I never said they were. What I did say is what you quote just below. And the “objection” was to Canada allowing it. You continue to demonstrate quite a proclivity for this kind of inaccurate recounting of my words.
Wrong. What they were objecting to was both, although in regard to the second it was Canada that conservatives were unhappy with.
Are you aware of any other instances of widespread breaking of the law in which amnesty was supported by conservatives and proposed by a conservative president? If so I’ll grant that you may have a point.
Now, shall we continue this silly hair-splitting hijack all day or do you think the OP might like to have his thread back?
Allowing the draft-dodging in violation of US law, not the breach of Canada’s own immigration laws, which were not a matter of concern to American conservatives.
It’s not hair-splitting. You are attempting to fabricate an argument for conservative opposition to immigration law violation in general by pretending that conservative opposition to Vietnam-era draft evasion was based to any significant extent on the violation of Canadian immigration law per se, which it wasn’t.
It is true, however, that by introducing the irrelevant topic of draft-dodging you somewhat hijacked a thread that’s really about illegal immigration. By all means, feel free to stop the hijack at any time.
One might be tempted if one was a liberal or ignorant of the facts. The e-verify progam was started in 1997 to target businesses who were hiring illegal immigrants. Since then 16 states, mostly republican run, have passed laws mandating its use for state hiring and state contractors. Democrats have tried to sue to stop the program but they were unsuccesful. There was a big case about an Arizona law targeting businesses who hire illegals that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was in all the papers.
How many times do I have to tell you that it pissed a lot of us off that Canada was allowing draft-dodgers from the U.S. to cross illegally into Canada to avoid the draft? I know you think you’ve found some sort of silly little point to cling to try to eke out some sort of victory here, but a.) you’re wrong; and b.) it’s a stupid thing to argue about and I’m not going to indulge you on it further.
It’s a good thing this isn’t in the Pit, where I could properly characterize what you’re doing here. Yet again, what I’m doing here is pointing to the fact that conservatives in general are opposed to amnesty for lawbreakers. Why are you so desperate to deflect the issue from that central point that you continue to try to brew a tempest in a teapot over this silly conservatives/Canadian immigration issue?
Sorry, but this is yet another…ahem, inaccurate, recounting of my words. What I did was point out in response to another post that conservatives generally oppose amnesty, and the draft-dodgers of the late-sixties/early-seventies were an example which everyone would be familiar with.
So let me say it again just so were clear: the point being made when I raised the issue of draft-dodgers was amnesty, not immigration. Got it?
And now having said that, I maintain that by reiterating the point I remain on topic as to the discussion under way before you came charging in to huff and puff over a minor liberty in phrasing whose meaning a child could understand, so ain’t no hijack on me!
Undocumented people can be undocumented for a wide variety of reasons. For example, if someone’s parents brought them here when they were 6 months old. This individual, even though they were raised in the US, with US customs, language, and beliefs, is not a US citizen according to the law. Because of the laws, this person cannot obtain a driver’s license or legally work in most places, even though the only crime they commited was being born on the wrong side of a border.
A valid point. As long as the term is used to refer to people like that rather than as a PC attempt to minimize the fact that many immigrants are here illegally, I’m fine with it then. Thanks.
The Missouri GOP criminalized the employers a few years ago. So did Oklahoma, and a few other states. They are going after employers, on the, “How dare you hire a foreigner!” theory.
Cite? I’ve been of the impression that the pressure to fine the evil business people who hire illegals has been coming from the left as a way of trying to discourage illegal immigration without, you know, expecting people to actually obey immigration laws.
Anyone who does not think that our borders should be protected/regulated is not a true conservative. Anyone who, after what happened with Reagan’s amnesty proposition, favors amnesty, or amnesty-light, is not operating from a conservative position. Does that help?
You’re leaving out two things. 1) Reagan was seeking to fix a problem that had gotten that way due to years and years of lax immigration enforcement. So, the die was to reset the clock. And part of that was 2) that illegal immigration from that point forward would be prevented. Naturally, given the unholy alliance between dems and reps on the issue (albeit for different reasons), illegal immigration got worse than ever. Also, the policy sent the wrong message. Illegals believed that all they had to do was get here and eventually there would be another amnesty. And if we do it again, we will encourage more illegal immigration.
That’s an awfully vague criterion, though. I don’t know of anybody except maybe some really hardcore anarchists or libertarians who argues that our borders shouldn’t be “protected/regulated” at all.
And from there, you’re arguing about matters of degree. Specifically how much and what kind of border regulation does one have to support to be a “true conservative” in your book?
It sounds as though you’re using a fairly hard-core zero-tolerance “immigration hawk” stance as your bright line for being a “true conservative” on immigration issues.
Don’t you think it was just a tad disingenuous to phrase it that the Missouri GOP decided years ago to “criminalize” employers on the “How dare you hire a foreigner!” theory, when in reality what they were doing was trying to deal with an influx of illegal immigrants fleeing the six states they had previously been flocking to and which had been forced into enacting stricter laws of their own in an effort to deal with the problems the influx of illegals was causing them?
In the case of Missouri and according to your own cites, this was resulting in areas of some communities becoming so saturated with illegals that landlords were finding themselves renting to people with proper ID only to find shortly thereafter and in response to citizen complaints that as many as eight to ten people were living in one and two bedroom apartments, and taxing local police and community service agencies. And let’s call a spade a fucking shovel while we’re at it and acknowledge that any community in which circumstances like this exist are invariably hotbeds of drug and criminal activity as well.
So of course conservative politicians are going to attempt to create legislation to deal with all that, which is a far cry from your rather creative characterization that they simply decided to make employers criminals for daring to hire “foreign people.” :rolleyes:
I actually like it when most people post cites around here because they so rarely show what they’re supposed to show.
This argument I don’t really get. Do people really base their decisions about whether to move to a foreign country and live and work for years without legal status on the expectation that sometime within the next few decades there will be an amnesty?
So it looks as though the illegal immigration problem is hardly spiraling out of control; in fact, it seems to be vastly reduced from what it was even just a few years ago. And that appears to have much less to do with amnesty prospects than with ordinary economic and demographic pressures on migration.
Are you saying that the right isn’t exerting pressure to fine employers “who hire illegals”?
Why wouldn’t they, if conservatives in general are supposedly so opposed to giving people a pass for breaking the law?
In fact, wouldn’t it be more efficient to crack down on illegal employers more than on illegal employees, thus disincentivizing the employees from seeking work illegally in the US in the first place?
No one assumes that the wait will be decades. There’s always that hope that it wil be next year, or the year after, etc.
True, illegal immigration has calmed down in recent years. But that is an accident of our economy. It had already spiraled out of control prior to the recent leveling off.
I just went back and read your post. You seem to be talking about immigration, I am talking about illegal immigration. The two are very different things.
Got a cite for that? I would really like to see some evidence that the average illegal immigrant’s decisions about coming to the US are significantly affected by expectations of an imminent amnesty.
Anyway, since there hasn’t been a general immigration amnesty since Reagan’s 1987 Act a quarter-century ago, it seems that whatever “assumptions” about imminent amnesty allegedly fuel illegal immigration still operate whether we actually pass an amnesty law or not.
Got a cite for that either? The cite I provided indicated that the recent sharp drop in illegal immigration appears to be due to the combination of a number of factors, including more effective enforcement, the Great Recession, and decreased demographic/economic pressures in Mexico.
I don’t see how something that is not currently out of control can be said to have “spiraled out of control” immediately prior to that. It sounds kind of like saying “The dropped papers were irretrievably scattered by the wind before we managed to retrieve them”.
Yes, there was a very heavy wave of illegal immigration from Mexico up to a peak in about 2007, after which various factors combined to drastically reduce it. I’m not seeing an “out of control” situation there.
So did Oklahoma, and a few other states. They are going after employers, on the, “How dare you hire a foreigner!” theory.
I don’t see how something that is not currently out of control can be said to have “spiraled out of control” immediately prior to that. It sounds kind of like saying “The dropped papers were irretrievably scattered by the wind before we managed to retrieve them”.