Are you saying that teens can’t get jobs in fast food because illegals have them?
Domestic help and gardeners and the like get paid in cash - not anything new. But I’d like to see a cite about big business doing that. Since they have to pay minimum wage anyway, and these people aren’t going to get a lot more, why pay extra cash under the table. And why risk a federal rap by not doing withholding? More likely they don’t look too hard at the bogus social security numbers they get.
But I guess picking potatoes counts as participating in the underground economy, doesn’t it.
We spend $600 billion in national defense every year already don’t we? $20 billion is a small fraction of that; in fact we could easily divert $20 billion of military spending towards this.
Strange that we have a $787 billion stimulus, a $600 billion defense budget, but suddenly balk at $20 billion. I suspect the real motive isn’t finance - it’s a veiled resistance to tougher border security.
And…aren’t those the same people who are clamoring for the fence? It would be high irony to see people fight for the wall and then drag their feet in an attempt to make more money.
As Buck’s excellent numbers show, it’s not just the total dollar value, it’s also the amount of money spent per illegal alien. It hardly seems economically rational.
The government does plenty of things that are not economically rational. The world is not economically rational; many decisions are made out of emotional reasons.
But the argument being made isn’t being presented as an emotional one. It’s argued that the economic damage (drain on public programs, jobs lost) is worth building a wall to stop.
What fraction? 62% of illegal immigrants in the US are Mexican, and we don’t give out many visa to Mexican nationals. Most of the illegal immigrants from central and south America - which look to account for another 14% - come through the US/Mexican boarder too, do they not?
IIRC ~40% of illegal immigrants arrived legally and did not sneak across the border. I expect that to vary by country of origin, but I haven’t seen data.
No one has mentioned the other downside of a really effective wall. It also keeps people in. As a Jew, that’s a little unnerving. I don’t want to live in a police state.
Untrue. First, your wanting my position to be that a secure border means that absolutely no one ever would eve able to sneak in is false. I’ve explained this already, yet you desperately cling to that fabrication.
Also, as I’ve stated many times on this board, I’m all for going after employers. Today. And I don’t mean just fining them, I mean putting them in orange jumpsuits. Today. The point is to stop the flow of illegal immigration before we deal with anything else.
No, you first. If you want me to agree with your plan to secure the border before doing anything else, I demand that you tell me where that line is. If you try to be ambiguous, I will oppose you with vigor and insist on immigration reform now.
As a citizen of one of the “other first world countries” (Ireland), please allow me a moment to distract the rest of you from your interminable Mexican Wall analysis.
Here in Europe, we are facing what Drudge gleefully highlights as “Europe facing worst crisis since WWII”. Personally, I think that Europeans have every right to determinedly keep out illegal immigrants. We also have the right to set the conditions by which we allow those already admitted to stay. I agree with Czech President Milos Zeman: "“If you do not like it, just go away.”. I’d also note that Hungary is busy building its own analogue to a Rio Grande fence.