Slashdot Mirror
The Death of the US-Mexico Virtual Fence
eldavojohn writes "A couple of years ago it was announced that the Boeing-built virtual fence at the US-Mexico border didn't work. Started in 2006, SBInet has been labeled a miserable failure and finally halted. A soon-to-be-released GAO report is expected to be overwhelmingly critical of SBInet, causing DHS Chief Janet Napolitano to announce yesterday that funding for the project has been frozen. It's sad that $1.4 billion had to be spent on the project before the discovery that this poorly conceived idea would not work."
The fat lady has sung for the fence.
There's no defense like the virtual fence.
Asking immigrants to follow the law and immigrate legally isn't being a xenophobe.
Gone!
As a legal immigrant I can tell you that the hassle to be legal is so high that sometimes I wonder if I should just stop bothering and become illegal
is it dead... or just virtually dead?
"Couldn't that $1.4 billion have been better spent buying Valium for the rampant xenophobes in Congress?"
Yes, I couldn't agree more. The only thing coming out of Washington that is good for 'We The People', is gridlock. When they actually do stuff, it always seems to cost us more.
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
I went to the wikipedia page on sbinet and got wiped out by a wall of text. What exactly is a virtual fence and what is it supposed to do?
Couldn't that $1.4 billion have been better spent buying Valium for the rampant xenophobes in Congress? Just trank 'em all out and stop them from worrying about a non-problem.
One of L. Sprague de Camp's fantasy novels features a tribe of barbarians who discuss all political issues twice: once sober, once drunk.
I think this is an excellent idea. Who's going to lobby Congress?
Now if we can just put an end to the asinine "war on drugs", we'll be in good shape. When the laws surrounding a substance are more harmful than the substance itself, there is a serious problem.
As far as the fence is concerned, if we had just poured $1.4 billion into Mexico's economy instead of this cluster fuck of an idea, workers would have less of a reason to leave Mexico and try to sneak into our country. They come here for jobs, but if we help create jobs in their own country...
We will never be able to keep them out, so why not make it so they have no reason to come here?
Living With a Nerd
It was brillant... convinced the congress to pay them 1.4b for just snake oil.
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens. They're picking crops, cleaning houses, flipping burgers, etc. The real problem is that our legitimate businesses are legally shipping planeloads of cash overseas for crappy products and services. Do we really need a million plastic "movie tie-in" figurines to be given away with Happy Meals, or blankets with arms in them?
I've heard this come up and the speaker never really supports it but just assumes everyone's on board. I've been to parts of the country without a substantial immigrant population, and believe it or not those crops get picked, those houses get cleaned, and those burgers get flipped. Americans will do those jobs, though usually for a bit more money (which is to be expected when you have to pay those pesky income and social security taxes.)
Asking immigrants to follow the law and immigrate legally isn't being a xenophobe.
No, but structuring the legal immigration process so that it's darned near impossible to immigrate unless you're highly-educated is.
My wife and I have been trying for years to help a friend of hers who is a Nigerian national living in Italy come over. At one point a staffer in our congressman's office got so frustrated with the law that she actually suggested that my wife's friend come on a tourist visa and then overstay! It appears that the best legal option is the immigration lottery.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"Couldn't that $1.4 billion have been better spent buying Valium for the rampant xenophobes in Congress? Just trank 'em all out and stop them from worrying about a non-problem."
Yeah, well, apparently it will cost bit more to medicate all those of us who voted for these douches.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
That depends on the content of the law.
Totally agree, this will help make some sense of how long it takes: http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bulletin/bulletin_4747.html
They say they can't compete without cheap labor, but it they'd have invested as much in robots as they have in lobbying for protection and special access to illegal immigrants, then they'd be competitive without having to load NAFTA with special protections just for them. (free trade. ha!)
Now the restaurants and building industry are spraying malathion on the middle class suburbs. (just call your critics "xenophobes" and you WIN the argument. wtf? )
Just fine the crap out of people that hire illegals and the problem goes away.
but no. let's build a virtual fence and make sure it doesn't work.
If picking lettuce and sweeping floors is scarce labor, how come wages have gone down in these industries? Why is average working Joe making less? Wouldn't wages have gone up if the labor was as scarce as some people whine about?
And everyone who downloads a movie or music file from the internet illegally is also going to get involved in the drug trade, rape your daughter and murder any witnesses.
After all they've made is clear that American law means nothing to them by that downloading.
Nah, if it wasn't wasted on this, it would have been wasted on an afternoon in Iraq.
American citizens? Pffft, who cares about the health of your citizens, when you could be shooting Iraqis!
As easy as it is for an American to become a Mexican citizen.
oh, wait...
This project was about two things:
1) Lining the pockets of a lot of people
2) Making those who fear illegal immigration feel better
Goal 1 was *very* successful. Goal 2, not as much but...there will be other mufti-million dollar projects coming up that will.
Seriously, did anyone really think this would work? Of course not. Plain common sense would immediately tell you this was destined for failure. Government and corporations simply ignored that and moved forward, That's a difference between "them" and "us."
If they had just called it SkyNet (or even SyFyNet) we could all rest easier.
Think Deeply.
Name one other country that allows anyone to cross into its borders regardless of the reason. Not only that, but allows those illegal immigrants to demand that their language be accepted and spoken by government service workers, and even goes so far as to essentially take over a government office for a day and fly the flag of the migrants country on that office's flag pole. http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3007/mexican-flag-raised-over-us-post-office
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I grew up in a small midwestern town, and maybe this makes me xenophobic, but would it be too much to ask if people immigrating to this country would culturally integrate themselves to the point of at least learning the language?
A a woman who proudly defined herself as a Russian Jew, made it a point to tell me that her son, who was born in the USA, was learning Russian as his first language because she wanted him to have a Russian accent - and that he could learn English when he was in kindergarten.
She wouldn't let him watch American television at all, so no Sesame Street, Barney or Teletubbies.
And she has the right to do that, but isn't she perpetuating "us"-vs-"them" and making sure that her son doesn't assimilate?
I dunno ... maybe I "am" xenophobic or racist, or whatever. Intellectually, I don't think that people from other cultures are "bad" - but I'm also kind of sentimental about the small town homogeneous culture I grew up in. :\
It's just frustrating ...
No, if the hassle of being "legal" is too much for you then you should just return to your country.
And I say this as a Mexican who does not plan to go to the USA due to their current policies against immigrants.
Having said that, I believe the USA really needs to fix their immigration programs as they are broken. As I heard some American guy who used to work at IBM: Mexico does not have a problem with immigration, it is a USA problem. Mexico just "exports" very cheap labour. The problem is that the USA government has not managed to establish a proper program to fill up the demand of international labour in the country.
As our racist ex-president (Vicente Fox) put it: Mexicans do things that not even African-American (I believe he did say "Negros") want to do. So, if people in the USA do not want to work for whatever payment the market is offering, then let aliens do that work.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Many of them aren't taking (much less stealing) jobs at all: they are the non-working family members of legal immigrants or naturalized citizens who are notionally in one of the "priority" categories for legal immigration, and who otherwise would be supported by money sent out of the country by the worker who is legally here. Unfortunately, because instead of an overall limit within which the number of slots per country is set by the number of qualified immigrants in the priority category per country, our immigration quotas are set up to limit any one country to a particular small percentage of the overall total annually. Consequently, in most of the family categories, countries where there are lots of eligible immigrants with relatives who wish to sponsor them -- Mexico, obviously, but also India and a number of other countries -- have very long (decade plus) backlogs.
This defeats the entire purpose of having family-priority for immigration, which is reinforce the ties of current legal immigrants to this country by having whole families here.
Our immigration policy is poorly designed to meet its notional purposes.
Name one other country with a statue considered to be a national symbol that says "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free."
If we don't mean it, we shouldn't have that written on the Statue of Liberty. Just sayin'.
Living With a Nerd
Makes sense, but how are we going to get the Republicans sober long enough to get anything done?
The nature of political debate and commentary shifts. I can see it now...
* "We need to allocate more funds for Congressional statutory drinking"
* "I can't drink - my religion prohibits this. This law is unconstitutional, waaa!"
* "If you don't drink (Johnny Walker/White Horse/Jack Daniels) you're not a REAL American"
* (In Texas) "...how can we entertain a notion inspired by those East-coast ivory-tower appletini-drinking fag^H^H^H^H liberals...."
* (In Mass) "...how can we entertain a notion espoused by those cow-herding, tequila swilling hick^H^H^H^H conservatives..."
* "The honor'ble member is a MORON! (barf)"
* 100 drunk Senators song
* "More hookers!"
* Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the temperance movement? (Follows the "I have here a list of non-drinking employees of the Department of State" speech)
* Read my lips: no more scotch!
* "Trickle down" economics gets a whole new twist.
* "Mr. President, we must not allow a distillery gap!"
the economy isn't doing well. It's an easy distraction for the government to use so the people don't realize how much of a role the government is playing in screwing up the economy in the first place. Honestly, most of those illegal Mexicans are harder working than many Americans at the poverty level. I still don't see Americans out of work lining up to pick grapes, or mow lawns for the minimum wage, do you?
No one talked about illegal immigration in the 90s when things were great. A healthy economy makes illegal immigration a non-issue.
.. there are no jobs in US even for unemployed but willing to work US citizens, so illegal immigrants don't have reason to come to US anymore. If they do, they might regret doing so.
This is not going to change soon.
So we need to revise the legal immigration path. That's fine. But this labeling anyone who opposes open, rampant border crossing with zero control a "racist" or a "xenophobe" is unfathomable bullshit that needs to stop so the problem can actually be debated. It's an anti-intellectual tactic trotted out by the other side to clamp down on open discussion.
And, I'm sorry, but we can't take everyone who wants in. We can't afford it even in the best of times. Eventually you are taxing all income over X dollars at 100% and confiscating all corporate profits, and still don't have enough money. Then what? No other country in the history of the world has ever been expected to allow this willy nilly open border nonsense.
I've heard this come up and the speaker never really supports it but just assumes everyone's on board. I've been to parts of the country without a substantial immigrant population, and believe it or not those crops get picked, those houses get cleaned, and those burgers get flipped. Americans will do those jobs, though usually for a bit more money (which is to be expected when you have to pay those pesky income and social security taxes.)
... You sure those crops aren't being picked by migrants that show up during harvest season and vanish soon after?
How are you going to get them sobered up?
>>>The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens
Just as I don't want to find some intruder walking around in my house without permission, neither do I want an intruder entering my country without permission. Pack them up, hand them a VISA application form, and send them home.
As for jobs, given the current ~10% unemployment rate, a lot of these businesses don't need to hire intruders from Mexico or Canada anymore. There are plenty of hungry or homeless Americans willing to pick crops or defeather chickens or whatever else it takes to earn money to survive.
Final thought - My Japanese and Chinese friends are not intruders. They applied for and got permission to come here (and eventually gain citizenship). I don't see why there should be an exception for any other group.
.
>>>The real problem is that our legitimate businesses are legally shipping planeloads of cash overseas for crappy products and services.
True but when oil rises to $200/barrel during the next decade that problem will self-correct itself. It will no longer be affordable to ship goods all the way from China, and instead the factories will be built on this continent.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And, I'm sorry, but we can't take everyone who wants in. We can't afford it even in the best of times. Eventually you are taxing all income over X dollars at 100% and confiscating all corporate profits, and still don't have enough money.
This assumes that each new person is a net cost to government coffers. If that's true, then we have bigger problems than immigration.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Well, if you do not want Mexicans involved in trafficking drugs then Americans should stop consuming the darn shit. The only reason we keep pumping drugs through the Mexican transport channels it to make them arrive at the USA is because its population is gladly paying whatever price for them.
I am glad that at some point their dream-world gets touched by the reality of drug trading. Just look at the state of Cd. Juarez and the majority of the North of Mexico. If there was no demand on illegal drugs in the USA then the majority of the crimes related to that would be decreased considerably.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
A blanket with an arm in it is exactly what I need; I am taking a very long plane ride in the near future. I am willing to spend extra if the arm is heated somehow.
Anonymous? Oh you bet.
Along those lines...
Hair based drug testing relies on melanin - most drugs they test for bind to the melanin in the hair.
So detecting drugs in people with black hair is 50x easier than it is for people with blond hair.
So you get a situation where the entire process is racist, but most of the people have no idea just how biased it is and just accept on blind faith that the people in charge are doing the right thing.
It's far too easy to play the "racism" card. It even gets in the way of you thinking reasonably about certain social situations.
You need to keep in mind that there are many significant benefits to keeping uneducated foreigners out of one's nation:
1) Educated people have a better chance of contributing positively to their new nation. Their knowledge and talent likely has benefits for the society they're entering.
2) Educated people are more likely to be able to sustain themselves, and won't become a welfare burden.
3) Educated people are more likely to be able to sustain themselves, and won't be driven to partake in petty crime.
4) Educated people are more likely to stress the important of education upon their children. This will help prevent the next generation from becoming welfare bums and criminals.
That's just a few to get you started. If you aren't a moron, I'm sure you can think of many, many more benefits to only allowing in educated people.
There are water shortages across huge sections of the country. For a while there were talks of riots ensuing in the Atlanta area as water levels were reaching dangerously low levels. The roads, schools, and prisons are filled to capacity. There are shortages of decent cheap housing.
Tough luck for you if the majority of people in this country don't want this problem exacerbated.
You are right, all that don't respect the laws aren't good enough for america, and should be expelled from the country. Of course, all laws are important, be about immigration, intellectual property, spitting on the streets or even wear masks in open places. After all that scum get expelled, maybe the remaining all lawful residents could like to rename America to Solaria.
I think that its not only an immigration problem: that is how they sell it to the repugs. Its the drug problem and, as Milton Friedman put it, its a DAMNED STUPID way to attempt to thwart ANY kind of contraband, including illegal immigrants contraband. You see, the real problem is not the immigration itself and the jobs it might take, because, really, americans dont WANT to work the fields or the mens room at the yankee stadium.
The real problem is that they are attempting to thwart a growing and very powerfull mafia that moves human organs (children organ's in many cases), slave sexual labor (children in many cases), drugs, slave labor and whatever anyone pays to move to the US, by actually eliminating their competition and securing their monopolies by artificially elevating the entry barrier to the market (with technology, which will be thwarted by the more intelligent and thus more powerfull contrabandists, but not by their smaller competition).
And on and on the circle goes forever while, as friedman said, stupid politicians with good intentions keep peddling their crap without tending, for a second, to reason.
Ah...reason.... that thing weve lost in both sides of the border.
hell, all of us, americans and mexicans, should move to canada.
NO SIG
Have you ever considered that the US is not in need of unskilled labor? The unemployment for that section of the work force is something like 30%.
Yet it should just have an open door police?
Asking immigrants to follow the law and immigrate legally isn't being a xenophobe
How is this flamebait?
Sure the laws might need to be changed,
But it isn't fair to others who follow the law.
Just because one group is close to the US boarder they get away will all types of crap.
...as a UK citizen I'm not paying for this, but my first thought was that for a product (potentially) of that scale, a $1.4bn write-off doesn't sound all *that* much. It's only a small fraction of the $12bn+ wasted on a disastrous IT project by the NHS in England.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Skynet is dead!
What is that? Oh, Sbinet! Nevermind then. Keep running, Connor.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Is this the same logic that says the problem of Mexican drugs being imported into the US is the US's fault? Sure, there needs to be demand, but this is a bit like saying that murderers wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for all of these *living* people around!
Honestly, I believe the problem needs to be solved on both sides of the border. Americans are willing to pay a fraction of what they would to a local, to do a menial job. Mexicans are willing to risk life and limb just to get a chance to do that job. Something is very wrong with every part of this situation.
Asking immigrants to follow the law and immigrate legally isn't being a xenophobe.
No, you're right. it's called being close minded to the fact that the existing immigration laws do not work, on a number of different levels for a variety of situations. But, hey, maybe it's easier to be a xenophobe than to try and address the problem logically.
Also, is it just me, or are there relations to be drawn between the long term fail of the War on Drugs and the long term fail of the War on Immigration? Hrmm.
The cameras would detect human-like and vehicular motion and notify the border patrol for interception. These would be used in unpopulated areas. According to a 60 Minutes piece, the technology was still in the research stage and not up to snuff. The desert environment was brutal on the devices. There is no power or communications infrastructure in these area, so that all had to be added. Desert wildlife set the alarms off. There were many potential points of failure. Perhaps we should have hired the Israelis.
It wouldve been better spent in tv ads adressing the dangers drug consumption abuse, while at the same time you legalize drugs.
And then both mexico and the us would be happier, richer countries, with money spent where it should, instead of in a drug "war" nobody can win.
NO SIG
This is a classic example of Top-Down Error. Government was approached or approached a few big-players and they all agreed that it would be just peachy. Reality has a way of spoiling the party often times however. If they had adopted a more open model such as a bazaar of ideas that could have completed with each other through criticism I'm sure that something else while it also may not have been 100% effective would have emerged that would have been at least just as good and cost far less. Government has a fascination with centralization it appears they think it is the way to go, I disagree: I think that decentralized is better for cost, flexibility, and reliability. I also think that given few players with centralization that it is also effectively a command economy/system. See how well that has worked in history.
Shh.
"Those problems included Boeing's use of inappropriate commercial software, designed for use by police dispatchers"
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens. They're picking crops, cleaning houses, flipping burgers, etc.
When 18 million Americans are unemployed, great jobs aren't an issue- ANY JOB IS THE ISSUE.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Maybe because the U.S. welfare/medicare system is already overburdened and therefore wants educated/professional people who will ADD funds to the system, not suck more out.
I'd also argue that the U.S. has enough people already. When the oil crisis hits in the 2020s (price rises about $200/barrel), we'll have a hard enough time feeding the 310 million persons we have now. We don't need more bodies to make the situation worse. I'm not saying we should completely stop immigration - just be selective in who we let in.
This is no different than how I only allow certain people into my home, not everyone who asks.
DEVIL'S ADVOCATE:
Let's just invite all 6 billion people to live here, even the deadbeats who have nothing to contribute. Let everyone enjoy the U.S.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The first European immigrants didn't bother to do that, so why should everyone else? It seems a bit of a double-standard. Especially when loads of immigrants stay in areas that have historically belonged to a certain Spanish-speaking country. Or are you asking for all non-Spanish-speakers in SoCal to start speaking Spanish? :)
No, it assumes that an increase in "government coffers" doesn't mean shit to the average person already living here who is negatively affected by an influx of worthless immigrants.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Run the numbers... If you are lucky enough to be in the top 1% of income earners you are likely to be paying more into the system than you are getting out of it. For the rest of us, the system is so overbearing that we have no hope of paying for it. We are leaving that for our kids and grandkids (in the form of debt). It's simple, really.
The problem is that the USA government has not managed to establish a proper program to fill up the demand of international labour in the country.
At 10% unemployment, I'd say the USA government has not managed to establish a proper program to use up the supply of domestic labor either.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
That's going to depend really strongly on what kind of drunk the politicians are. The weepy drunks aren't going to be valuable, nor are the horny drunks (ick, try not to think about that too much), while the angry drunks will dominate discussion. (meanwhile the barfy ones will be in the back missing out on everything.) Come to think of it, this won't be that different from normal politics...
What's really wrong with it is that there are 18 million Americans who are also willing to work for that fraction- but aren't getting the jobs because of racial discrimination.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
When I was 16, I worked "flipping burgers". Rather than a high-school or college student doing it now, there's a 30 some odd polite (yes) Hispanic lady doing it. Is she here legally? I can't say, but I suspect she is. As well several of the staff.
On a higher level, at my current job (before our buy out), several people were making near or over $40k using bogus SSNs. Were THEY here legally? Cant say -- but they all bailed during our company buy out (and re-hire screening). I dont know about you, but I'd say $40k/year is far from your "[not] exactly great jobs [for] Americans" comment.
That said, my wife is a legal immigrant (from Syria). Came here when she was 19. Here entire family is from either Syria or Lebanon. Two of my grand parents immigrated legally. The others (except maternal grandfather's family) came one generation sooner. Apparently Pop-pop's family goes back to the early 1700s or earlier in Deleware.
What bothers me is people try to make this about race or "xenophobia". It's not. Its about national sovereignty. Why would it be bad to protect our southern border in the exact same way that Mexico protects it's southern border? I understand why Mexico protests -- as it would mean an end to a HUGE part of it's GDP (money flowing back in from the US from Mexican nationals working in the US illegally).
This assumes that each new person is a net cost to government coffers. If that's true, then we have bigger problems than immigration.
It is true, and we do have a bigger problem than immigration: businesses that aren't willing to pay living wages to get workers.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Absolutely, those jobs will get taken by Americans - often high school students and people going to college part time. Problem is today in most cities you can't get a job as a burger-flipper as a high school student. They simply aren't available.
Similarly, if you don't manage to get a college degree and want to get a job you will find that minimum wage jobs pretty much require speaking Spanish, because all your co-workers speak nothing but Spanish. If you are bilingual and have even a little bit of experience you can be the "foreman" but of course there are only a few of those jobs available.
The work that can't be outsourced is now going to low-wage workers right here in the US. Because these people are earning 10x what they could get back home, they are willing to put up with anything to get and keep minimum-wage jobs. This isn't going to change when they become legal, voting citizens. We are building our very own slave underclass right under our noses and most people just don't care. Somehow, we are doing this to "help" the poor in Mexico. Which isn't helping at all because it just allows the upper class there to ignore the situation.
The source for that story is the Greek historian Herodotos.
This assumes that each new person is a net cost to government coffers.
That's what would happen with open borders. That's what happens now with just a broken border. Even with a good economy, there only so many jobs. Illegal aliens are exploited by employers who pay them slave wages. The only source of tax revenue from them is sales and gas taxes and the like, but at those wages, how much are they really giving back?
If that's true, then we have bigger problems than immigration.
Uh, yeah. Come to California to see it all in action, and compounded by a batshit insane state government that has effectively declared open economic warfare on anyone in the "net plus" column. Some of the corrupt antics here border on those of fascist governments of the past- openly padding their pockets, taking bribes from lobbyists and openly expressing utter contempt toward anyone who questions their corruption. Personally, I'm amazed no one has taken a shot at one of these scumbags yet. It's *that* bad.
What can I tell you... I think that if youve ever been to california and talked to a mexican-american you would realize that mexican children that grow up in the states speak english as well as any other american kid. I dont think you are xenophobic, I just think that you are not realizing that its hard to an adult to learn the language perfectly in years. It would be very hard for you to go to, say, Hungary and learn hungarian in five years, isnt it?
So further generations WILL be plain americans, will do their military service, will go to college and will pay all taxes you ask of them. There is no reason to assume otherwise.
NO SIG
of how large private companies only beholden to a few shareholders can not reliably build large complex systems.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes, but how do you detect drugs in the hair of somebody who doesn't do drugs?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
>> Do we really need a million plastic "movie tie-in" figurines to be given away with Happy Meals, or blankets with arms in them?
Hey! Do not knock the Snuggie!
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
It's sad that $1.5 billion had to be spent to try and protect honest God-fearing Americans from poor Mexicans who wanted to pick our fruit for minimum wage.
By definition Xenophobic doesn't have qualifiers about education or anything else. It's an undue fear of foreigners or things foreign, period.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/xenophobe
What you're describing is something else. Only letting in useful or highly educated people from other countries isn't xenophobic. It may be a dick move but it's _not_ xenophobic.
It's unfortunate about your Nigerian friend, but perhaps she should have spent the last years increasing her education so that she'd have more perceived value?
As I said... bigger problems than immigration. And, actually, given the Ponzi-scheme nature of what we've been doing for decades now, plus the decline in native birth rate, we may NEED massive immigration just to have a prayer of eventually every catching up.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The only thing coming out of Washington that is good for 'We The People', is gridlock. When they actually do stuff, it always seems to cost us more.
Well, that just might be the intent. After all, for several decades now the US government has been mostly run by people who consider corporate profits the most important thing in the world. Of course, we've long used the term "pork" to refer to Congress passing laws designed to funnel money to companies in their district. This story is just a more blatant recent version of this, where the money is funneled to construction companies while openly ignoring questions about whether it'll even work. The real answer, of course, is "Who cares?", since the actual goal was enriching the officers and stockholders of the construction firms.
The other growing example of this is the US pseudo-debate over health care. If you listen to this "debate" at all, it rapidly becomes clear that they almost never discuss health care itself. Rather, they always talk about the money, primarily insurance money. The main consideration in both Congress and the White House is that the existing insurance companies and the flock of other medical management firms, which do no actual medical work at all, maintain or increase their income. Actual medical care is far down in the list of priorities. Even when corporations such as hospitals are discussed, the "issues" are things like profits, mergers & acquisitions, etc.; they rarely deal with any actual medical issues.
It was especially blatant in the recent "bank bailout". Many analysts reported that the government's support money went almost entirely into three things: officer bonuses, share dividends and acquisitions of smaller financial firms. Almost nothing went into fixing the problems that had got the financial system in trouble. So this was yet again a way of funneling money into the corporate owners, with no concern for whether it solved any actual problems.
But none of this should be surprising. We've even read here frequently how the only important thing is corporate profit, and corporations exist for no other purpose. When this is the major source of almost all campaign funding, you should expect exactly what we've got. And it's the main ideology in US politics these days, in both major parties and several minor parties.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This was all about "sensing". It didn't actually do anything to stop border crossers.
Multiple fences with a patrol road between them, plus a chain of towers to discourage people cutting the fence, might actually work. The sections with physical fences are doing their job now. There's solid fence from the Pacific Ocean to Yuma, AZ., which has pushed crossing attempts into Texas and the desert.
The point is that white people get to take drugs and get away with it while the browner people do not.
Selective enforcement based on hair color is racism.
But thanks for demonstrating just how deeply some people have abrogated their critical thinking skills to the war on drugs.
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens.
Seriously, how does an adult person get to be this fucking stupid? Are you ex-military? Did your mother do drugs while pregnant?
Every 100 crop-picking immigrants equals three Americans driving tractors, one American maintaining those tractors, and one American building them. We have chemicals and vacuum-cleaners and disposable wet-mops. We don't need a million immigrants with toothbrushes hand-scrubbing out houses for us. I'd rather have a job producing steam-cleaners than being unemployed, and most Americans would too. Burgers can be flipped by machines. Drinks at your nearest McDonalds are already filled automatically, no immigrants required. I'd rather have the job of making those machines than have a million more minimum-wage mouths to feed, dragging down the average wage along with living standards.
Even if you're too lazy or stupid to do productive work, please stop pissing all over your fellow citizens who are.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I'm sure that when I was 12, I was picking crops right next door, and that my son doesn't have the same option to learn to work.
Only part of that is because I moved to the city- they used to bus kids out to the berry fields as well.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"...This assumes that each new person is a net cost to government coffers..."
Conceded in the ObamaCare debate, see the Abortion funding arguments and the rationing arguments.
Your statement that Mexicans are not stealing jobs is another fallacy. So what if it is a crappy job? What about college students? Should they be able to
take these crappy jobs while in school so they can pay for their books? I remember in the late 80s they were offering p/t jobs at McDonalds for $10.00/hour.
People claim that Mexicans take jobs that legal residents don't. The correct statement is that Mexicans takes jobs at a pay rate that legal residents won't take. Of course, this is in part because they don't pay the taxes, as many of the jobs are under the table so they don't pay taxes on them.
In Mexico, if you work illegally, they will prosecute you. To attend school, you MUST show evidence you are legally able to attend school.
There are two words to consider, illegal and legal. Can you tell the difference?
Fight Spammers!
Catching up with what? We're digging a fucking hole and you think we need more people to help?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
but jumping to conclusion on the effect of immigration is xenophobic.
It is a pretty clear sign of xenophobic when people are only concerned about having a fence on ONE border... racist, really.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Americans will do those jobs, though usually for a bit more money (which is to be expected when you have to pay those pesky income and social security taxes.)
Many illegals also pay income and social security taxes. In fact, they often pay MORE than legal residents would, because they don't dare file for the income tax refund.
I dunno ... maybe I "am" xenophobic or racist, or whatever. Intellectually, I don't think that people from other cultures are "bad" - but I'm also kind of sentimental about the small town homogeneous culture I grew up in. :\
"I don't think other people are bad, I just don't want them anywhere near me unless they act just like I want them to."
Yes, you are a racist xenophobe.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
I always heard that if you overstay your visa that you'd be prohibited from even returning once you left the country. Seems to me that your friend should be listening to an immigration attorney, and not some political hack taking random calls (or an apocryphal story).
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
Name one other country with a statue considered to be a national symbol that says "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free."
If we don't mean it, we shouldn't have that written on the Statue of Liberty. Just sayin'.
The French knew what would happen. Those bastards set us up!
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
I agree; excellent idea. When do you think they can try out doing it sober?
-Dave
Run the numbers... If you are lucky enough to be in the top 1% of income earners you are likely to be paying more into the system than you are getting out of it.
Only if you neglect to account for the value you received from a system that allowed you to reach the top 1% of income earners...
Derka derrrr!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brj2UkUPjCI
The answer to the war on drugs is pretty easy- don't take them. Or if you do, just have a prescription for them. They can't prosecute what is already legal.
But thanks for entirely missing my point- that if this is so, this is *MORE* reason for the "browner" (though I know plenty of whites with black hair) people not to take drugs.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
And I hope you promptly told her supervisor of her telling you to tell someone else to break the law! Of course some of you might think, "oh whats the harm"...
But then when our congress people do the same thing..."Well big corporation, I know it's hard for you to...but just do this illegal thing(perhaps some under the table donations) and it'll be okay, then you get angry.
I know, it's a rant, but no one else seems to see that big gaping issue of a government employee offering advice about breaking the law.
>The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens. They're picking crops, cleaning houses, flipping burgers, etc.
How does this get modded up? A lot of Americans, many of whom are legal immigrants, take these jobs. We dont need illegals to fill them, especially when we're at 10% unemployment. Unlike a lot of the loud-mouth commentators here, I've actually hired legal immigrants to do house cleaning and in the restaurant business. They're eager and hard workers generally, and dont like to be categorized with the illegals who sneak in here and live a lawless lifestyle (fake SSNs, fake names in the ER, etc). We dont need illegals for that, thanks.
Not to mention, when these illegals get here and these jobs have dried up or dont pay enough, then we see a rise in crime. We also see a rise in social services spending to help them pay for their kids.
Is it xenophobic and racist now to want legal immigration? Incredible how low the pro-illegal immigration people are willing to go. I can't say Im surprised, after all they are advocating illegal and immoral behavior.
Annexing Mexico.
Worry about non-problems?
You just broke the needle off of my bullshit meter. There is so much unarguable evidence of SERIOUS problems with illegal immigration that I can't believe that ignoramus like you still exist.
How would like your house shot up by those "non-problem" illegal immigrants? Perhaps 30 rounds or so from an AK47 that are directed at YOUR family would change your mind?
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-17332392_ITM
There's thousands of stories just like those. I personally know people who are leaving the border areas because they can no longer deal with the crime and violence that these "non-problem" Hispanic immigrants bring with them. What planet do you live on that you don't know anything about this?
My family immigrated to the United States from Germany following WWII. My father was the first in his family born in the United States. Growing up around his family I spoke German before I spoke English. In all I'm at least somewhat familiar with and sympathetic to the plight of immigrants and those wanting to come here.
This wave of illegal immigrants from south of the border is nothing like the legal immigration from Europe and Asia. They bring with them violence, crime, and diseases that were eradicated from our country decades ago.
I have no problem with legal immigration from any area of the world but ILLEGAL immigration is a real problem and head in the sand people like you aren't helping.
P.S. If you really want to hear a rant let me put you in touch with some friends of mine that are Russian immigrants from the 80s. They are unbelievably pissed off about the situation. They got here with no English language and no money and have worked their assess of for more than two decades to get the things that are almost handed to the Hispanics. You can argue with them if you'd like but they're going to own your seemingly ignorant ass.
Wow. This makes me wish Canada also bordered on Mexico...then someone could do those jobs for us!
Right now our houses are all filthy, our crops are rotting in the fields, and our burgers are all burning on one side....there's nobody to flip them!
They may not be great jobs, but they are a heck of lot better than no job at all.
It's not the government's job to create jobs, if that's what you're saying. What we need is fewer "programs" (decrease public sector) and more freedom (increase private sector). So yes, the government has failed, but I'm not sure if it's failed the way you're implying.
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
Really, I done cleaning, accidents and stuff and it is actually an okay job. No, it is not as challenging as doing a massive IT project or being a doctor, but lets face it, the fast majority of people don't have that kinda job anyway.
But regular cleaning sucks because not only is the hourly rate piss poor, but the working hours are bad as well. For instance 2 hours in the evening after public transport has stopped in some remote corner of a city with no travel expenses.
I have had people complain they couldn't get cleaners and they just didn't get the math that with the income minus the expenses, people would be paying to work. Geez, no wonder nobody wants it.
And then something happens what I call in Holland "turkefication", Turks are our LEGAL mexicans. They come and do the jobs nobody wants to do and organize them so they can still make something of a living, by for instance chaining different jobs together. They then work very hard and do a decent job. Good? No. Because now the boss is going to lower the pay even further, the old Turks don't complain because they are not the complaining kind but then after a while they get to old and the job by then has become so overloaded, there is absolutely no way ANYBODY is going to take it legally. Que illegal immigrants and an entire sector going out of control.
Gosh, I wonder how that happened?
Because you kept gutting the job till nobody but someone living in a car is even capable of taking it anymore.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What did you think they were going to put into the hole?
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free."
The new version says: "Give me your huddled masses yearning for political asylum; granting your hardliners easily earned political points against their enemies."
>No, but structuring the legal immigration process so that it's darned near impossible to immigrate unless you're highly-educated is.
Err, thats the point of immigration. If we cant fill certain jobs, we'll bring people in. I dont need someone else to compete for my job, we have enough of people like me already, thanks. Prove we need you. We want more highly-educated specialists for that reason.
African-American (I believe he did say "Negros")
Well considering that the term 'black' isn't considered to be really offensive, that a spanish speaking person would call an African-American 'black' should be no surprise.
Wouldn't it be weird if he was speaking spanish and said 'los blancos'?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
There's a lot of packing plants in the midwest that used to provide men a living wage for their families. Those guys are almost all gone and in their place are 30 guys named Jesus who all share the same social security number.
American citizens had those jobs and DID those jobs for years and years. It wasn't until outfits like Hormel, IBP, and other found it was cheaper to higher the Hispanics that supposedly no one wanted them.
I'd posit that this is true for MANY of these jobs that Americans supposedly don't want.
If those Mexicans immigrated here legally, us "God-fearing" Americans wouldn't need to be protected.
You wouldn't like it if someone crash your party, or just showed up uninvited, no matter how harmless they might be. And 1.5 billion is just a drop in the bucket for the richest country in the history of the world.
And maybe if it weren't for all these illegals depressing labor rates, you would have Americans doing the jobs.
I just utterly pwned and destroyed you.
No, you're absolutely right. It's not the government's job to create jobs.
IT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S JOB TO PATROL THE FUCKING BORDER
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The fallacy in your comparison is that illegal immigration isn't harmful per si - the only "harm" it causes is violation of law. Murder destroys life, regardless of whether it's considered a crime or not.
Of course there are fiscal issues when people hire workers that officially don't exist, but I'm willing to bet that if the immigration process weren't so long and cumbersome the huge majority of illegals would be running to the immigration offices. It's obviously better for the individual to be legal than an alien, and if they still can't do it, then it's somebody else's fault.
The Mexican government can be argued to be at fault for not providing proper employment within the homeland, but defending that point is very naïve. The USA doesn't have a 0% unemployment rate either.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Just as I don't want to find some intruder walking around in my house without permission, neither do I want an intruder entering my country without permission. Pack them up, hand them a VISA application form, and send them home.
Exactly. We currently require that people wishing to enter the country by air or sea do so at a designated port of entry, fill out reasonable paperwork, and establish their identities with official documents (aka a passport). This applies to everybody, whether they're from the UK, Russia, India, or Chile. We spend a lot of effort to intercept boats and airplanes that try to enter without going through that process. We spend a lot of money securing the customs and immigration parts of our airports (as well as the other parts, too). That's a practice accepted by pretty much everyone.
So why does everyone shit an elephant when it's suggested that we do the same thing for our land borders? Securing ports and airfields is a legitimate security concern, but trying to do the same for a land border apparently turns you into some kind of xenophobic racist scum? I don't get it. You don't lock up the windows in your house and wire them for a security system, but then leave the front door wide open, do you? Everyone else coming into the country has to go through the proper channels, so why should someone coming in by land be different?
I have nothing against immigrants from any country. I'm descended from fairly recent immigrants myself. All I ask is that immigrants learn the language in a reasonable time, obey the laws of the land like everyone else has to, and pay taxes just like everyone else who lives here. The same would be expected of me if I went anywhere else.
Our immigration laws need updating, yes. So let's update them. But let's also secure our land borders to the same standards that we do our air and sea "borders". Pheysically ensuring that everyone entering is doing so legally does several things:
-makes smuggling harder and helps reduce crime
-cuts back on freeloading and helps ensure everyone is paying taxes
-ensures non-citizen workers are protected by wage and safety laws because they won't fear deportation for reporting violations
-allows faster identification and notification of authorities/families/etc. in case of accidents, emergencies, disasters, etc.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
No the problem is that you and your elected officials gave away millions in tax incentives and you agreed to work for less than a living wage to get companies to move to Georgia and the rest of the south. The problem with your plan is that once you gave away everything, you did not have the resources to pay for the infrastructure that was needed to support those companies. Now you are paying the price your stupidity and rather than admitting you made a mistake you go zenophobic and try the place the blame elsewhere and on someone who has nothing to do with the problem you created. The majority of the country doesn't care that you screwed only you and the rest of the uninformed uneducated zenophobes.
Install non-lethal ice-bullet remotely controlled rail guns in DMZ areas along the boarder.
Ice-bullets minimize the litter and enable a way to create more ammo with relative ease.
Allow internet gamers to purchase time on the guns. Monies collected will be used to enhance the gaming interface, better detect potential violations and route gamers appropriately and maintain the hardware. Raid parties could be organized and purchase improved tools used to first snare the NPC prior to pelting it with an AOE.
Gaming interface can represent moving objects as zombies and gamers can move up in ranks from citizen to minuteman to ranger based on varied metrics.
I'm sure there's lots of room to improve the idea, but it wouldn't take long before no sane individual would take on bored gamers....those gamers might even be citizens of MX!
Positive outsourcing of labor and solving a govt problem with capitalism!
Each new person? No. But I would say it's safe to assume that each new illegal immigrant (undocumented worker, labor sans paper -- whatever) is.
Do a little research. In 2004, it was estimated that 15% of California's public student body were children of illegal aliens. At around 6.2 million students today, 15% (assuming the number hasn't increased) comes out at around 1 million students. At a cost of about $9k-$12k per student, That's nearly $100 billion dollars a year. JUST in educating them. That's not counting the costs in "free" or "subsidized" lunches, either. Or "free" transportation.
Do you have any idea how many people it takes to generate 100 billion in state tax revenue for California? How many people who actually aren't using fake SSNs and setting the w-2s so they get next to no income withholding?
As a legal immigrant I can tell you that the hassle to be legal is so high that sometimes I wonder if I should just stop bothering and become illegal
This reminds me a lot of the arguments about DRM...why bother buying it legally when it is such a hassle. the illegal versions provide much better service...such as not requiring the cd/dvd
"I've been to parts of the country without a substantial immigrant population"
Which parts are those, and how did you determine that, for example, immigrants weren't a significant part of the farm labor force?
I agree with you. If you notice, the post I was replying to was talking about jobs, not borders. I completely agree that national defense, which would include protecting the borders, is the government's job. I guess the fact that the guy's name is "Marxist Hacker" might be a clue to his position on things.
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
The implied assumption is that immigrants are worthless. You wouldn't be complaining about illegal immigration if the assumption were, instead, that each new immigrant is an added revenue source for the country.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Sure it has. Unemployment benefits expire after a little while, at which time job-seekers will lower their asking price and the rest will sort itself out.
Anybody can find work. They are just having trouble finding work they like, at a pay rate that supports their prior lifestyle.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
And how do you measure the hair melanin OF THAT WHICH HAS NO HAIR?
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Three words:
intern sex scandal
Minor correction but someone making such a low wage won't be paying any Federal taxes. You have to make a certain amount before they kick in. On the plus side, you might even be eligible for some benefits.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I don't know about Hungary, but when I was 19, I went to Denmark.
With only two months of formal language training, I was speaking (haltingly) within 6 months.
Within a year, I was speaking fairly well but with a noticeable accent.
Within two years, I was speaking strongly, could imitate some of the regional dialects, and while I still had a little accent, I guess I didn't sound "American" and many Danes assumed I was from Norway.
This was in a country where almost everyone spoke English, and actually spoke it better than I spoke Danish.
So if people make an effort, yes I think they _can_ learn a language. Maybe some of them won't ever be read as a native speaker - but if they don't even try, then what's that saying?
this is a crap argument.
it's not the "stealing of jobs" that is the problem with mexican immigration (anyone who uses that as a reason for strict immigration control is a tool).
the problem is the perpetual poverty that is created by such immigration. when you have extremely poor people flooding into a country, and all they are going to do is get jobs that pay fractions of what it costs to survive in the economy of that country, you will get poverty. poverty perpetuates crime (particularly violent crime).
if you don't believe me, find the poorest neighborhood in the nearest major city and hang out there for a while. how long until you get nervous for your safety?
the fact is, a non-english speaking immigrant with little-to-no education is going to get a bad job (if he/she finds one), and has a good chance of either turning to crime, or to being a burden on the US welfare system. not 100% of them fall into a live of poverty/crime/welfare, but there is a good portion who do.
i don't know the solution, but there has to be some control.
While this logic is formally correct, it also leads to the conclusion that we should kick out uneducated people, even if they were born in the country. If that's your argument for complicating the immigration procedures, you can't escape defending the expatriation of uneducated people as well. Now what?
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
To your first point, regardless of reason, is fairly broad, and I don't think anyone who argues that doesn't agree with it being overly broad, but there are many many countries that have little to no restrictions on immigration for certain classes of people. For example, anyone who is born on in Ireland has a right to be both a Republic of Ireland citizen or a British Citizen. Also the Republic of Ireland allows anyone who has grandparents or parents born in Ireland to apply for citizenship.
The whole of the EU is a immigration free zone for other EU Citizens. Someone who is a French citizen can move to Germany for whatever reason they wish.
I am an American who legally immigrated to the UK and all government forms are printed in many languages that are not even found within the EU, such as Hindi and Chinese. Legal, illegal and asylum seeking immigrants to the UK have the right to demand services in their native language. While admittedly not everyone agrees with it, there are a many other countries that aren't so openly hostile to immigrants.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
I'm guessing that the huge majority of those illegal immigrants want legal immigration, too. Why don't we give it to them, then?
Teletubbies is British you ignorant moron.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Exactly.
It is borked when you have to hire lawyers for following their byzantine laws. Illegals only need them if they're caught.
Immigration raids benefit legal workers: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/immigration/1929-immigration-raids-benefit-legal-workers Seems when a company can't get slave labor they are willing to pay more for legal workers. How unsurprising.
Don't worry about Boeing, they are getting a nice big order for their Frankentankers to keep them busy.
If after living in Hungary for five years you still don't speak the language, you are probably a member of the Bush family.
I'm moving to the Netherlands in the future, and I have already started learning the language, sure I won't arrive speaking it perfectly, but hopefully I'll speak enough for everyday interactions.
"Name one other country that allows anyone to cross into its borders regardless of the reason."
Like, almost every other country that isn't having a religious-xenophobic-hyperventilating-freak-out episode, to be frank. For almost the entire existence of our country (and my life) we could travel from the US to Canada and back with no documentation and no questions asked. Worked perfectly fine, and at low cost.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Actually, the innovation was that some packing company realized they could replace their skilled butchers with an assembly line of low-wage unskilled workers who were each taught to perform a single cut.
So if we made them legal, all those "problems" you allude to would go away? Or is your problem not that they are illegal, but that they are hispanic? Or... what exactly are you saying?
That is for people to come over to be Americans. These beaners don't give a fuck and want to ruin our land and pump out noise pollution. They are vile.
Before you mod this flamebait, please read on...
Yes, I'm a racist. But I wasn't a racist 10 years ago. In my community, the mexicans started immigrating 10 years ago to work at the Tyson chicken plant. It was fine at first, and everyone included them and made them feel welcome. Now my entire town has gone from a nice clean tourist town to a fucking trash slum.
These motherfuckers don't even pay for garbage pickup and let bags of garbage pile in their front yard.
It's okay because one of their fucking stray dogs will come along and string it all over the fucking street.
Seriously, have you lived around these people? We now have grafitti on our road signs, crime, fucked up boom cars driving around all over the place, unsupervised children vandalizing everything. These mother fuckers stop in the middle of the road and block traffic in both lanes while they have their beaner conversations.
And you should see the daily lines at the Western Union desks.
And the real what the fuck is -- our populations has not increased. That's right. The argument that this has only happened because of the population increase and not because of the race of the newcomers does not apply here. The natives have been moving out as quickly as the immigrants have arrived.
And as expected, the mexicans turned it into a shit hole.
Thankfully, I'm moving out next week. Thank FUCK for that.
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens. They're picking crops, cleaning houses, flipping burgers, etc.
Three issues from someone with apparently a lot more life experience than yourself:
1) All the "nice workplace" laws that were passed because humans deserve a minimal level of dignity, like OSHA, FMLA, discrimination, sex harassment laws, unionization laws, are only for American citizens. Illegals are simply told to shut up or INS will dispose of them, true or not. Only a truly horrible person believes that either illegals are not human beings or that its should be a societal goal to treat human beings inhumanely.
2) Maybe not a great job to you, but with a true (U6) unemployment rate approximately 20%, theres plenty of citizens whom would like those jobs, but "citizens need not apply". My children will never be allowed to work certain jobs for racial reasons when they are teenagers. I'm not sure that limiting their options and basically rolling back the civil rights movement is a great idea. It is kind of interesting that it only took about two generations to go from "blacks need not apply" to "whites need not apply" in certain areas...
3) The Roman empire fell, when being a citizen was more of a PITA than not being a citizen... Essentially, despite the barbarian hordes, they were still better off without than with. The current situation is that we are working as hard as we can to make a permanent underclass whom will never enjoy the benefits of being a citizen, while simultaneously creating a permanent underclass of citizens whom will never be employed again because they are citizens. Encouraging lawlessness and discontent is not a good way to maintain an empire. I don't think the American Empire is a perfectly great thing, but the only thing worse than living in it, is living thru the fall of it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think it's time the statue of liberty came down and got replaced with something that truly represents the America of today. A baseball bat wrapped in sandpaper going in and out of a sphincter.
So we should all live with 15 people in a 3 bedroom house and cars parked all over the lawn?
In your case it is. I can tell because you are hiding behind "the law" instead of making a more reasonable and nuanced case. Did you even look at one bit of the actual law? Read one story about the reality of emigration in the U.S. today? Did you research the ways in which your ancestors got into the country - what they faced, and compare that to today's experience? There is nothing in your statement except a weak shield statement that you obviously believe is all you need to get a pass.
Seriously. It's time for Americans to grow up a little, and stop making silly non-arguments. As an American, you are embarrassing me.
http://www.unfocus.com/
Or how police sergeants can allocate traffic patrols that just happen to be on the south-bound side of Texas interstates before major holidays, and on the north-bound sides of interstates after major holidays.
The patrol officer in the field might not have any bias at all, but the effect of the system is to profile against those traveling to and from Mexico.
Discrimination can be very very subtle.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
It's not the government's job to create jobs, if that's what you're saying.
"promote the general welfare". What part of that phrase don't you understand?
What we need is fewer "programs" (decrease public sector) and more freedom (increase private sector). So yes, the government has failed, but I'm not sure if it's failed the way you're implying.
Freedom is bad for business. Ultimately freedom means no police to stop shoplifters, no courts to enforce contracts, no way to stop fraud or even counterfeiters. The private sector couldn't exist without certain government "programs".
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The problem is obvious. They used a virtual fence instead of a fence in the cloud. A fence in the cloud would obviously be hand-wavingly cheaper, way more reliable, highly secure and infinitely scalable.
Dear USA Gov: I am happy to consult on this issue and assure you that I can implement a fence in the cloud at half the price.
The difference is congress passing a law. It sounds like your real issue isn't illegal immigration, it's immigration, period.
L. Sprague de Camp didn't make that up. Herodotus tells the same story about the ancient Persians.
A deceptive clue. It's a very old handle- I went from Marxism, to Apostolic Communism, to libertarian Capitalism, and back to distributism in the 30 years I've used that nickname on the net.
But you can't avoid the Declaration of Independence. Not protecting the borders and not giving a stable enough business environment to create jobs were two of the biggest failings of King George which created the American Revolution to begin with.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Name one other country that allows anyone to cross into its borders regardless of the reason.
Actually, the borders between the Scandinavian countries have been quite open for a long time. We even have the curious situation that all of them except Norway are now in the EU. You'd think this would make the Norway/Sweden border somewhat controlled, but there are lots of roads crossing the border that are usually uncontrolled. (Of course, many of them aren't what you'd call major highways. ;-)
I saw this some years back, when I happened to be in Sweden, near the border, and people decided to drive to the next town for lunch - in Norway. When we reached the border, there was the expected "Norge" sign, and a small building off to the side that was obviously for a border guard. But the driver didn't even slow down. When I asked, he said "Oh, there's never anyone there." The attitude seems to be that such things are just for show, to keep the more rabid political types happy, but nobody would bother wasting money actually enforcing border controls at minor crossings. That's done at airports and (major) seaports, but there's little point in such theatre anywhere else. I just checked, and you can sorta see this with google maps. Using the "satellite" view, zoom in on any of the border-crossing roads, where you'll see a small widening and a tiny building - but no vehicles of any sort.
I have heard that people take the borders seriously in some other parts of the world. ;-)
Of course, one might question whether areas such as Sweden properly qualify as "countries" these days, now that they're more like "states" within first the Scandinavian Union and then the EU. OTOH, I haven't noticed people calling the EU a "country", so I'm not sure what the proper classification is. Do borders such as Norway/Sweden or Sweden/Finland qualify as international any more? They do still maintain separate citizenship rolls, and at least make a pretense of being "countries".
In the other direction, there's the case of the "two Chinas", each of which insist (in public) that they are all one country, and the other part is just occupied by an illigitimate government. They have some fairly strict border controls, despite the fact that they are officially a single country to both governments.
So maybe "country" isn't the right criterion when it comes to border crossings. Maybe the local political power structures are a better explanation of what's allowed and what's not.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Asking immigrants to follow the law and immigrate legally isn't being a xenophobe.
No, but structuring the legal immigration process so that it's darned near impossible to immigrate unless you're highly-educated is.
My wife and I have been trying for years to help a friend of hers who is a Nigerian national living in Italy come over. At one point a staffer in our congressman's office got so frustrated with the law that she actually suggested that my wife's friend come on a tourist visa and then overstay! It appears that the best legal option is the immigration lottery.
Yea, like we need to make it as easy as possible for uneducated people to illegally come here and flood our schools.
Sure it has. Unemployment benefits expire after a little while, at which time job-seekers will lower their asking price and the rest will sort itself out.
And how is that theory working for you?
Anybody can find work. They are just having trouble finding work they like, at a pay rate that supports their prior lifestyle.
I know people who have been out of work more than two years now- who have already cut their prior lifestyle by 1/4th (since that's what unemployment insurance pays) and STILL can't find a job.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Three points;
1. The argument that legal immigration into the U.S. is wrong and invalid. The U.S. grew, up until around WWII, largely through legal immigration. Since then, we have not needed to grow via immigration, though we permitted it even after WWII. The reality is that we do not need legal immigration to satisfy our labor needs; we are told by industries that we 'need immigrant workers', when in reality the demand from them is for lower-paid workers. Technology, service, every industry that employs legal or illegal immigrants does so to lower costs. The H1B program is an exampole of the abuse of a legal immigration program. Illegal immigration speaks for itself.
An example of illegal immigration causign problems is the Maine blueberry harvest. This used to be, in the 60s and 70s, dominated by Mic Mac indians and local people (like me) who could make decent money for a few weeks' work. It is now 60% Hispanics, many illegal immigrants. Some stay and take other jobs in Maine.
The refrain is ';who will clean the toilets? Americans don' want thosejobs' My question is, who cleaned them before Hispanics came to Maine? The answer is, Mainers. Americans. But they will cost more. If it's about wages, let's have that discussion. ok? It is my contention that Americans will do the work avaialble if they have a chance, and if they need to. If it's about minimum wage, ok, fix that. If it's about working conditions, fix that. But if it's about letting illegal immigrants do the work for less, then either legalize them
or send them home.
2. No one has a dog in this fight except for everyday citizens. Business obviously likes cheaper labor. Politicians like new voters, and cater to them. Unions see them as potential new members. Government and other agencies see them as needing services and increasing demand for their services. Other nations use them as 'safety valves', sparing their own economies the trouble of providing jobs or services. So how do we fix this?
3. Illegal immigration is ILLEGAL. Let's either address that and stop the flow, or change the rules. I don't mind if we decide to allow unfettered immigration, or lower the barriers, but we should certainly make the choice. Until then, when will our government address the problem? Do we need to vote them out again and again until they get the point? When does our government stop listening to the corporations and start listening to us?
And just declaring amnesty doesn't work. Stopping the flow is the only first step, securing the souther border first. We cannot expect Mexico to do anything at all, as it is not in their interest. And if we do secure the border, expect Mexico to react harshly. The Mexican government most certainly has a stake in this, and will
be significantly impacted if we do shut off the flow. Then we can begin to have honest discussions with them, perhaps. But not before. We've proven to them that we do not have the will. We will need to change that first.
Complaints that legal immigration is difficult miss the point that it is supposed to be. The U.S. is much more welcoming of legal immigration than most any other nation. But we do have the right to choose who we let in, don't we?
ps- I used to play soccer with MANY foreign nationals going to school in the U.S., several if which were Nigerians. Wonderful people, and very different. Why does your wife's friend think they are a good candidate for legal immigration? We probably do give 'highly-educated' people a much easier path, but that makes senss to me. Is Italy so bad a place? I'm genuinely interested in this. Can you tell me?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Illegal immigration is a non-problem? What are you on?
Take a look around the web, and you'll see that apparently the cost to support illegal immigrants(incarceration, health care, etc...) in JUST California every year is 10.5 billion USD!
Also feel free to take a look at the United States unemployment data. Unemployment stands at around 10%. What would happen if you require employers to actually hire US citizens,and pay at least minimum wage? I'm sure you'll hear the complaints of "I don't want to pick apples", or "that job is beneath me", etc.., but that's just the new whiny american't citizen. Apologies to some, but who grows up and says "I WANT to be a janitor. I want to clean up puke and crap and piss"? Not really anyone, but they do it to support themselves.
-Now that you have removed a giant reason, making all employers hire citizens, for illegals to enter the country, the support cost alluded to above stat to go away, which then can translate to lower taxes.
-Also note that now you also have increased tax revenue from all the former american'ts that are now working and being payed minimum wage.
-Also note that you have now take people off of unemployment, thereby reducing tax expenditure, which can reduce all our taxes.
-Also note, that other forms of welfare can be decreased, such as food stamps and public housing, which usually seems to be used to allow people to live in or around areas in which hey cannot afford to live....decrease in taxes
-Now people who will have to move for these new jobs, typically out of the cities and into much more rural areas, so we could possible provide a one time moving assistance, but what you have now are permanent, instead of seasonal works moving to these new locations...permanent housing will be needed, and increased infrastructure. This creates additional jobs, and pushes more money into te economy...increased jobs and tax revenue
-etc...
-You might say that it will lead to increased food cost, but paying an illegal $2 per hour for picking 5 giant crates of apples vs ~$8 per some associated health plan cost of say $6 per hour, is a difference of $12 per hour spread of 5 creates of apples where 1 crate is ~300 apples = 1500/12 = ~0.01 cents per apple increase cost!
Enforcing the current laws,and making sure employers hire only citizens, is a real solution to many of our budgetary woes.
But why should I have to pay taxes that benefit your friend or compete with him for a job?
I have a friend who came over from Taiwan with his parents when he was 3. He grew up here and got an engineering degree here but he doesn't have the right to work here. He's thinking of going back to Taiwan, a place he hasn't been since he was 3 years old, because he can't find decent work. Now that's f'ed up. Granted, it's unfair our tax dollars subsidized his education, but come on, he was 3. Can't we get a statute of limitations on these things.
How would anyone ever tell the difference?
But what if you're an island!
I don't see how the unemployment rate is a big factor in this.
If I can do Job A in Mexico for $.50/hr and Job B in the US for $5/hr, it's a matter of income, not employment. The rate of exchange and pay is so drastic that it's worth doing menial jobs in the US for what we consider low payment and sending the money back.
Let's see: There are no jobs in the USA, people are losing their houses... The richest person in the world is a Mexican... Therefore, I think Americans should be racing to get into Mexico, the land of opportunity! I'll bet if we had a mass migration of poor Americans into Mexico for their jobs and free health care, they'd build a real wall in no time.
Either that, or let's just declare Mexico a terrorist state. I mean, with all the drug-war related deaths on the border, it's a good bet more Americans have died in Mexico due to the drug wars than were killed on 9/11...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It's not the government's job to create jobs, if that's what you're saying.
I don't know. I think it's the government's job to do whatever's necessary to promote the country's overall well-being. (Certainly it's in the government's best long-term interests to do so, as they get to govern a more powerful and prosperous country - and I think the rest of the nation benefits as well) If that means creating jobs, then, yeah, it's the government's job to create jobs.
Bow-ties are cool.
Its where the problem lies. According to my friends working at ICE, the real number of illegals in the US is closer to 30 million rather than the 12-18 that is usually bandied about by Washington. 55% give or take are mexican nationals. Huge numbers of chinese, indians and others come into the US via the southern border. Most of the rest are overstaying tourist visas.
Crying racisim etc is the smoke screen used to try and prevent any attempt to control the flow of immigration. Over the last few years, illegal immigration is about 3,000 people PER DAY. That is an awful lot.
In any case we're screwed. Democrats want as many people as they can on government benefits so they can justify expanding social programs and Republicans want slave labor for their big business cronies, and neither give a damn about what the taxpayers want.
I think it's time the statue of liberty came down and got replaced with something that truly represents the America of today.
A giant IOU check to China?
To do list for Windows
Is this the same logic that says the problem of Mexican drugs being imported into the US is the US's fault? Sure, there needs to be demand, but this is a bit like saying that murderers wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for all of these *living* people around!
Bad analogy. The murderer does not produce a product, and the murder victims are not consumers of the product.
All your post indicates is that we need harsher penalties for people who overstay their visas (though I think you should get at least a green card for ratting out people like your Congressman's staffer, who belongs in jail). The US has no need for Nigerian unskilled labor, just like Nigeria is unlikely to welcome random Americans as citizens.
This happened to a friend of mine Amy.
Amy was here on a student visa and overstayed her visa by several months before returning to England.
While Amy was in England, she married a friend of mine, Dana, who was an American woman. They lived there for a while, and decided to come back to the USA.
Amy applied for and was granted a tourist visa, and so she and her wife flew to Chicago. When they arrived, Amy was told that she wasn't allowed to enter the country, and was sent back to England
I said more freedom, not ultimate freedom. I said fewer programs, not no programs. It's it odd that the first thing that people point at is "no policemen no firefighters oh no chaos!!!!" No, not really. There's a lot you could reduce (not even CUT, but just REDUCE) before you'd be left with "oh man, the only thing left to cut is policemen and firefighters." How about we put those near the bottom of the list to cut/reduce? People and companies have to make budget cuts/reductions, how about the government tried it too? If you haven't noticed, the national debt is kinda high. And yes, it's Bush's fault too. But not solely Bush's fault. It's pretty much everyone's fault.
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
You are not including cost of living. And an illegal won't be getting $5/hr.
Mexico operates a strict immigration policy which seeks to protect the interests -- especially the job interests -- of its own citizens. You will need to prove an income from a foreign company or have specialized skills to be granted leave to live and work in Mexico.
From http://www.mexperience.com/liveandwork/livingconsiderationsmexico.php#4
The truth of the matter is, US immigration policy is far more lenient than most countries in the world
I've heard this come up and the speaker never really supports it but just assumes everyone's on board. I've been to parts of the country without a substantial immigrant population, and believe it or not those crops get picked, those houses get cleaned, and those burgers get flipped.
... You sure those crops aren't being picked by migrants that show up during harvest season and vanish soon after?
Immigrant ninjas?
And when exactly is burger-flipping season, anyway?
Bow-ties are cool.
Belgium? (only those acquainted with Belgian immigration problems would understand this)
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It doesn't have death lasers!
Amen
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
To clarify, regardless of whether a government project succeeds or fails, government wins. Look at the big picture. Failure in government is everywhere, yet still, somehow, the business of government expands in total revenue year after year, and becomes more lucrative for those who control the business. This is because success and failure are merely smokescreens hiding the main goal, which is simply to get that money passing through your hands so you can leverage it for your own personal gain.
There is a legal process for becoming an American citizen. These Mexicans know this, too. They just choose to put their own interests first, and in doing so they willing violate American law.
For the vast majority of them, there is legal process that will allow them to become an American citizen.
And as for these laws you speak so highly of - they aren't the 10 commandments handed down by some supreme being. Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe they should be changed?
Don't be a tool. Freedom is not lawlessness, and even at that "more freedom" does not mean "absolute freedom" or anarchy. Funny how you quote part of the constitution and then utterly fail to apply it in your later statements about freedom supposedly being lawlessness. What part of "promote the general welfare" don't you understand? The protection of citizens' freedoms is quite clearly elucidated in the constitution.
If the immigrants are so great and people like me are so horrible then answer a simple question. Why are you trying to leave a country full of people like you to come live in a country full of people like me? And why is the country full of people like you such a horrible place to live?
It is not the same logic. The American druggies are criminals sending money to terrorist criminal drug lords. Obviously, they are selfish and irresponsible addicts. Yes, the Mexican drug problem is the fault of the criminal Americans as well as the criminal Mexicans.
wake up and hold your nose
By in large, I doubt they live alone, rather they share the burden. Also, $5/hr isn't unreasonable...
http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecentersdfe9
You seem to be misunderstanding me or I am misunderstanding you. And yes, I agree handles can be deceptive. Sorry, I didn't mean a personal attack. I, too, am all for the Declaration of Independence, the security of our borders, and a stable business environment. Maybe we agree on the ideas but not on how to implement them best. Oh well.
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
And it's particularly difficult if there is a large underclass of people willing to work without benefits and at substandard wages because their illegal status prevents them from garnering the same protections from exploitation that legal residents of the country have.
How about a real wall. The Great Wall of China has lasted.
The Berlin Wall worked, albeit for evil purposes. There's no reason such simple applications couldn't be applied except for the fact it's the government doing it.
I live in a rather heavy Mexican area, and we have NONE of those problems. They are courtious, good neighbors, keep their property well trimmed and maintain a friendly attitude. I know for a fact that at least three of the people on my "horseshoe" street are illegal immigrants, and I also know for a fact that those three work 12-14 hour days...which is a fuck of a lot more than I can claim (8 hours a day at a desk).
Sounds to me like your problem isn't Mexicans...sounds to me like your problem is assholes.
Living With a Nerd
Well, it's that or kill all the old people. Your choice.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"An unjust law is no law at all", said St Augustine, providing the foundation of civil disobedience movements across the globe. If a law is not really a law at all, it is argued, one has a right -- even a duty -- to break it. Martin Luther King articulated this view in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws".
The problem is that while the law is a matter of public record, justice is an intensely personal matter. What one person regards as just may strike another as an unwarranted imposition. This is why we need law; if we all behaved according to our personal standards of morality, anarchy would rule. While we may have our own views about the justice of particular laws, we generally accept that some rules must apply universally. If we are to follow Martin Luther King's exhortation to resist unjust laws, then, there must be an unusual type or degree of injustice to justify that. What kind of injustice might do so?
The great American democrat Henry David Thoreau had an answer. In his classic essay Civil Disobedience, Thoreau observed that "a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice". An infantile deference to the will of the majority, however ill-informed, is still common today. It informs the thoughtless "majority rules!" which is frequently blurted out as if, on its own, it magically justifies anything (I always want to ask whether, if the majority jumped off a cliff, the speaker would too). In fact, "majority rules" is a solution of last resort. Ideally, people should act according to their consciences. If that is inappropriate, unanimity should be sought. Only if these two fail should the will of the majority be imposed on the rest. Thoreau called for this kind of government, "in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience... in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable".
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
That was written before the welfare state. I can't put it better than this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eyJIbSgdSE
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
So we should all live with 15 people in a 3 bedroom house and cars parked all over the lawn?
I think what the GP meant is something about _not_ spending most your money in frivolities, and not indebting yourself to the neck while buying your SUV and a expensive house you simply cannot afford to begin with.
If an european decided to follow the "american way of life" to the full extent he/she would not last 10 years.
I have shares of healthy companies which lost much of their value (fortunately mostly recovered now) due to the financial debauchery in the US. Funny that neither I, nor the aforementioned companies, nor the country I live had anything to do with that.
That's how financially "solid" most US companies and US citizens are.
And you still mock the GP post?
Seems to me that your friend should be listening to an immigration attorney, and not some political hack taking random calls
Political hack? Part of the JOB of your congressman is to act as a liaison between you and the government. He (or she) is your representative. Congressional staffers do a lot of this sort of research and assistance to citizens.
As for getting an attorney immigration attorney, we looked into that, too. Expensive and no guarantees of success (but you pay either way).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
As a legal immigrant I can tell you that the hassle to be legal is so high that sometimes I wonder if I should just stop bothering and become illegal
I was recently legally living in Spain and had the same problem. Being legal was a major pain in the ass, and everyone I knew that was not a native was illegal and it was completely painless and easy. The immigration office finally told me I had to leave, even though I had proven to them that I was transferring 3X the average wage into the country (and spending it legally!) every year and was not taking any Spanish job. And at a time when the unemployment rate in Spain is the highest in Europe. They were afraid I might go out and take a job even though I didn't need one.
Is this the same logic that says the problem of Mexican drugs being imported into the US is the US's fault? Sure, there needs to be demand, but this is a bit like saying that murderers wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for all of these *living* people around!
Wow, is that you, BadAnalogyGuy? Drugs require willing participants. Yes, there is the issue of addiction, but to develop the addiction, first you must be taking the drugs. According to the CIA, The USA is heavily invested in the drug trade:
world's largest consumer of cocaine (shipped from Colombia through Mexico and the Caribbean), Colombian heroin, and Mexican heroin and marijuana; major consumer of ecstasy and Mexican methamphetamine; minor consumer of high-quality Southeast Asian heroin; illicit producer of cannabis, marijuana, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and methamphetamine; money-laundering center
World's largest consumer of Colombian cocaine and heroin, Mexican heroin and Marijuana, etc etc? I guess that must be why they're shipping that stuff here, huh? I mean, to be fair, we're right here. Oh, there's another reason; it's lucrative. And why is that? Because it's illegal, of course. I thought we learned all this from prohibition of alcohol and the mob.
Americans are willing to pay a fraction of what they would to a local, to do a menial job. Mexicans are willing to risk life and limb just to get a chance to do that job. Something is very wrong with every part of this situation.
End the payment of farm subsidies to megacorporations who don't need them. It would be a good start. Legalizing drugs you can grow would be another good step. It would eliminate huge swaths of crime. However, federal, state, and local government are all profiting from it... on the backs (and blood) of the people of both nations.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm sorry, but we can't take everyone who wants in. We can't afford it even in the best of times.
This logic assumes that immigrants are a net-drain on the economy / social safety net. Sure, there are some costs perhaps associated with providing specialized schooling to their children, but other than that I disagree that immigration is a cost centre.
I realize there are always exceptions, but it seems to me if someone is making an effort to get here, then generally they work when they get here.
Take my vietnamese next door neighbours - They do every scut-job they can find, gutting fish, building scaffolding, working retail - They're always working, and they put three girls through university. Ask any farmer in the Okanagan (our farm region here in British Columbia, Canada) about his Mexican "temporary workers" and he'll tell you they work hard and are happy to be here.
Compare this with the guys begging for nickels at the subway station - They're all obviously WASP Canadians, albeit with purple hair and 17 piercings.
All anecdotal to be sure, and I'm sure some folks, once arrived, go straight on welfare, but I'd argue they're the minority, at least in North America.
No, you're absolutely right. It's not the government's job to create jobs.
IT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S JOB TO PATROL THE FUCKING BORDER
It's also the gov't's job to seek out and prosecute the employers of illegal immigrants, and not turn a blind eye to it because that cheap immigrant labor helps its corporate sponsors keep labor costs down.
What disturbs me most about the anti-immigrant backlash of the last few years is that so much vitriol is directed at the illegal immigrants while little is said about those who employ them. Is all this illegal immigration a conspiracy of poor migrant workers from Mexico who hoodwink innocent US employers into hiring them, or do US employers have the clout to lobby/bribe gov't into lax enforcement because it is in their economic interest to keep labor costs low? Does anyone believe these people would risk so much to cross the border if US employers faced any real risk in hiring them?
But no, let's focus the blame on the poor Mexicans, because, well, they're just so much easier to hate. But it's not racism or xenophobia, no sirree!!
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
After reading through 100 comments on the politics of Mexican immigrant workers, I realized I'm reading a technology blog, and all I wanted to know was why the fence didn't work. The article doesn't really say. It says the "fence" is composed of towers with monitoring equipment. But it doesn't really say what that equipment was supposed to do, or what it failed to do.
"Ninety to 100 percent of all illegal crossers, this camera system was going to identify and characterize this threat,"
What does that mean? Was it supposed to magically know who was crossing illegally and who wasn't? Or identify Mexicans -vs- Americans? That's silly. Was it just supposed to detect people, or movement? Did it fail at doing that?
"It's not a matter of, you know, do you look at the screen and see things?" Stana said. "Yes, you're going to see some things. The question is: Are you going to see things over time? Is it a quality image and is it a reliable image?"
This is still very vague. It is supposed to "see things over time" - what things? Over what time? Was it supposed to identify behaviors somehow?
This whole thing is really vague.
With a 10% unemployment rate why do you think businesses still hire illegals, millions of them? Why don't they hire unemployed citizens instead, who, according to you, are willing to do the same jobs and work equally hard, for the same pay?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
You are probably right. There are Mexicans in the neighborhood I'm moving into that do not exhibit any of the issues I'm experiencing. I know it's not all members of a given race, but there is something about my small town where there are literally no good immigrants. And the white folk are bitter as shit (like me). Most are moving out. After a few years, my racist attitude will be gone and I should be back to normal.
An interesting anecdote to add to this which is found in Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential", he says he prefers the South American workers in his kitchens above US-born workers because the former will work hard, show up on time, and follow directions while the latter are entitled and needy. And these are in restaurants, not just fast food.
I am an American who legally immigrated to the UK and all government forms are printed in many languages that are not even found within the EU, such as Hindi and Chinese. Legal, illegal and asylum seeking immigrants to the UK have the right to demand services in their native language. While admittedly not everyone agrees with it, there are a many other countries that aren't so openly hostile to immigrants.
How are those taxes treating you?
Not true. I have problems with hypocrisy and lies.
I find it hypocritical that Mexico complains about US immigration policy when it is much more strict when people come into Mexico.
When someone comes into the USA and work illegal, they don't pay taxes, but they do take the benefits of being here. This also depresses the wages
for the people who are legal.
They talk about the need for a program for migrant farm workers, but they fail to mention the H1A visas. That is because if the farm workers come under
that program, they are required to provide housing and medical for the workers and not pay them $2/hour.
My wife is here legally, because we followed the law. Is it fair that people who have been waiting for years to come legally are allowed in after
the people who broke the law are given amnesty? There was a one time amnesty before, and afterwards the law was to be strict enforced. Now, again
the no borders crowd are asking that there would be a one time amnesty program? How many one time amnesty programs should there be?
Fight Spammers!
No, I wouldn't, by definition, because anyone capable of actually adding revenue to the country is capable of immigrating legally.
But it's already been pointed out in this thread that upwards of 90% of people are completely worthless anyways. So it's not the case either that the ability to pay $10,000 or whatever it costs to immigrate legally means that a legal immigrant is worth anything more than a one-time $10,000 increase in government bureaucracy followed by an untold number of lifetimes of unproductive resource consumption.
So if you'd like to discuss "worthwhile" immigration as opposed to "worthless" immigration, let's be clear that this is completely separate from the issue of "legal" versus "illegal" immigration. And, besides, I seriously doubt your concept of "revenue source for the country" is at all in line with reality.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
That threshold is very low, about $5k I believe for a single worker with no dependents. Even at $5/hour you'll make $10.4k/year working standard full time.
I agree with your comment. My wife is a legal immigrant and we are against illegal immigration. It seriously feels like a kick in the nuts every time, we hear that illegals should be allowed to stay/given amnesty.
I say kick 'em all out, get a sane work program going and make them all re-apply to come back.
It all depends on the good old full employment theory. Personally I think the economy has long stopped being able to ensure full employment, and never will again. At the moment and for the foreseeable future the economy is a pyramid scheme ... our feudal masters only need so many peons, adding peons just lowers the wages they pay us.
Sure, there needs to be demand, but this is a bit like saying that murderers wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for all of these *living* people around!
Isn't that the point of prisons?
Not only that, but allows those illegal immigrants to demand that their language be accepted and spoken by government service workers
Spanish has always been the second most common language of the United States ever since we acquired significant amounts of land in the west, well before the phrase "illegal immigration" meant anything. The fact that most US citizens only speak English doesn't change the fact that there is a part of the country that once only spoke Spanish, and that there are parts where fully legal citizens still predominantly use it.
"promote the general welfare". What part of that phrase don't you understand?
If jobs programs fall under this phrase, then I'd press you for an example of something that does not.
Does waging war 'promote the general welfare'? What if we did it to profit off of their oil?
How about putting all Japanese Americans in concentration camps? Or shooting all illegal immigrants on sight?
Is there any limit at all?
Or perhaps it is a simple guideline saying 'pass only good laws', and NOT an enumerated power.
Still can't find a job, or still can't find a job that allows them to live "their prior lifestyle" (to use your words) in a manner they feel accustomed, if not entitled to?
I'm in the process of changing careers, to a career that will pay, at maximum, 2/3 of what I earn now. I'm adjusting lifestyle choices, not waiting for a blue moon where I might find some magical position that would put me at parity with my pay now (for the record, moving from IT Development / Management, to Paramedic).
As our racist ex-president (Vicente Fox) put it: Mexicans do things that not even African-American (I believe he did say "Negros") want to do. So, if people in the USA do not want to work for whatever payment the market is offering, then let aliens do that work.
As an American, I have no problem with US money employing immigrants. But I have a real problem with illegal ones: I feel that they are unfairly exploited. They get crap pay, no health insurance, and no legal status in the US. The shitty living status that is pushed on them often brings down the areas they reside in too and thus spills over onto US residents. It's a human rights violation in the name of profit... and our government turns a blind eye to it due to lobbying from big business.
To me it is the same as shipping our electronic waste to China so that some Chinese kid can desolder the parts without ventilation or gloves and die of cancer in 20 years after he has a few defective children due to all the poison he ingested. We're passing problems that we can solve, but are too cheap to bother with off to less developed people and countries.
OK call me a hoser, but WTF is a "virtual fence"?
I can only parse that together to mean "Not a real fence" or a "fence that doesn't really exist".
You spent 1.3B on that? You are surprised that it "didn't work"?
I think I have some interesting projects for you and I am in need of some funding...
Gridlock might be the intention, but it's at least definitely the intention of the design of the federal government that one group can't just grab the reins and run wild.
Anyway, a few things you got rather wrong:
> The other growing example of this is the US pseudo-debate over health care. If you listen to this
> "debate" at all, it rapidly becomes clear that they almost never discuss health care itself. Rather,
> they always talk about the money, primarily insurance money. The main consideration in both Congress
> and the White House is that the existing insurance companies and the flock of other medical management
> firms, which do no actual medical work at all, maintain or increase their income. Actual medical care
> is far down in the list of priorities. Even when corporations such as hospitals are discussed, the
> "issues" are things like profits, mergers & acquisitions, etc.; they rarely deal with any actual
> medical issues.
The reason that people aren't arguing about medical care as such in Congress is that that would be putting the cart before the horse. There are groups like the FDA and AMA and so on who care about actual medical care - what Congress is empowered to do is spend money and create agencies in the executive branch to enforce the laws and manage the regulations. Also, if there were a budget available of $1P for each human being in the country's medical expenses, medical care would simply be a question of how much were wanted - but there isn't. The whole problem is the allocation of scarce resources, best measurable by Congress as money. So yes, they care about the money, it's the tool at hand to address the problem, and what they're trying to do is get the money spread around, without sucking up too much more, in such a way that broke rednecks in forgotten corners of the Appalachians can also get medical care without wasting money at the emergency room.
> It was especially blatant in the recent "bank bailout". Many analysts reported that the government's
> support money went almost entirely into three things: officer bonuses, share dividends and
> acquisitions of smaller financial firms. Almost nothing went into fixing the problems that had got the
> financial system in trouble. So this was yet again a way of funneling money into the corporate owners,
> with no concern for whether it solved any actual problems.
Aaaah yes, the infinite black hole of incomprehension about the bank bailouts. First: citation required. Seriously. I've read a lot of those analyst reports (most of them are fairly mind-numbing; I wouldn't do this for pleasure), and that's not what they say at all. The government's support money went, via various channels, largely into their capital stocks so that they could stand up to stress tests designed to measure their capacity to handle liquidity crises. Many of the acquisitions were explicitly arranged by the government so that smaller firms would have some protection against the madness of the crash - they had to twist some arms for the acquisitions to even go through. Sure, they paid bonuses to company officers, but even if you counted them all up, they were orders (yes, that is plural) of magnitude smaller than the bailout funds. At worst, a pecadillo. Bonuses to traders were actually written into employment contracts, and were a part of their payment structure, not a surprise pat on the head for being a good employee. They were part of the banks' expenditure structures.
If you want a real scandal, remember that the bailout bill failed at first, and only succeeded when they tacked on roughly $100,000,000,000 of pork. Pork often with less prospect of success than this Boeing deal. That's right, Congress needed $300 in bribes for every man, woman and child in the country before they could be persuaded to avert another Great Depression.
Why aren't people screaming about that? I would have thought cynicism, but at this stage I think innumeracy has won; the public at large just doesn't comprehend it.
If you then set the immigration quotas so low that you've effectively eliminated any legal means of entry, then yes, it is xenophobia.
To give just one example, there are currently 60,000 H-2A visa holders in the US (temporary or seasonal agricultural work, aka, fruit pickers). Many other work permits (e.g., H-1B) require advanced education or technical skills. Last year, in contrast, the US deported over 200,000 Mexicans alone. That's more than three times the number who were legally able to get visas. It's not that people want to enter illegally — we, the US, won't provide them any legal avenue to come hear and earn a living.
It is true, and we do have a bigger problem than immigration: businesses that aren't willing to pay living wages to get workers.
Why not the workers that scab less-than-living wages from these businesses?
If the business were paying too little for their market, they'd have no employees.
Honestly, I blame credit cards, but maybe that's all about to end.
The idea that illegals do not impact jobs of native Americans is often repeated but seriously flawed. First, low skilled illegal immigrants directly affect the wages and employability of the poorest of Americans by increasing supply. When our native born low skilled employees then go on public aid, society as whole pays the price -- not the original employers who benefited from the sub-prevailing wage labor. More significantly for the readers of this site, illegal immigration affects skilled positions as well. Consider this scenario, if an employer has a task that requires basic skills such as carrying a bag of potatoes from point a to b. He could hire illegals or buy a conveyor system. A conveyor system requires long term investment, skilled mechanical engineers, manufacturing engineers, embedded system electrical engineers, etc. Rather than involving technological solutions, our short-sighted farmer will just pay illegals - even if less efficient on a man hour basis. Societies only benefit from higher man hour productivity; if we just strive for simply higher dollar input efficiency --- we will ultimately hurt our standard of living and quality of environment.
Uh, yeah. Come to California to see it all in action, and compounded by a batshit insane state government that has effectively declared open economic warfare on anyone in the "net plus" column.
Isn't the entire Californian economy completely upside down, though? You guys out that way get triple what I do, and your home (used to) cost triple mine as well. Your keyboard that you typed your post on, though, was the very same price at your BestBuy as it was at mine.
That's bound to cause some kind of problems. Perhaps the crunch you're feeling is the adjustment meant to bring your house prices, wages, etc, back towards the median American.
I guarantee that if the employers of illegal immigrants started having to do the perp walk, illegal immigration would drop to nothing in about 2 seconds. But that'll never happen, because it would embarrass rich people and more importantly, cost them money.
Trying to build fences and the like to keep out illegal immigrants is like trying to hold back the tide. If we were serious about the problem, we'd go to the source and start arresting the people who employ them. But we're not serious about the problem - the government has chosen instead to pretend to do something about the problem, while not actually inconveniencing the rich and powerful (and oh, by the way, dumping huge amounts of money into the pockets of various defense contractors for silly projects like the "virtual fence").
The Mexicans who do enter illegally aren't exactly "stealing" great jobs from American citizens.
From personal knowledge, I can say that the situation is much worse than illegals simply filling the lower rungs of burger flipping, etc.
In Portland OR, illegals are doing self-destructive jobs like scraping lead paint from Victorian houses, removing asbestos, and so on. Without knowledge about the risks they are taking, or training or equipment that are required by law to do the job right. I do not have direct knowledge of what is going on elsewhere in the country, but I think the pattern is clear: whenever there is high risk work that could be done by untrained labor but where there are health and safety laws requiring an expensive approach, there will be scumbags who contract to do the work under the table with untrained illegals without proper gear who are unknowingly poisoning themselves. Whether this be asbestos removal before renovation of older houses, or harvesting crops too soon after pesticide applications, or otherwise working in toxic environments.
We need to see the existing laws revised. But we also need to consider new laws, that will target those who exploit illegals and put them in the same despicable category as slave traders.
Will
While it may not be official, I guarantee this already happens. At all levels of politics. But perhaps not quite as bipartisian as you would like.
In 2004, it was estimated that 15% of California's public student body were children of illegal aliens. At around 6.2 million students today, 15% (assuming the number hasn't increased) comes out at around 1 million students.
Doesn't that mean there are something like 1 million addresses on file that would lead to a deported immigrant family?
Sounds like an enforcement gap to me.
And I'm sorry, but if your parents don't pay any taxes then perhaps you shouldn't get to benefit from those that do. I'm not making a compassionate argument, I know, but the end result of money going out without money going in to replace it is bad news.
The original post MH42 had responded to was claiming that the US government wasn't doing enough to get Mexicans to fill jobs legally.
MH's response was that the US government wasn't doing enough to get Americans to fill jobs, which I suspect was intended to be a snarky comeback rather than a statement of political belief.
The point is that white people get to take drugs and get away with it while the browner people do not.
Selective enforcement based on hair color is racism.
But thanks for demonstrating just how deeply some people have abrogated their critical thinking skills to the war on drugs.
The answer to the dilemma you're informing us of cannot be simply that more 'browner' people get away with taking drugs, to level them off with 'whiter' people.
Fairness is one thing, but that's just silly.
Chemo patients aren't likely getting tested for drugs that often.
The rest of us, we have some kind of hair somewhere that can be tested. Or at least we will after a few days.
As a legal immigrant I can tell you that the hassle to be legal is so high that sometimes I wonder if I should just stop bothering and become illegal
How about moving to a different country? There are countries with less hoops to jump through if you are educated.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
While I share your view that the purpose of government, in recent years, has become to further enrich the already really well-off, this statement is not quite true. There is a provision in the health care bill that forces insurers to spend at least 85% of their income on actual medical care. Given that insurance companies also have their own staff that has to be paid, this is going to put pretty strict limits on what they can take in profits. It's really a pretty smart provision.
Unless things have changed significantly in the past 3 weeks, there is still a huge stretch of unfenced, unmarked open border across the Yuha desert west of Calexico, and in the vicinity of Tecate peak. Granted, most of it runs through gulleys and over hilly terrain, but this is seldom a problem for people who have already crossed however many miles to get there.
Also that solid fence is frequently undermined as it only extends into the earth a few inches in many places. Thus there are holes dug under it at a frequency of at least one per mile or so.
First. We had a revolution exactly 100 years ago in Mexico. We don't need another one. You don't seem to know much about history.
Second, you also don't seem to know much about demography. Indians, original people, whatever you want to name them are less than 10% of the population, 18% european and the rest (we), are the result of the mix between Spaniards and the indegenous people (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograf%C3%ADa_de_M%C3%A9xico#Grupos_.C3.A9tnicos).
We are poor because among other things we inherited a corrupt and injust system and we grew up as a colony. We usually don't produce/create/convert anything and while we're rich in natural resources like oil, we don't transform it and just sell the fluid and we buy back gasoline, diesel or plastic. So, we hace social clases, but these are not decided by race. Alas, Carlos Slim, the richest comes from a Libanese family.
We're still poor because in the last 20 years the farmers left their massively and moved to your country or to the border states to work on sweatchops, most of those now desappeared.
The children of illegal aliens are legal US Citizens (if born here), so tell Hannity and the crew at Fox news to come up with some legitimate statistics that don't demonize US Citizens.
Only I can judge you.
respawning in 3... 2...
Is this the same logic that says the problem of Mexican drugs being imported into the US is the US's fault?
Maybe it is.
Whether or not it is, the logic concerning the effect of USA drug laws on criminal activities is sound. If USA drug laws were revised in a rational fashion, then the cost of feeding a drug habit would plummet, and the tremendous profits in illegal drugs would disappear. Yes, there would be problems with addicts becoming more visible and perhaps even their numbers increasing somewhat, but those problems can be managed at much lower cost to society than what we have now.
To put this argument another way, ask this question: who currently benefits the most from the current USA drug laws? The answer is completely obvious: the drug cartels are the primary beneficiary. Without the USA drug laws, that whole industry could not survive.
Yeah, we'd face other societal problems. But those problems could be handled much more easily than what we now have.
Will
... and the results were that illegal immigrants are primarily competing with, and lowering the wages of, Americans with less than a high-school education (sorry, can't now find the link). For everyone else, there was no effect. While that's bad news for those without the diploma, that is actually a pretty small subset of the labor force.
No, but structuring the legal immigration process so that it's darned near impossible to immigrate unless you're highly-educated is.
Why? Why is restricting immigration to skilled professionals xenophobic?
Now the problem with U.S. is that it goes even further, and also restricts even highly skilled immigration, with quotas and bureaucratic red tape to the point where it is a tough choice. But that's another matter.
This is how I feel about just about every government bail out program and social service. Nearly 100 yrs and people still think throwing money at an issue and painting over the symptoms some how fixes the problem. Most of the time the actual problem is never addressed.
In this case there are a few easy measures to end the illegal immigration problem
- arrest the illegal immigrants, document them, and deport them
- arrest the people who hire illegal immigrants and charge them huge fines
- eliminate citizenship via birth and make it necessary for everyone to naturalize
As we see with via this recession, remove the profit from the individual, and the employer, and illegal immigration dwindles.
Soylent green is grandma?
But Ireland doesn't just allow anyone to immigrate there, so you're completely missing his point.
As counterpoint to your mention of languages and their sign of England's welcoming nature, England has a good amount of racism (e.g., blacks) as commonly accepted, and my friend who just went through getting hired for postdoc work there had to answer questions on the job application forms (*not* the visa forms) that were entirely inappropriate -- e.g., race, religion, sexual orientation, current relationship status. We were impressed with the specificity of the list of races, though, so I guess one could construe that as being open to other cultures.
Well considering that the term 'black' isn't considered to be really offensive, that a spanish speaking person would call an African-American 'black' should be no surprise.
I thought he used words that translated as "the blacks," which is kind of racist in English.
Name one other country with a statue considered to be a national symbol that says "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free."
I find it interesting that, historically, in many U.S. states, you could get citizenship by simply residing in that state for a certain period of time - usually 6 months to 1 year - up until around mid 19th century (later in some states).
Still, times change. Perhaps in older times migrating was harder, so there was a natural limiter. Or perhaps resources (esp. land) were not seen as "pretty much unlimited". And there was no notion of "political correctness", so if a new immigrant wouldn't behave in a way expected by the community he settled it, they would be rather upfront about that, to the point of making his life intolerable enough that he'd pack his bags and leave.
Here's a helpful infographic as well: http://reason.com/assets/db/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5ad.jpg
I wasn't being serious... but since you replied, do you know if this test also works on skin melanin? Swabbing dead skin should be fairly easy.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
No, not really. It's like blaming the problem of assisted suicide on suicidal people. Drugs are bought by people who want drugs. Murders happen to people who don't want to be murdered.
Still can't find a job, or still can't find a job that allows them to live "their prior lifestyle"
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/unemployment
The numbers say "still can't find a job."
Maybe a few can go to a company and say "hello there, I'll work for minimum wage, hire me" and the company will find something for that person to do, but most likely HR will thank them for their time and tell them they'll keep the resume on file.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I am Russian, currently residing in Canada.
I grew up in a small midwestern town, and maybe this makes me xenophobic, but would it be too much to ask if people immigrating to this country would culturally integrate themselves to the point of at least learning the language?
No, it doesn't make you xenophobic or racist. Your expectations are entirely reasonable. Proper integration of immigrants is key to preventing immigration from disrupting the society and culture of the country for all current residents.
I've covered this in more detail from immigrant's perspective in a /. post in the past.
A a woman who proudly defined herself as a Russian Jew, made it a point to tell me that her son, who was born in the USA, was learning Russian as his first language because she wanted him to have a Russian accent - and that he could learn English when he was in kindergarten.
She wouldn't let him watch American television at all, so no Sesame Street, Barney or Teletubbies.
And she has the right to do that, but isn't she perpetuating "us"-vs-"them" and making sure that her son doesn't assimilate?
The woman is a fool.
And while such views shouldn't preclude her from residing in U.S., I don't see why she has any moral claim to U.S. citizenship so long as she espouses them.
The only bright side about it is that, from personal experience observing such families, it doesn't matter what she tries to do. She can't keep her son locked out all the time, and most likely, he will still be exposed to American culture and English language enough to consider himself an American. What his mother thinks about it won't matter. He'll speak to her in Russian, but he'll speak to you (and other fellow citizens) in perfect, unaccented American English.
This is not just a fantasy. It is described in Herodotus as a practice of a tribe in his times before the undertaking of war. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
As a legal resident born in the same state in which I have lived my entire life, who happened to want marry someone who was also born in a neighboring US state but moved to Canada and got married and classified as a landed immigrant and then divorced after 20 years and who carried 1) a US Passport, 2) her *original* birth certificate, 3) her *original* Social Security Card, and 4) all marriage and divorce certificates - I'd agree. It was near impossible for her to get a driver's license and file taxes the legal way, we had to come up with photo ID to match her maiden name on her SS# record and couldn't get it without the SS# record matching her married name, which couldn't be changed unless she had photo ID that matched her married name, and no - the US Passport didn't count for some reason. It would have been far, far easier to not pay taxes and let the Feds try to track down her W4 and credit cards, happily issued without bother about the discrepancy of the last name, of someone who doesn't exist according to the maiden name, and then buy a counterfeit driver's license to get access to things like insurance and not being hassled for loans and other identity crisis moments that can come about when someone doesn't have "legal" papers.
And, no, she's not Mexican nor even looks Mexican or French or Canadian; it doesn't matter where you're from or what language you speak, all that matters is having the "legal" papers regardless of how they were acquired.
You are changing the argument -- not to mention attempting to dismiss it by trying to link me to someone you perceive in a negative light. These are poor logical/argumentative tactics and could say a lot about your skills as a thinker. I however will give you the benefit of the doubt that you just had a gut-reaction and fired off a hate-response and didn't actually READ my post. I'll spell it out clearer for you in the hopes you might actually read (by which I mean not look for buzz words to invoke a "you are Hannity and watch fox news" response).
First, I deliberately wasn't including "legal US resident children". The children from the study in 2004 are in this country illegally. Second, if you want to include children born in the US to illegal immigrants, the percentage jumps quite a bit -- and if you include children where just ONE parent is in the US illegally it goes up even more. There is a STRONG argument to be made that the child(ren) should be with the parents -- and the parents should not be here. And to back-track the problem a bit, the child(ren) wouldn't have been born in the US had it better controls on employment and border enforcement.
And all attempts at better border and employment enforcement are meet with cries of racism and xenophobia... and we as a state spiral around the debt drain ever faster...
Ask one of the Kennedys. They should know.
I've evolved over the years. Marxism has it's flaws- but the biggest flaw was when Wall Street started openly using Marxism to centralize capitalism.
But back to the subject at hand- the original comment meant that we currently don't have a stable enough business environment to hire the people we have, so why would we want to import more?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I guarantee cost of living is much higher in the USA, and they would be sharing housing elsewhere too. I'll give you the $5+, though.
If only the US could treat immigrants the way your country Mexico does. Then all would be wonderful.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
3. Illegal immigration is ILLEGAL. Let's either address that and stop the flow, or change the rules. I don't mind if we decide to allow unfettered immigration, or lower the barriers, but we should certainly make the choice. Until then, when will our government address the problem? Do we need to vote them out again and again until they get the point? When does our government stop listening to the corporations and start listening to us?
Emphasis mine.
This really is the root of it isn't it? As long as corporate money can be used to buy politicians (the elephant in the middle of the room) what exactly can any of us do about it? Isn't this the age old campaign finance reform story? We see it over and over - Corporations have the rights of individuals (does that make any sense?) and money = free speech or more exactly more money = more free speech.
The project was about catching drug traffickers and wanted felons and making sure that illegal immigrants who don't fall in to those two categories don't die while crossing in or out of the U.S.
And everybody is just like you hey? What did you do in denmark: picking berries?
Uh hu.
Now for the case you put forward, i agree with you. It shouldnt be a necessity for the inmigrant to educate his/her children in their mother tongue as a first tongue. However, this is mostly not the case on a day by day basis for most inmigrants, or thats my perception.
NO SIG
Well, it's that or kill all the old people. Your choice.
Can we do both?
If jobs programs fall under this phrase, then I'd press you for an example of something that does not.
Centralized ownership of everything by 5 corporations, seems to me to be a very timely example.
Does waging war 'promote the general welfare'? What if we did it to profit off of their oil?
The general welfare is for citizens only- and as citizens are killed by invading other countries, for any reason, I'd suggest that on a Consistent Ethic of Life scale, invasion is against the general welfare. Even if it's to grab resources. We have enough resources here in the United States that if we'd just live sustainably, we could easily live lives of luxury for all 300 million citizens. Thus, environmentalism is a part of promoting the general welfare.
How about putting all Japanese Americans in concentration camps?
Are they citizens? If so, then promoting the general welfare would say DON'T put them in concentration camps.
Or shooting all illegal immigrants on sight?
Once again, are they citizens? And where's the shot being fired from? I'd argue that if you try to shoot the illegal immigrant *after* he crosses the border, you're a bit late and likely to make a mistake that harms general welfare. Mining the border on the other hand, has it's protectionist pluses. But the whole idea shouldn't be based on what is good for the illegal immigrant, but what is good for our citizens.
Is there any limit at all?
Yes, there is- the primary duty of the US Government should be to it's citizens- and the US Government has no duty to anybody who isn't a citizen. That is the limit.
Or perhaps it is a simple guideline saying 'pass only good laws', and NOT an enumerated power.
Looks to me like it's as much of an enumerated power as "provide for the common defense", which we pour TRILLIONS into every year.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Still can't find a job, or still can't find a job that allows them to live "their prior lifestyle" (to use your words) in a manner they feel accustomed, if not entitled to?
Still can't find a job *at all*, even after cutting their expenses back to 25% of their "prior lifestyle".
I'm in the process of changing careers, to a career that will pay, at maximum, 2/3 of what I earn now. I'm adjusting lifestyle choices, not waiting for a blue moon where I might find some magical position that would put me at parity with my pay now (for the record, moving from IT Development / Management, to Paramedic).
Good for you. What are you using to pay for the retraining, your retirement funds?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yep, I'm in Portland, OR. 6 applicants for every job, even the minimum wage ones. Of course, illegal immigrants are willing to work *below* minimum wage, and in Oregon, unemployment (at a minimum) is now $80/week, essentially setting a floor of 40 hours at $2/hr, 25% of our minimum wage.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Enforcement gap it is. By law. Information sharing between agencies about this is strictly forbidden by law. One reason this whole debate gets so frustrating; the hypocrisy of both parties and the major voices on each side of the issue.
We can't even get a decent discussion of the problem in the mainstream media, we'll never get to the "possible solutions" stage.
"legal" immigration is a scam, plain and simple. There is no "line" to wait in. There are by-country quotas. Cubans get a free pass (if they survive the journey) simply because we don't like Castro. Actors, Athletes, and celebrities have no problem getting in.
Unless you are a Native American you shouldn't be complaining about immigration. You wouldn't be here if your ancestors had to follow today's laws.
Also, based on that, I'm willing to temper my "Government can't find work for Americans" quote earlier. It appears by that chart that the Federal Government (in Baltimore and Washington DC) are the only people hiring at anything close to parity with the number of unemployed.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It would be interesting to see in 20-30 years of free flowing immigration from Mexico, if Mexicans would take on arms and declare independent states/countries within US... ? Europe is full of these scenarios where at one point immigration from neighboring countries was at a free flow, so people from poor countries populated richer in search of jobs, or land, or affordable living... and later wars ware/are being broken and land disputed. This is how Albanians from Albania got independent state of Kosovo away from Serbia by uncontrolled immigration basically. I'm all for helping those less fortunate, but if there are rules then they need to apply to all, not some. If you are going to let in 500,000 Mexican in and give them legal status, then you should also let 500,000 South Africans in and give them legal status, or have quotas that are regulated to keep good balance of ethnic diversity... RULES are important, and enforcing them is VERY IMPORTANT... If anyone cares, I have a virtual fence I wanna sell. It costs 10K, and is totally virtual - in every sense. I can make it as big or small as you want it, it only requires imagination on your part.
Looks to me like it's as much of an enumerated power as "provide for the common defense", which we pour TRILLIONS into every year.
Look some more.
Why not the workers that scab less-than-living wages from these businesses?
If you're scabbing less than living wages, then you're pretty much losing money by working. One way around this is to *be* an illegal immigrant- have a home country to go back to where costs are cheaper.
If the business were paying too little for their market, they'd have no employees.
Which is exactly what certain industries, primarily agricultural industries, have been complaining about for decades.
Honestly, I blame credit cards, but maybe that's all about to end.
Hmm, that's an interesting theory. I've got a related one- inflation is *directly* caused by a widening gap between the rich and the poor (something else that is about to end, I think rather explosively).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It is a pretty clear sign of xenophobic when people are only concerned about having a fence on ONE border... racist, really.
That's like saying avoiding a dangerous neighborhood that happens to be full of a particular race is racist. That a particular race inhabits that neighborhood is irrelevant and to assume so is racist in itself.
The reason that border is focused on is that is where the majority of unfettered immigration comes from.
Maybe because the U.S. welfare/medicare system is already overburdened and therefore wants educated/professional people who will ADD funds to the system, not suck more out.
Right, because everyone is either "educated" or on welfare. Listen, a realistic immigration policy would bring in people with exactly the skills and level of education necessary to fill the jobs which citizens cannot. If we need more academics, then we should let them in. If we need more construction workers, then we should let them in. If we need more grape-pickers, then we should let them in.
Immigration policy should not be about elitism. It should be about letting your nation's businesses operate as efficiently as possible by bringing in people who have the skills which your labour force lacks. Oh, and about preventing population decline by keeping your population growth above the replacement rate. Okay, helping out people who would be persecuted or killed in their home country is good too. But only allowing in "educated/professional" types (many of whom would be on unemployment nowadays...) is definitely not the point.
Drug dealer: "So, do you want to support the illegal mexican drug trade?"
Drug buyer: "Well, no, not really"
Drug dealer: "Oh. Well, i have these drugs, that i got, from, um, somewhere. Nowhere special. Do you want to buy them?
Drug buyer: "yes. yes i do."
I'm all for private companies bidding on Govt. contracts, but frankly as a tax paying citizen I'm freaking tired of wasted tax dollars on projects that die. While most projects within Corporate America fail to go to completion this trend needs to NOT happen with tax payer monies.
If this project failed, why did it take well over 1 billion dollars to freaking figure this out. I personnally believe that the companies that bid on these contracts have an obligation to make the project work on time and within budget and should have a penality stake in it if the project fails to work and go to completion within the budget and time frame.
If Americans could get man to the moon in 10 years, what the heck is our problem these days?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Right, as part of my "prior lifestyle" I had children. So I should stop feeding them in order to get a lower-paying job.
The fact is that a society can't be stable if too many people are out of work without a safety net. We could easily end up with the US looking like Mexico. Watch out EU, we may be sneaking into your countries in decade or two.
Not saying it isn't a problem, but dude...check your math:
15% of 6200000 students = 930000 students
Average cost per student in CA ~$8500 (http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Articles/article.asp?title=California%20comparison) for a total cost of $7.9B *not* close to $100B.
You are off by more than 1 order of magnitude.
Most estimates are that the state of CA spends ~10B total supporting illegals. A lot of money for sure, but the state budget this year is around $85B after slashing close to $50B since the recession began. Getting rid of all illegal children from the schools would be a drop in the bucket toward fixing the state budget.
The April 2010 issue of Popular Science has an article called "The All-Seeing Border" (pages 30-31), which talks about this border fence tech. Does not mention that it does not work at all. Makes me wonder if PopSci investigates what they are publishing or just throws crap on their pages.
"The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake." - Yakir Aharonov
BadAnalogyGuy has the day off. I am filling in. Yes the US market has a strong demand for drugs (that happen to be illegal per national laws), but saying this is the root cause of the violent drug trade across the border is pretty silly, almost as silly as my bad analogy. If the drugs were illegally grown in the US there would be no illegal importation problem anymore, eh?
So, honestly, what do farm subsidies have to do with illegal immigrant labor? I am legitimately curious. Also, you would need to both legalize growing/processing/selling/using AND create a nearly tariff free import policy, otherwise illegal importation of drugs will always be the cheaper method to obtain them (considering the labor here in the US is god awful expensive).
Well as to the first part, here's 25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement
The second part, well, there's always someone demanding something. Big deal.
"No, I wouldn't, by definition, because anyone capable of actually adding revenue to the country is capable of immigrating legally."
The question isn't whether such a person is "capable" but whether the US immigration system is "capable". If you think that people capable of adding revenue can easily immigrate to the US, you're badly misinformed.
Since I'm such a nice guy, I'm willing to bail out these unfortunates and swap their assets and liabilities with my own. Don't tell anyone about my good deed - I want to get my reward in heaven, not on earth.
That bigger problem is, quite simply, that we are living in a total illusion. We are told that the most beneficial members of society will get the most compensation (in order of their perceived benefit), and this motivates us to be beneficial ourselves. But who gets all the money? Those mooks from American Idol who sing poorly and clog up telephone networks (among other completely undeserving people). Yet, if we all get rich and famous by singing and dancing and swearing on TV we too can be a net-earner for our society! Except there is no way that our means of production will support that kind of lifestyle, simply because we are rewarding so many people who, honest to god, mean jack to society/prosperity/whatever.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a 'rise of the proletariat' type of person at all, but I know for sure that we are in for a free-market kick in the nuts once all our bad decisions start catching up with us.
Educated people were more likely to stay in Europe than come to America in past centuries. If you are a US citizen your ancestors were probably uneducated and poor.
"Let's just invite all 6 billion people to live here, even the deadbeats who have nothing to contribute."
Except for the actual number of people involved we essentially did that in the past and you and I are here because of it.
When I would cross over, I noticed that the virtual fence towers were using an off the shelf WiFi interface. My mig-labor-pickup van was always late, and I'd get hungry waiting. So, I would just internet-order a Pizza and have it delivered at the GPS coordinates on my cell phone. The problem I had with the virtual fence was that the pizza would be cold, and the beer warm; go figure. Maybe if Boeing would use Verizon's G3, my Pizza and Beer would taste better?
That is a different (although related) problem. Fixing that problem is the answer to those who say that we need the labor of illegal immigrants (for whatever reason they come up with). If we need the labor of illegal immigrants, then we need to change the law so that those workers can and will enter the country legally. I happen to believe that much stronger efforts should be put into limiting illegal immigration and significant steps should be put into place to allow speed up and simplify the process allowing legal immigration.
One of the annoying things is that (like in so many other areas) efforts implemented in response to demands from the public to reduce illegal immigration have often had minimal impact on illegal immigrants but created significant problems for those immigrants who obeyed the law.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No, but structuring the legal immigration process so that it's darned near impossible to immigrate unless you're highly-educated is.
Most people who want to see stronger efforts to prevent illegal immigration agree with you. They want to see the government crack down on illegal immigration and then as a separate process expand opportunities for legal immigration. It can't be done as a single process because if it is Congress will use it slip in immediate amnesty for illegal immigrants already here with all the stuff that fixes the problems to come later (and then they either won't allocate any money to implement those provisions or they will just fail to enforce them).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The implied assumption is that immigrants are worthless. You wouldn't be complaining about illegal immigration if the assumption were, instead, that each new immigrant is an added revenue source for the country.
Nonsense.
I am an example of a person who believes that a robust flow of immigrants - including poor (low-wage) immigrants - is vital to the U.S. economy and society. But who also believes that getting illegal immigration under control is essential for several different but interlocking reasons.
Two key and intertwined reasons are the poisonous effect that high rates of illegal immigration has on U.S. political discourse, and the crippling effect it has on formulating immigration policies that are both fair to all who seek entry, and effective at achieving U.S. national goals. Illegal immigrants are a scapegoat, but unfortunately the issue has proved to be highly effective at blocking any number of important policies that the U.S. sorely needs. And this issue regularly poisons policy debates about legal immigration.
After watching this subject being used for three decades as a means of corrupting civil discourse and rational policy making I have concluded that it is very important to bring illegal immigration under control.
Will U.S. row and tree crop agriculture collapse without the low wage labor of illegal immigrants? Possibly it will - in which case the necessity of bringing in these low wage workers as legal and properly protected workers will be instantly evident, and agribusiness will see to it that appropriate measures are passed into law. This will likely have the beneficial result of better working conditions, and better wages for the workers (while still low), and pushing up low end wages for all workers (a good thing for Americans in general, even if big business and its minions in Congress hate it).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I don't have current knowledge, but when I was in college there was no discrimination against my working the jobs that immigrants do. I just *REALLY* wanted to find a nicer job. Eventually I did, but yuck. The labor is both difficult and unpleasant. A decade earlier my mother had the same experience. (I worked in a cannery, she picked cotton.)
That experience has caused me to support a mimum wage that is a fixed fraction of the income of the wealthiest person in the country. And that covers ALL jobs. Including piecework. If your piecework rates fall below the minimum wage, you still get the minimum wage.
I do acknowledge that his might require import taxes, as I also want the economy to be balanced. And the taxes. But the disparity between the lowest paid and the highest paid is excessive. (I'm not quite sure how to figure those who are unemployed. But I am sure that it should apply to babes in arms as well as those who just don't have a job. Probably half the minimum wage or some such. Or figure what it costs to maintain someone in prison, and pay them 3/4 of that for just not being a criminal.)
N.B.: a part of the reason for this plan is that families where one of the adults stays home with the children raise children who are much better citizens. (On the average.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Since these people are already here, as you point out, the logical solution would be to allow them to stay legally and pay taxes just like other workers.
I'm sure that when I was 12, I was picking crops right next door, and that my son doesn't have the same option to learn to work.
Only part of that is because I moved to the city- they used to bus kids out to the berry fields as well.
Is the other part because working when you're under 14 is illegal? And that working in hazardous environments (like harvest) when you're under 18 (given some exceptions for apprentices) illegal?
I fat-fingered a zero. But "most" estimates are wrong -- or do not include all the costs. Your estimate from http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Articles/article.asp?title=California%20comparison is from 05-06. It's closer to $10k-$12K+ now (which is where I came up with $10 billion). Also, the numbers reported to your ed-data study do not include the total cost per child -- at least not in CA. CA reports cost of education for children in Juvenal Detention separately, but the cost comes from the same education pool, for example. That's a huge expense.
My estimate came out around $10 billion. JUST for education. And those JUST based on 2004 estimates of illegal immigrant children.
Toss on medical care, food stamps, subsidized housing, welfare and such, the cost grows. Toss on the increased housing expense everyone pays (not through taxes, but supply-demand on housing) because of the additional population, and the cost grows. Apartments in LA go for close to $800/mo for a low end studio in a not-that-great neighborhood. I'd be spending close to $2k/mo for a 2 bedroom for my family if I didn't own a home.
Tack on the lost state and city revenue due to illegal garage conversions (HUGE problem in the SF Valley) and houses with 20 + people in them -- lost revenue to licensed businesses due to illegal street and alley vendors (who collects sales tax from a unlicensed vendor pushing a cart?)
Your $10 billion is so low-ball -- and based on a 2004 study. And it's low ball even for then.
Great. I agree with you. But nowhere is that all made clear when you simply talk about "worthless immigrants".
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Have you ever considered that the US has enough domestic workers to fill its requirements for manual labor? I say this as someone that is directly affected by illegal immigration. I do residential carpentry, and I've watched my employer file bankruptcy because we simply can not compete with illegal labor. It's not like we're demanding a fortune (My best year I netted slightly above the poverty line), but we're not willing to put in 84 hour weeks and do work that is in violation of the building code. Even if we were willing to put in 84 hour weeks, we wouldn't be able to compete on cost when we're paying out 44 hours/week of overtime. If the process were less "long and cumbersome", and these illegals did flock to the immigration office and were turned away because we already have a large pool of domestic labor, do you really think that they'd be returning to their countries of origin? If so, I have some property to sell you.
1%~=drop in the bucket
>10%=significant
I would suggest that's "part" of the "logical solution".
It's impractical to "send them all packing". I can't see it happening.
But I completely oppose this until the border is secured against further illegal crossings.
Want a solution that will solve MOST of the problem?
Everyone already here, stays here.
All employees get their W-2s validated (verify mutliple jobs aren't being done by the same SSN)
o A simple letter to business asking for a copy of picture ID or something to verify any discrepancies)
Fine and Imprisonment for any employer who fails to validate W2s and who continues to employee someone with a fake SSN.
And finally --
INSTANT green-card and resident status for ANY undocumented worker (and their family already here) who turns in their boss (or 1099 worker, or under-the-table boss, or whatever) for hiring/paying them.
There's your virtual fence.
But thanks for entirely missing my point- that if this is so, this is *MORE* reason for the "browner" (though I know plenty of whites with black hair) people not to take drugs.
Oh, I got your point and I addressed it. Apparently my response was too subtle. So let me be more direct -- "Sieg Heil!"
It's also the gov't's job to seek out and prosecute the employers of illegal immigrants, and not turn a blind eye to it because that cheap immigrant labor helps its corporate sponsors keep labor costs down.
What disturbs me most about the anti-immigrant backlash of the last few years is that so much vitriol is directed at the illegal immigrants while little is said about those who employ them. Is all this illegal immigration a conspiracy of poor migrant workers from Mexico who hoodwink innocent US employers into hiring them, or do US employers have the clout to lobby/bribe gov't into lax enforcement because it is in their economic interest to keep labor costs low? Does anyone believe these people would risk so much to cross the border if US employers faced any real risk in hiring them?
But no, let's focus the blame on the poor Mexicans, because, well, they're just so much easier to hate. But it's not racism or xenophobia, no sirree!!
I don't know who is legal and who is illegal. We do e-verify but that only covers new workers. Regarding the governemnt, they arrest supposedly illegal immigrants, and then they let them go. At that point, they should be free to work. Also, why do assholes like you propose requiring an ID card to hire someone but not a card to go to school or get health care? Somehow, you assume people won't come here for free school and healthcare and all the other perks. You assume if we take Manny's $8 dishwashing job that his family will pack up and leave. Leave to where? If someone is leaving because they don't have a job, I would assume they would only go to where they do have a job. Where does Manny have a job if not here? Why should employers do jack shit when the police, government run schools/hospitals/welfare don't do anything? How about we require an ID card to go to church or receive any church charity? That would help with the strongly Catholic immigrants. No, fuckfaces like you want to blame the people who make jobs and manufacture. FYI, we lost a lot of our white/black/alcoholic workforce to drug testing. Thank you feds! How about immunity from job discrimination complaints if we hire someone under this ID plan? Seriously, let's get back to arresting and jailing and law officer that lets an illegal immigrant be anything other than deported. You want to do something about it? No. You want to find scapegoats. We pay over minimum wage and if our employees or temps falsified their papers, then they won't get SSN benefits. You have a problem, the feds can say to fire people. But they don't. Guess what? I can't fire someone for having poor English or not being a citizen. The people you want to treat like animals have rights.
The expatriation of stupid people is fine with me. While we're at it, let's cut loose the parts of the country that aren't really contributing anything besides preachers and stock-car drivers. These two programs could even be combined.
What we need is fewer "programs" (decrease public sector) and more freedom (increase private sector).
How does more private sector mean more freedom? If anything, corporations are just as much into restricting freedom as the government is (MPAA, RIAA, etc)
Just to add: when my parents immigrated here from Iran in 1979, I was born on US soil a year later and learned how to speak Persian first at home while learning English in school. Once I started going to school though, I was fully immersed in American culture, so I had no problems picking it up. I still speak Persian fluently, but to native Persians, I actually have a noticeable American accent.
My mother's intention, of course, wasn't to keep me from assimilating. She wanted me to grow up here as comfortably as possible. She just didn't want me to grow up clueless about my history and I'm glad it worked out this way - it allowed me to also be familiar with the language and culture of my ancestors. It doesn't make me better than anyone else, it just gives me a different cultural perspective on things.
It's much harder for older immigrants who come here to learn the language and culture because they're so set in their ways, but it can still be done as long as you want to and are genuinely interested. Those who have no interest in the language or culture will never learn it, and frankly, I'm not sure why they bother to immigrate to a country that they're not interested in unless they had no choice in the matter (asylum). If I want to move to Norway, Japan, or Chile, I would certainly want to learn the culture and language as fast as I can -- preferably even start before moving there.
The Russian mother you spoke to, her son won't pick up much culture from Sesame Street or Barney. He'll pick everything up through social interactions in school, unless he has trouble adjusting. I grew up with neighborhood kids telling me that they didn't want to be my friend because I had dark hair, and that I should go back to where I came from. They didn't care that I was exactly like them in every way except for appearance. All they cared about was the fact that I looked different than them, even though I really wasn't. It was tough hearing that as a child, but that didn't stop me from being American.
Anyway, there's nothing wrong with missing the small town homogeneous culture. Even immigrants in America get the same way when they go back home and visit relatives. It doesn't sound like you hate the immigrants, you just miss what you're used to and that's perfectly acceptable. Humans do everything possible to resist change.
Best "String" Ever!
Can't we just hire some cheap Mexican labor to patrol the border ?
There is much to what you say, but I think you are missing an important point. Wages are being depressed by outsourcing and corporate shenanigans of various sorts. But the cost to keep oneself alive is not falling. My wages fall, but does my mortgage/rent? My hours are cut, but my health insurance is skyrocketing. Etc, etc.
emt 377 emt 4
No, it's not that hard to learn another language, especially Spanish/English, which both belong to the Indo-European language tree.
I started learning Spanish (Spain Spanish, since I'm European). After 14 months of learning Spanish I gave a technical talk in that language in Bilbao last year. Now after around 20 months, native Spanish speakers tell me I write better than most natives, I can enjoy watching dramas on Spanish TV (some are harder than others, I still have trouble with things with lots of coloquilaisms). I can't talk anywhere near as fast as a native but I can hold a conversation. I don't live in Spain, all this has been done with a bit of study every day.
I'm 38 this year.
It is a total myth that:
(a) adults can't learn another language easily
(b) English speakers aren't good at learning languages
Our brains are powerful learning machines. All it takes is application, and finding a fun and interesting way to learn a language. I'm not a natural at language learning - with 7 years of French at school, I can hardly speak a word of that language (basically, because school didn't make it fun so I didn't have the motivation). However, I found fun ways to learn Spanish and I fully expect to have near fluency within the next 14-18 months.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Check your math. You are off by more than an order of magnitude. Multiplying it out with your numbers and a number from the state of $8400 per student comes to 7.6B *not* 100B. The total budget for the state of CA is ~85B after being chopped by more than $40B since the start of the recession. Assuming enforcement is completely free, you could recoup 10% of the total state budget. Illegals are not the primary cause of CA budget woes.
Or maybe The French should not have put it there.
you mean the way we have this terrible problem with illegal importation to avoid heavy taxes on, say, cigarettes?
Well, I was trying to link you, but now that link has been strengthened since you didn't disavow an affinity with the fair-and-balanced crew. My response wasn't at all hateful, was it? Did I rant at you vehemently? I was going for disdain, just to be clear. Maybe I'm not good with expressing emotions in forums, I'll work on that, thanks.
Now that we've gotten past the diversions and ad-hominem attacks, back to the off-topic argument at hand: You didn't provide citations so I'll assume the numbers you quoted are PFA. Here's why I'm finding the total CA budget at 100 B and the USA Department of Education at 47B, you're saying that CA is using its whole budget on educating...? Care to try again? Or would you like to insult my method of presentation or intellect instead?
Maybe you weren't 'deliberately including "legal US resident children,"' (see? there you go again, excluding them, that's ok, its a common tactic not hard to call out), as I said, you did include these _US_ Citizens_ in your original argument. More, you're still trying to deport legal US Citizens, read up on the law, it's what they are. Whether you and Hannity like it or not, they are, and you can't legally remove them from the country. So suck it up and pay taxes, or move to a country that works more like how you'd like it to work. Don't like that argument either, right? I know, I'm unfair, then again, you're transparent.
Only I can judge you.
Pro tip: if you want to be taken seriously, especially when posting as AC, try refraining from (a) calling someone "asshole" and "fuckface", and (b) attributing positions never expressed to those "like you".
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
One of L. Sprague de Camp's fantasy novels features a tribe of barbarians who discuss all political issues twice: once sober, once drunk.
I think this is an excellent idea. Who's going to lobby Congress?
While I agree it would be totally awesome of congress also discussed things sober, I am wondering how on earth we're going to get them to lay down the power long enough to sober up...
</cynic>
This will likely have the beneficial result of better working conditions, and better wages for the workers (while still low), and pushing up low end wages for all workers (a good thing for Americans in general, even if big business and its minions in Congress hate it).
And what fantasy land do you live in where increasing the number of workers results in rising wages? Wait, let me guess, California?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"Is this the same logic that says the problem of Mexican drugs being imported into the US is the US's fault?"
It IS the US's fault. Prohibition makes drugs profitable. Refusal to broaden the legal recreational drug market beyond nicotine and alcohol ensures those who want something different will reinforce the black market ecosystem. Punitive policies that criminalize victimless acts renew the population of criminals by sending users to prison for advanced criminal training while closing the door to social reintegration. The drug racket pays organized crime groups throughout the world to penetrate the same US security whose "barrier to entry" keeps prices high enough to make killing the competition reasonable conduct. Far from mitigating damage, US drug policy causes more social destruction than drugs themselves did when they were freely available.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Well, let's look at something at the top of the normal list, shall we?
What's at the top of your list? What do you think we should cut?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Every cut reduces freedom a little bit- because taking economic responsibility for yourself instead of paying for it with taxes reduces freedom.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's in the same bloody sentence! How could it not be equal to providing for the common defense?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I've had to try to fall back on minimum wage jobs since college (I was unemployed October 2001 to December 2003). The constant I got was "you are overqualified" once they did a credit check and found my student loans- but the reality was, every kitchen in Oregon speaks Spanish.
I'm all for import taxes and a minimum wage that is a set fraction of the maximum income.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Is the other part because working when you're under 14 is illegal?
Apparently not- I see plenty of illegal immigrant children still in the fields.
And that working in hazardous environments (like harvest) when you're under 18 (given some exceptions for apprentices) illegal?
Some crops are hazardous environments, but I doubt strawberries are. They're low to the ground, best picked by hand, and I've even seen 8 year olds do it. But there is a definite bias against white children- who are too demanding
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Being addicted to drugs *reduces* one's freedom, not enhances it. So I guess that makes YOU the nazi, wanting to addict everybody to drugs.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My dear friend, please attempt to empathize with a guy or gal that may only speak zapoteco, mixteco or nahuatl and that is perhaps a great worker but never even had primary school. Concepts like "fun" and even "adult" may not have the same meaning to them than to you.
NO SIG
illegal immigration isn't harmful per si
No, it is harmful per se. It's exactly equivalent to someone moving into your house under the guise of renting a room and then having kids and deciding to live there forever and wanting to trade in exchange for mowing your lawn or something. Oh and if you can't find enough work for them (and their five kids) to do they'll probably steal your stuff so you'll need to hire a security guard also.
if the immigration process weren't so long and cumbersome
The immigration process is cumbersome because Americans have a standard of living twice that of Mexicans. If we didn't make it difficult to immigrate here, we would have the same (low) standard of living.
The USA doesn't have a 0% unemployment rate either.
Well, we would if worthless Mexicans hadn't invaded our country and bred us into poverty, destroying our economy.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Your math is off by one order of magnitude.
For the sake of simplicity, let's stick with 1 million students and $10,000 cost per student. That's in the range of costs you presented. 1,000,000 * $10,000 = $10,000,000,000. That's $10 billion, not $100 billion. While the number of people it takes to generate that much money is still significant, it is far less than those needed to generate $100 billion.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
It wasn't really about making the people who fear immigration feel *better* - it was making the politicians who feed on them feel *popular*. That's not just elected politicians; it's also the right-wing radio jocks and anti-immigrant lobbyists and the folks who thought Israel's apartheid wall was really cool and wanted one of their own.
Building a "virtual wall" looked really cool and high-tech, so the politicians thought it would be a good sell, and it would get a lot less flack from environmentalists and local politicians in border towns (not that the promoters care about the environment unless it looks good, but they care about being forced to do paperwork and have years of delay for their boondoggle.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Makes sense to me. Or do you expect people to be vitriolic against the employers? The same employers people will have to apply for work at?
Also, why is Mexico poor again? There's a wildly successful country across the border. Why not craft laws to be more like them?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
It was pretty much a scam from the beginning, intended to bolster the image of the politicians who sell the Anti-Terrorism and Anti-Immigrant lines to the public. They're no longer very relevant, now that we've got the Economic Crisis and Health Care around to keep the politicians and public busy, and it's a lot less disruptive to let something like this die out now that it's no longer interesting than to kill off the whole logistics chain they'd have needed for a construction project building an actual physical wall. Nobody really cares that it's gone, and none of the front-line politicians need to take responsibility for killing it, and we can push it all back under the rug where it belongs.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's not written on the statue. The poem, "The New Colossus," is on a plaque inside and wasn't added until 1903 an effort spearheaded by a friend of the late poet. The poem refers to immigrants through Ellis Island and what was then two separate cities... Brooklyn and New York. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus
The problem of illegal Mexican immigration promotes poor working conditions, depresses wages, robs young Americans of entry level jobs, brings organized crime (look at CA crime/prison stats), reintroduces 3rd world diseases and more.
If you have millions of people flowing in from one country into another unregulated by law what is going to happen?
There are MILLIONS of people illegally in the country who do not share its common values, heritage, language and live their lives with impunity as business caters to them through bilingualism, separate media (the infamous Noticias 62 billboard with "Los Angeles, CA" crossing out "CA" in favor of "Mexico") and BILLIONS in dollars ($18 billion in 2005) earned in the States flowing into Mexico. All those illegals wiring money back to Mexico is that nations second largest source of foreign income after crude oil sales.
Imagine how things would be in Southwest and California if that $18 BILLION stayed in the region?
Bush's idea that all the folks coming across are just good people looking for work and a better is BULL. We have immigration laws for a reason. We *cannot* take everyone. We should *not* take everyone. If somehow we need laborers to work our agricultural fields, we can have a legal, managed program for that similar to what once existed in the 60s.
It's better for the US and it's better for the workers too. Those who raise accusations of "xenophobia" are at best willfully ignorant of the facts or, worse, looking forward to exploiting the underground population and consequences for personal and political gains.
Clearly you haven't looked into what it actually takes for that legal process to succeed.
Under the current immigration laws it's very expensive - every filing has a fee attached and it runs into many thousands of dollars before you even qualify to try to gain citizenship. But that's only if you fit into certain classifications and there's a visa available for you in the first place. Here's something for you to ponder: if you're trying to come to the USA from - let's say the Philippines - then the current wait time for a visa number is over NINE YEARS. You're going to need that before you do anything else here and it just gets harder, more time consuming, and more expensive as you go along.
Saying that there are legal ways that allow foreigners to become American citizens overlooks the simple facts: most Americans couldn't afford to pay their way to citizenship. Those illegal immigrants you're howling about don't even dream of having that much money. They don't qualify for a visa, they can't pay the fees, they absolutely can not obtain that citizenship or even a visa that allows them to work here.
Let's tell the truth about this for a change: that "legal process" that would allow your average Mexican laborer to become an Amnerican citizen DOES NOT EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD. The choices they have if they want to come to the USA to make a better living for themselves and their family back home are limited. They could enter using a visitor visa (very hard to obtain) and "forget" to leave. Or they can sneak across the border - the sneak in option is preferable because the INS doesn't have a record of your name, fingerprints, etc.
I'm not saying that entering this country illegally in any way is a good thing. But if we're going to discuss this issue, let's consider the truth instead of some glib talking points that obscure rather than enlighten.
It's in the basement of the statue.
Just sayin'.
You can't fix the Ponzi scheme by propagating it. The declining birth rate will make us face reality. Capitalism is doomed to fail. It's a failed design. It may appear superior as long as you can sustain the growth. But the resources of this planet are not limitless. Eventually something has got to give. It's going to be a pretty fuckin' horrible century. My only fear is that eventually we won't change a thing, we'll just settle for a cycle of thinning the herd every X generations. Followed by generations of growth.
It's truly a testament to the demise of Slashdot that you were modded to -1. You speak the truth.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
You can't fix the Ponzi scheme by propagating it. The declining birth rate will make us face reality. Capitalism is doomed to fail.
You've got it all backwards. The failing Ponzi scheme is our flirtation with socialism. Right now we're funding more and more entitlements with debt that future generations will have to repay (or suffer the consequences of defaulting or, equivalently, devaluing). To fix the problem, we need a combination of cutting back on the socialist entitlements and a significant growth in GDP so that we can dig our way out of the hole we're in. An influx of immigrants can help fuel GDP growth.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Sadly, we removed the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for people born in Ireland. It now only applies to children born to at least one Irish national.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland
i wish i could stop
No, it's not a bit like saying anything like what you said about murder. Your "thinking" is bizarre. The "problem" of Mexican drugs is only a "problem" because of the United States' immoral laws prohibiting the sales and use of certain psycho-active substances. Please attempt to shed your programming, and start to think for yourself! Are you a slave or a free human being? What's that? A free human being, you say? How can I tell?
Social Credit would solve everything...
As a non-American can you tell me why do jobs do a credit check on you? What does you having a student loan have to do with it? I don't understand
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
What bothers me is people try to make this about race or "xenophobia". It's not. Its about national sovereignty. Why would it be bad to protect our southern border in the exact same way that Mexico protects it's southern border?
You have obviously never crossed that border. These are all things I have done in the last year:
I have been to almost every country in Europe and many in Central and South America. Nowhere are immigration procedures as onerous as in the US, and I say this as a US citizen. I am sorry, but xenophobia is the only explanation I can find for this discrepancy.
It's sad that $1.4 billion had to be spent on the project before the discovery that this poorly conceived idea would not work.
Or perhaps it's sad that they were able to conceal the fact that it wouldn't work until we had been screwed out of $1.4 billion.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Fixed fraction of the wealthiest person is impractical, because that changes so much and so rapidly and randomly.
What one could do, would be fixed fraction of the average income in the top 10% or top 25%.
Most Americans aren't aware of it, but the income-differences in USA really -are- grotesque as compared to 95% of the developed world. GINI is a measure of income-inequality where 1 would mean only the richest person had income at all, everyone else earns zero, and 0 would mean everyone has identical income.
Real countries are somewhere in between, offcourse. The tendency is for dictatorships, fascist countries and poor countries to have high indexes (only a tiny elite has good education and good income), whereas developed countries where reasonable education is available to all, has much lower indexes.
Have a look at the map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png
Most countries as developed as USA are at under 0.30, 0.30 is the average for european union for example, and the tendency is that the poorer countries are more unequal whereas the richest countries such as Sweden are around 0.25
USA ? 0.45 -- surrounded by countries such as the ivory coast, uruguay and uganda.
In short, if you're poor in USA, you're as far away from the rich-elite as you are in typical third-world countries that are ruled by a tiny elite that holds all the priviledges.
Grotesque.
Because you know (or should know) that the existing US legislation makes a mockery of the actual day to day situation in the border and the economic realities faced by both employers and immigrants
Before the US decided to live in a haze of dope induced political and social indifference (no to socialized care! In which planet you people live?) we didn't have any drug problems in Mexico.
No trafficking, no cartel drugs, no drug dependency.
I am not goin to disentangle what is first, supply or demand, at the end they reinforce each other, in this case in a descendent spiral of addiction and death.
The hypocrysy is to consider countries like Mexico evil suppliers and consumer countries like innocent victims of the evil traffickers.
There is enough blame to throw around at both sides, so the blame game should be replaced by mutual, *respectful* cooperation.
Mexico tried a shy attempt to tackle the local addiction problem by decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs. The law was swiftly vetoed by the Mexican President when he was told in no uncertain terms by Bush that Mexico's aid to combat drug trafficking may be reviewed. Scores of our young men and women, ill equiped and trained, die every year figthing the drug traffickers, and offten the only thanks we get for such sacrifice is the insulting "certification" process in the US congress.
So the US, as a great mirror of the small drug deal, buys the dope, smokes it and is oblivious to all the chain of human misery necessary to supply his vice.
Bad news ladies and gents north of the border: when you buy dope around your neighborhood it gets rough just outside of your front door, as it is, the most abject drug related violence is in the Mexican side of the border (when you are anywhere in Mexico far away from the border, the situation is almost normal, that should give the US voting public and their inept legislators and law enforcers a clue), if you think it will stay there you are deluded (and you can keep deluding yourselves that you border controls will stop this).
As long as the US continues its puritanical (drug addicts are not criminals, they are sick people) and militaristic approach (there is a surprise for you) to drug dependency and drug dealing, we will continue to suffer, in both sides of the border the malaise of drug related social illnesses.
People in border towns give the jobs to unskilled labour because they can pay them less.
Why? Because they know they can exploited illegal workers (and we know why illegal workers are in the US: poverty, ironically in many cases caused also by US commercial policies or even by political decisions, or do you think Cubans would have flooded Miami if Cuba could stand on its own feet without the idiotic embargo?)
But the US public is part of that game. Do you want your $0.99 burger? Well, the only way is to have the cheapest labour possible on the avatoirs where the McCows are slaugthered. It is that simple. Kick all the illegal immigrants out and many of the cheap prices you enjoy for multitude of goods and services (even if you are in an area with little or no illegal immigration) will raise.
If USians were half serious about this, they would be willing to pay the price, as it is it is all wink-wink, smile, turn a blind eye, let Juanita, the $10 a day nanny, take care of the kids and Pablo, the 10 bucks a day gardener, keep those rose bushes in shape.
>>>With a 10% unemployment rate why do you think businesses still hire illegals, millions of them?
Because hiring an intruder is cheaper than hiring an American at minimum wage (plus the required SSI, Medicare, and other paperwork).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
This is 100% true.
DC metro area Wendy's worker: hispanic woman in her 40s that speaks little or no English
Rural Illinois Wendy's worker: white teenager (either sex) who speaks English
I have a big problem with people who don't speak English that have a job that requires communication in English to customers. It shouldn't be nigh-on impossible to order a bagel, un-toasted, with extra butter at a bagel shop due to the language barrier. At least hire ONE guy that speaks decent English so I can communicate my needs.
There are PLENTY of Americans willing to do these jobs. Especially with unemployment around 13% here...
Is this the same logic that says the problem of Mexican drugs being imported into the US is the US's fault? Sure, there needs to be demand, but this is a bit like saying that murderers wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for all of these *living* people around!
Honestly, I believe the problem needs to be solved on both sides of the border. Americans are willing to pay a fraction of what they would to a local, to do a menial job. Mexicans are willing to risk life and limb just to get a chance to do that job. Something is very wrong with every part of this situation.
wait, you almost suggested a socialist idea, and you know that's bad thinking these days.
I mean, imagine a world where everyone had a home and food and didn't have to go without the basic necessities? Where everyone had access to healthcare and schooling?
Be seeing you...
The truth of the matter is, US immigration policy is far more lenient than most countries in the world
How many places have you lived and worked? I'm just curious, because I've lived and worked in 5 different countries (with 6 month - 1 year contracts in other places as well) so far, and I've _never_ found anywhere as hard to legally emigrate to as the USA.
The worst is the risk involved in trying to emigrate to the USA - for most places, I've been able to move there with a clear understanding of the route to settlement and citizenship, including requirements, timings and procedural steps. Short of winning the green card lottery, I can't see any predictable way to emigrate to the USA.
It's really not more lenient than most countries in the world, sorry.
When I was a kid, I had various paper routes for years.
Funny thing now is, i don't see kids with paper routes. I see adults with a car doing a full time jobs worth of paper routes.
are the adults illegal aliens? I don't know, but they might play that song on the radio.
Oh ya, Genesis. I went there.
Be seeing you...
I am an American who legally immigrated to the UK and all government forms are printed in many languages that are not even found within the EU, such as Hindi and Chinese. Legal, illegal and asylum seeking immigrants to the UK have the right to demand services in their native language. While admittedly not everyone agrees with it, there are a many other countries that aren't so openly hostile to immigrants.
How are those taxes treating you?
probably better then us here in america.
they might pay more, but at least they get something out of it.
Be seeing you...
Pick on the Mexicans all you want, but there are several small towns in Missouri where the meat-packing plant hired up a bunch of Chinese.
The Mexican border fence will do nothing to keep them out. The Stupid Mongo-ians keep tearing down our shitty wall!
The USA doesn't have a 0% unemployment rate either.
Well, we would if worthless Mexicans hadn't invaded our country and bred us into poverty, destroying our economy.
No, you wouldn't. I can't believe you'd be narrow-minded enough to blame the several poor economic decisions of the American government and corporations on illegal immigration.
Might I chance that you're a Republican?
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Sorry, it was a typo on my part. I meant to say there is no legal process that will allow them to become an American citizen.
I completely agree with what you say, and am well aware of it. Thank you for spelling it out for everyone because I think things need to change and most people don't understand the problem.
Two other countries for 3-4 years, and visited several more for shorter periods. And yeah, the red tape might be a fuck story, but the actual qualifications to immigrate are far more lenient.
Minimum wage jobs do a credit check as a part of the vetting process now- I'm not sure what the assumptions of the Human Resources Department are with lower scores, but having student loans means you had some education, which gives them an excuse to say you're overqualified for the job and skip over you in favor of some other applicant.
Such things happen when there are 6 applicants for every job.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not. But you'd be right in thinking that kids are being pushed out of these jobs in favor of adults because there is a labor surplus on the market overall.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Millions of jobs have been eliminated over the past few years, what work exactly are people supposed to find? Cost of living means no American can compete with an immigrant sending money back to the third world.
The problem is that the people in charge are unwilling to make any move that would restructure the economy toward more sustainable growth patterns.
Maybe those shit jobs that "americans don't want" *should* pay more. Supply and demand - if you can't find anyone willing to do X job for what you are willing to pay, you pay more or that job doesn't get done. Instead, several powerful lobbying groups cheat, by artificially (and unsustainably) increasing the number of people willing to do the job - artificially and unsustainably increasing the supply of labor. Which would work, except they won't work forever at those rates, so even more immigrant labor must be snuck in next year.
Yes, it will suck having to pay more for produce, housecleaning, etc. that require cheap simple manual labor, but it will be a sustainable economy (once a true equilibrium is reached). the reduced outflow of cash *directly to Mexico* alone would be a significant boost to the US economy.
How are you going to get them sobered up?
Tell them their mistress and wife both arrived, and their major campaign contributor just took a plea deal in exchange for testimony.
What exactly did they do with that $1.4 Billion dollars then? I know wire is expensive and all but $1.4 Billion?
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
Really? Is that really how fucking stupid you are?
I'm complaining about immigration and a destroyed economy, and you think I'm a fucking Republican?
How old are you? Judging by your uid, I'd guess around twelve.
Nevermind, let me give you a history lesson. You see, there is absolutely no fucking difference between Republicans and Democrats in the US. No matter which is in power, they both happily hold hands and fuck over America, the one to benefit corporate interests, and the other because they are fucking retarded.
And, yes, if Republicans had done anything in the eight years they were in power to stem immigration or imbalanced trade or anything else the federal government was fucking created to do, then most of their other idiotic policies like subsidized unregulated banking and retarded unwinnable wars and tax breaks to help the wealthy flee the sinking ship that is America would have had little or no consequence to the average person, instead of completely decimating the middle class and guaranteeing decades of debt and depression supporting a new permanent underclass and a new faux-constitutional-scholar president who instead of actually changing any of them can only manage to grow fucking watermelons on the white house lawn and print money to hand out to his friends like some sort of fucking third world despot.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"make it so they have no reason to come here?"
Like shoot them on site. (i.e. in the USA)
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
If you really want to fix the problem of people using services without paying for them it takes one simple change. FairTax. With that in place you get charge the illegal workers tax. You get to charge the drug dealers tax. Any illegal industry will have to pay its portion of the taxes. The best part with the illegal immigrants is that since they aren't legal citizens they won't be entitled to the monthly rebate of tax and so we can discourage them from being here illegally because they don't get the rebate.
Sort of like our relationship with China, and Japan/etc. previously. Cheap goods need cheap labor among other things. And the price we actually pay is lost opportunity, lost capital, and diminished expectations.
Except for the cheap stuff, of course.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yeah, you can easily cross borders between rich European countries. It's not like the EU's thrown open its borders to Africa.
Ya got that right.
I don't think that the Scandinavian countries really qualify as all that rich, though. Other than the small amount of North Sea oil, they're the textbook case of people in a marginal habitat with few resources, but who have done a surprisingly good job of things, mostly due to behaving a bit more sensibly that much of the rest of the world. They weren't always that way, though. Watch just about any Bergman film for examples. ;-)
It's also not surprising to find the percentages of the Scandinavian countries' populations who are living and working in countries further south. OTOH, I've been in that part of the world in the summer, and it's a really pleasant place to be during those few months. But it's easy to see the signs that they're not all that rich.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
... highex landmines WOULD'VE been a MUCH BETTER choice...
woohoo, random Mexican infiltration and violence.. Yay!
Fuck the little shits. Build a REAL fucking WALL mounted with AUTOMATED defences ffs!
What the market is offering will always be the lowest they can pay and still get workers. If they had no workers at the wage they offered, they would raise the price they offered, or invest in automation to replace a bunch of extremely low wage low skill jobs with a few better paying high skill jobs. Saying people in America "won't" do the work is ridiculous. They aren't offering a price that makes it worthwhile to an American. It's not as if Mexicans magically have more tolerance for difficult work, it's the fact that the wage they get away with offering is so low that an American living in America could never hope to support a family on it. Somehow agriculture and construction still happens in developed countries without access to the mythical super-human super-cheap Mexican migrant. In many cases, the American may be legally prohibited from even trying to get these jobs, because the wage is below what he is legally allowed to work for.
If I built a hospital, and offered jobs for doctors at $10/hour, would I have any takers? Of course not, $10 hour would not cover the expenses and risks of being a doctor, not to mention a lifetime of work at $10/hour would never pay off the cost of medical school. Does that mean Americans are unwilling to become doctors? Should we import anyone from 3rd world countries that claims to be a doctor and is willing to work for $10?
I'm not against immigration, indeed I strongly believe our entire system should be ripped out and replaced with a simpler system that results in guaranteed citizenship after a few years (immigrants who can't vote are not as invested in the future and prosperity of our country, and can easily be intimidated by the threat of deportation). When people immigrate here, especially people with advanced education and skills, and want to stay here and build a family and life here, we are the stronger and better for it. Constantly importing the cheapest labor the world has to offer, and sending them back as soon as the job is done, is a race to the bottom.
If Mexicans want to lobby for changes in American politics, they should probably lobby for an end to the misguided "war on drugs" of which they are a major casualty. Because American politicians refuse to admit they made a mistake, they have created a massive source of revenue to feed criminal organizations and corruption in Mexico. That is hurting more Mexicans, and causing more damage to the Mexican economy (presumably Mexico does not want to be Americas source for migrant farm workers at slave wages forever) then our immigration policy ever could.
If you don't drink (Johnny Walker/White Horse/Jack Daniels) you're not a REAL American
Jolly Wanker, you say? I thought that was more of a waste product from the chemical industry. Of course, seen from that angle, perhaps it makes sense, "Don't throw pearls to pigs" and all that.
What is the use of a virtual purveyor of stolen goods, any way? Or are we talking about ebay?
Judging by your uid
Which, obviously, is a great way to judge everything - especially age, since every person in the planet is mandated by the UN to sign up to /. on their twelfth birthday or be forever banned from the Internet.
I'm sorry to have disagreed with you. Now that I understand the methodology you employ in making all your fantastic assumptions, the only rational conclusion I can come to is that you must always be absolutely right about everything.
Judging from the amount of profanity and general tone of your post, might I chance that you are not just a Republican, but also a redneck?
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.