down with one G. W. Bush, the man ultimately responsible for arresting these cronies.
You could walk up to a mexican immigrant and maybe say “hi” or “hola.” He wont bite, I promise. They do things, aaamazing thing. Ive heard they can paint, just like us! they will not, as you imply with your immense amount of crime stories, walk up to you and rape you or your sister, mother, daughter. They probably have loved ones theyd rather not have raped. And as they are ussually catholic, I think theyd respect nuns more than most Americans.
Put up with what?
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Well let me know if youd like a URL about an American raping someone, they do it all the time…
Dont make broad generalizations. You make a broad, unqualified generalization about a whole group of people based on a few cases. You simply cant do that. I could go back and find individual stories of blonde woman who own llamas, but that doesnt point out a huge trend of blondes owning llamas…
Remember, the biggest terrorist attack on American soil pre 9-11 was comited by Timothy McVeigh, American born and bred, and a man who I’m ashamed to share my first name with.
Kuk, every possible subgroup of humanity has bad apples. Should I be concerned about a national “Timothy” conspiracy? Of course not.
What exactly is the policy you’d like to see enacted?
If it’s better enforcement of immigration laws, than I agree. We need law enforcement to do as good a job as it can on all fronts.
If it’s “kick the illegal immigrants out,” than I’d tend to agree. After all, that’s what we’re trying to do right now, right?
If it’s “kick all immigrants out,” than I majorly disagree. Some of the greatest Americans were immigrants. Shoot, Albert Einstein, who, according to Time magazine, was the “man of the century,” was an immigrant. Immigrants are part of the fabric of American life. Besides, this influx of immigrants going to school in America? It’s great! We’re getting the better minds of foreign countries, and letting them work to better the United States. Legal immigrants are great. Gotta love 'em.
Germans are not as wealthy as Americans, but leaving that aside, the fact remains that you STILL have not addressed the simple, inescapable fact that more people means more jobs. A gradual increase of population increases both the supply AND demand for workers. That’s simply a fact of life, and until you address it, you claims that immigration costs people jobs are silly.
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there are a host of reason why my friend, an being an economist im sure your aware that Germany has a Socialist economy…right Rick?[/COLOR]
No, it doesn’t. Germany as a free market economy. They have social programs and such, just like any other Western nation.
Apparently you cannot read. I did not say the total number of people dictated the VALUE of the economy. Perhaps you should go back and read what I typed. What I said was that population and JOBS are directly correlated. And they are.
The reason some nations are poorer than other nations with smaller populations is that they lack other aspects of wealthy economies - educated populaces, rule of law, peace and order, and other stuff. India’s poor for a lot of reasons but immigration isn’t one of them.
Really? Gosh, I find that surprising. The United States’s highest immigration ratios were in the late 19th century. Seems to be there’s been a lot of economic growth since then. Would you mind explaining that?
The notion that “mass immigration” is some recent thing suggests you don’t know what you’re talking about.
That’s false. And stupid.
First of all, not just “the top 40%” of American pay income tax. You must be 15 years old. Get out into the real world and see if you don’t pay income tax, if you’re in the middled 20%, boy. If you don’t pay tax I assure you the police will come by sooner or later.
Secondly, you ARE aware people do pay taxes other than income tax, right?
Actually, kid, I live in Toronto, one of the most immigrant-heavy cities in the world. At least a third of all Torontonians have just immigrated here in the last 10-15 years. More than half the people in my neighborhood are immigrants (disclaimer; I was born and raised in Canada.) I am surrounded by people from other nations.
Guess what? Toronto has one of the lowest murder rate and the lowest violent crime rates of ANY large city in North America. The crime rates here are literally a small fraction of what you’ll see in any big American city and are quite a bit smaller than most CANADIAN cities, and more than a few European cities, too. It is the cleanest, safest, and most pleasant large city in the English-speaking world, IMHO.
Er, can I point out that the OP and some of his white supremacist friends who came over from storm front dot org have now been banned, so is there any point in continuing this discussion?
I don’t think anybody else here really wants to debate whether Evil Meskin Wetbacks are taking over the Yewnited States of Glorius Amerikkka… :rolleyes:
Moderator’s Note: While it is certainly possible for civilized people to have a rational discussion about immigration, it obviously ain’t gonna happen here.
