Being undocumented isn’t illegal, and neither is being in the US without a valid green card. They’re grounds for deportation, but in themselves, they aren’t illegal, and if someone is suspected of being here when they shouldn’t be, their case isn’t handled by the criminal courts, but instead by the immigration courts, which are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice.
Something doesn’t sound right here. Do you have a cite for this?
People call them undocumented because it’s accurate. People who call them “illegal aliens” do so because they want to dehumanize them and poison the well for discussion before it starts.
If a person is being beaten by her husband or abused by anyone I would allow her to stay and call the police on her abuser.
I think we can absorb all people who ask permission to our country like my family members did and I have a relative who is married to a Mexican but he agrees with me. As every one is suspicious of him because of the ones who came in across the border in trucks etc… We should work harder with the governments of other countries to help their people to get a fair shake. Most legal immigrants are hard working and sacrifice a lot.
All people should be more responsible parents and if birth control was made available they could limit their families to the amount they could care for them selves. The religions that do not allow birth control should support those families and not expect the state to do so.
If a person is in danger if they are in their own country that is one thing,but if a country knows they can get rid aof a lot of their population by allowing them to cross into another country rather than finding ways to help their people they never will do anything.
I can only site my daughter’s case who took their swimming pool down because her insurance company told her this when they raised her rates. It is called a attractive nuisance.You may check with your insurance company.
That is no more dehumanizing then calling a person who writes a bad check a felon. Symantics are one thing, respecting the laws of a country is another. If they didn’t feel they were doing something wrong they wouldn’t come in in the dark of night, but in daylight at the border crossings.
I feel sorry for the people who have to live in countries like Darfur etc. and I think our government and the United nations should do something about their treatment we went into Iraq on a lie, and spent all that money and lives that could have been spent helping people who are surpressed, to a better life. Difficult yes, but we must find a way some how and we cannot fit the world’s population here no matter how much we would like to do so.
It is true the people who work do pay taxes and most live good lives, but the expense of them being here and many in the jails and in gangs because their families cannot support them with both parents working is another matter. Also the expense of their health care by using hospital emergency rooms becasuse they cannot afford it because of the low wages they get from employers who expect them to work for a pittance is also wrong. They can’t complain or they would be fired and deported.
You keep repeating this as if it is a great idea.
What it fails to take into account is that even more people then would come to the USA from Mexico for example, because usually when the people decide to do anything about the injustice in their country there is unrest in that nation and suddenly the immigrants have a better reason to cross the border as they can now claim asylum.
As for the pool example you gave I will have to assume that was the reasoning of the insurance company and not a law, I’m getting the feeling that your opinions really have very little support from the law.
A really bad example too, besides that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ there is no movement or precedent to make laws that will clear check felons from their past deeds. The reality is that no matter how bad you consider the felony is for a person crossing the border, the fact is that there is precedent and the opinion of many that America does not see felonies like writing bad checks and living here illegally as equal.
If they are illegal, they are illegal whether or not they are convicted of being illegal. Unless it’s your contention that the only murderers are the people who have been convicted of murder.
Is that the reason, or is it generally that people who call them “illegal aliens” do so because that’s simply the standard phrase? I think you’re assigning venal motives to (hundreds of) millions of Americans for no adequate reason.
That said, “undocumented” happens to be more accurate, as a *person *cannot be “illegal,” given that word’s usage in all other instances of the English language. If “undocumented” is too value-neutral for some, may I propose a compromise?
How about “unlawful resident”?
“Irregular migrant” seems to be all the rage in Europe these days.
I was an undocumented non-immigrant alien for three months.
- enter the country legally in 1994
- obtain an SSN
- leave the contry legally in 1997 (reason to leave: my employer and my immigration lawyer had decided it was “in everybody’s best interest” if I started working ilegally)
- get a job for the Spanish subsidiary of a US corporation in 2000
- get transferred to the US in 2002; need new SS card which in theory had to be presented at my place of employment within 15 days of starting; be able to ask for it only from within the US due to being a foreigner (a national or citizen would have been able to request it at an embassy); ask for it in my first day in the US; wait for it for three months due to the CIA having to verify that I’ve got the right to a SS card
I was raised to believe that laws and regulations must be followed, but how was it illegal for me to wait for the CIA?
A document means a big thing in law. If one doesn’t have a deed to a property he cannot claim ownership, no marriage certificate…no legal marriage. No paper passport no permission to tavel to some countries. No document, no green card.
If the document isn’t necessary then we are in a sense having open borders and should just forget the whole argument. Do not deport anyone, get rid of the border guards, immigration laws and workers and save a lot of money.
The makers all the fake IDs etc. that some pople are making to help people stay here is considered illegal. Just say, “From now on you do not need a document because if you are undocumented that is okay, and you are welcome to stay here. It is much too dangerous to sneak across the borders so in doing so we will save a lot of lives and money in enforcing the law”. Breaking a law is illegal!
You may check the laws of your state but in Illinois I have read where a family was sued because some one was hurt on their property. Chicago was sued by a family who’s child drowned in a fenced public pool.
Still there is no law mentioned, as the judge that lost his pants in a dry cleaner showed, lawsuits do not depend on laws.
Still the punishment for it is not the same as precedent and current law shows.
There is a precedent to give a path to citizenship to the ones that demonstrate that they did not commit any other felonies, and even a good number of conservatives agree with this. And before you reply take into account that I was an illegal before, but I became an American citizen. It is ridiculous to ignore that laws changed in the past to allow that to be possible and it would be silly to just stomp your feet on the ground an insist that I’m still a criminal.
It’s called Political Correctism. It’s like saying a person is ‘height challenged’ instead of saying he is short. It is a way that the Left have of trying not to offend anyone for fear of being called a racist. Another way to say it is called ‘sugar coating shit’.
Personally, I like the term ‘illegal border crosser’ because it says exactly what it is without mincing words. The term ‘Alien’ nowadays has more of a connotation of a being from another planet ala Roswell style.
AuntPam: I think most people draw a distinction between refugees literally fleeing for their lives from war and genocide and certain death, and the people who slip across the border illegally because they know they can make more money in the US (and yes, build better lives for their kids).
The first group (the genuine refugees) has my sympathy, and whatever system of international law that deals with refugees should be swift and humane and effective.
The second group also has my sympathies, but I would ask you: is there no limit to how many immigrants a country can take in per year? And, does a country not have the right to decide who those immigrants are going to be, and where they are going to come from? If deportation is so hard, would you agree that it would be best to nip the problem in the bud by tightening control of the borders so that fewer people who by all rights should be deported don’t get in in the first place?
Also, for all the back-and-forth about how being in the country “undocumented” is not necessarily “illegal”: that may be true, but many of these people are working undocumented, which most certainly is illegal, no?
That may be true,but you can be deported, they do not put what you call undocumented people in jail but send them back. The punishment is different, but it is still disrespecting the laws of our country. You are supposed to come in the country legally.
Of course, but there are humanitarian and other reasons why people enter illegally, my family was in the process of getting legal visas but suddenly threats to my life appeared and we decided that I could not wait.
10 years after in the early 90’s I gained legal residency thanks to amnesty and the Nacara law (made IMHO because even the Republicans in the USA knew how guilty they were on supporting military dictatorships in Central America) and later I became a US citizen.
Of course if someone had deported me back then, I would not had the chance to get into electronic testing and test devices that eventually got into Tomahawk missiles that kicked Saddam Hussein’s butt.
Not all illegals come to be a burden monavis.