Point 4: I would be willing to bet that every single one of those kids knows a word in english.
Point 5: These "anchor babies" are just as American as you are and have all the same rights. If you don't like education, just say it. I would personally rather fund teachers than killers.
Point 9: More obviously BS than any other point! There is no way that you can quantify a variable like "Suppressed american wages"...
Point 10: This is racist and presumptuous. For instance, there are plenty of white illegal aliens! Perhaps you have a kid? Well then who's to say whether or not he is going to be a criminal when he grows up? Not somebody on a sailing forum, that's for sure!
Point 11: "Terrorist Countries" are you effing kidding me? Define "Terrorist Country", this is bigoted nationalist rhetoric if I have ever heard it!
There are many other points here that I find untenable, but I find that the counter arguments I presented were the stronger ones.
Quote:
1. Suppression of wages...so, every time we invent a machine or a new hybrid of plant which makes bigger fruit, easier to pick, or automates something - well, SOMEONE is losing out. I remember hearing this in the 1960's - that computers and robots would take our jobs!
You know what? They did, and we are much better off for it.
Take it from me, you can't "suppress" wages down too much lower than the GOP and Big Business has done in the last 30 years.
2. I'll bet the guy who wrote this BS smokes a lot of that illegal dope that comes across. America is the best market in the world for dope......for a reason!
3. HOW DARE THEY send back money to their families? Why, they should work and then give it to me. After all, make no mention of all the things that they actually PAY while they are here:
Rent
Utilities
Taxes (gas, sales, etc.)
In fact, they keep a lot of Americans employed servicing their needs.
So, we should get angry about some hard working dude making $10 an hour for picking twice as fast as we could, and then sending $5 of it home to his poor mom?
BUT, we should cheer when Dick Cheneys company and thousands of other American corporations move their HQ to others countries to AVOID paying taxes?
Hey, every time YOU buy something from China, YOU are suppressing American wages. And, you are sending your money overseas.
The problem is simply this. There are actual problems with our immigration policies - problems which need fixing. But as long as folks keep accepting and repeating all the BS that comes around by email, they are not fixing anything. In fact, they are making things worse by muddying up the problems and the solutions.
Heck, even Bush and McCain tried to help fix things...but the rabid right (educated by their emails) would have none of it. The party of no solutions.
It's not hard to fix these things. Legalize and tax dope and you'll kill two birds with one stone. Create an intelligent guest worker program to help those farmers who cannot survive without immigrant labor. Put some BIG penalties - even jail - for corporations which break the law knowingly....and don't let them use "shell" corporations to try to get away with it. Make them responsible for ALL contract labor they use.
Of course, what we forget to mention is that big business controls a lot of lobbyists in government...and they don't want to pay higher wages. Why should they?
As long as the reward to breaking the law exceeds the reward for following it, we get what we deserve....
Oh, and basically, we should accept the fact that our economy is based upon a LOT of people....both here and all over the world...having their wages suppressed.
And this is why we have the problems we have with illegals and why they aren't going away anytime soon
Ya both need to live in areas where the illegal alien issues are costing tax payers 12 billion a year or someones daughter was raped and murdered by a illegal who had a record of numerous assults, but nothing was done because of anti ICE activist and sanctuary city status.
Hell SF was hiding a illegal from ICE who had a criminal record, that was until the illegal killed a Father & Son because he needed a car
__________________ 1978 Tayana 37
Mother Nature, in whose lap we sit and who sustains us, sometimes eats her young
I have generally given up on replying to Craigimass because it is waste of time. But he did make two points that are interesting:
He suggested that we legalize drugs and tax them. This is the very first thing he has ever written that made any sense at all. Well done. That would be the end of the drug war, and our prisons would begin to gradually become less crowded. People who want to do drugs are going to do them whether they are legal or not.
But he really needs to get over the old fiction that somehow the GOP and big business have something in common. You can go back as far as you want, and you'll find that big business gives more money to Democrats than to the GOP. It was true by a long shot in 2008. The reason is simple: the Democrats have the same anti-competition attitude that big business does. Democrats fear the unknown, and so are willing to use the power of the government to attempt to steer the various aspects of society in the direction they would like to see it go. Ditto with businessmen, who don't want to be bothered with small start ups cutting into their profit. All those regulations that have been instituted over the years by the government are heaven to big business because the little guys can't afford it all.
LB ....you may be surprised that I agree with you. Over the top and easily disprovable rhetoric does no cause any good...and there is much distortion in those numbers. I would also say that I think your link dismisses too much too easily...while admitting that the $20 billion cited as a reasonable estimate is closer to the truth than the e-mail is. My personal judgement is that the number is probably closer to $100billion with depressed wages and job opportunities making up the bulk of that.
My objection to illegal immigrants centers on the fact that they are illegal. Our country has the right to choose WHO can come here and HOW MANY and what the standards are for entry.
Yeah...businesses large and small have been for years supportive of illegals for their own selfish purposes. The law needs to raid their homes in the middle of the night too.
Me...I'd rather take in a million Chinese with doctorates in Science and Engineering that a million illegals with no skills.
LEGAL immigrants enhance our democracy and add value. Illegals AND their enablers flaunt the law and respect for it, and cost our society 10's of billions a year.
Hey, Dry....
Just about EVERYTHING is a waste of time. We could call them pastimes, though.
Let me be clear and 100% agree with you on this. Big business has no party. Whoever pays them the most, or deregulates them the most, etc. - will be who they support. I have no idea of the party affiliations of MANY big corporations. But the fact remains that the poor person who wants to work hard and send some money home to a family living in total poverty is NOT the bad person......you or I, if we had 1/2 a brain and conscience, would do the same if we were watching our family starve.
The culprit, in this case, is spelled US or USA. That means that profit....or divisiveness, or politics or something else....other than what is good for the country, drives the debate. That makes compromise impossible and gives everyone what they want...business gets to keep saving money, the pols can continue to divide us, etc.
I'm not just blaming big business either. A lot of people, probably some here, either use immigrants...or don't ask.....or would not care. Heck, let me admit it right here. I don't really care who cuts my lawn. I don't check. Sure, I never hired an illegal in all my years as a business owner....I 'm the sucker who is too honest to cheat on taxes that way. At the same time, I STILL don't care who cuts my lawn or cleans my hotel room. That, IMHO, is someone else's business.
Rhetoric such at that expressed in the (email copied) first post of this thread...is, IMHO, ridiculous and divisive and does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. That is in addition to it being largely false.....if you are gonna count one side of the equation (cost), you have to count the other (revenue)...as I have laid out in my former posts.
As to big business and the GOP...let me phrase that better. It was Senator Phil Graham and his wife along with conservative (GOP) think tanks who pushed for, and succeeded, in deregulation of banks and wall street...which caused the current crisis (to a large degree). Grahams wife sat on Enrons board, GW called Ken Lay "Kenny Boy", etc.
The US Chamber of Commerce, who fights for business - keeping the minimum wage low (this relates to the immigrants too), etc...is widely known as a GOP org. The GOP constantly promotes "tax cuts for business"...
I'm not commenting on those cuts, just saying that the GOP and Business have a LOT in common. Then again, Warren Buffet is true blue - but he's not calling for tax cuts...in fact, he is calling for people like himself to pay more.
OH, last point. The GOP had 100% total control for a long time. Was the immigrant "problem" fixed under their watch? Not that I saw. Only the current economic mess seems to have slowed the flood.
__________________
"I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the state governments extends over the individual states"
-George Washington
In hosting America's largest population of illegal immigrants, California bears a huge cost to provide basic human services for this fast growing, low-income segment of its population. A new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year.
Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body. Another $1.4 billion of the taxpayers' money goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens and their families, the same amount that is spent incarcerating illegal aliens criminals. "California's addiction to 'cheap' illegal alien labor is bankrupting the state and posing enormous burdens on the state's shrinking middle class tax base," stated Dan Stein, President of FAIR. "Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become."
No radical rhet here, just facts, it is now over 12.5 Billion
__________________ 1978 Tayana 37
Mother Nature, in whose lap we sit and who sustains us, sometimes eats her young
Everything is not a waste of time. You're starting to sound like Ecclesiastes.
I don't worry about the illegals are here. I'm not one to favor wasting time trying to track them down and deport them, although I am in favor of deporting them (and their citizen children) if they come to the attention of authorities for any other reason. But I agree with the other posters: we have the right to police our borders in any way that suits us, and what we need are more Indian engineers and scientists, not cleaning ladies. As for the work the illegals are doing - it will still get done, but business will have to pay more for it.
This is where you frustrate me, though: you know very well that neither party ever has "100% control" of anything at any time. This is particularly true of the GOP, which did not have a majority in either house of Congress from the 1950's until 1980, and then that was only in the Senate, and only for six years. The immigration problem has spanned all administrations and majorities in both houses for at least four decades in its current form, and for many years before that in other forms. You will note, however, that it is the GOP talking about immigration reform, not the Democrats, and that is because the Democrats are hoping that all those illegals will one day become voting Democrats. There are a lot of illegals where I am (in the DC area) and every one I talked to wanted Obama to win because they thought that he would give them amnesty.
No radical rhet here, just facts, it is now over 12.5 Billion
Hey, I'm not saying there's no validity in the point being made. There's a real problem here.
My point is that most of the things that are used to start threads in here are emotionally charged / statistically skewed / radically partisan (divisive) rhetoric. And people are taking this stuff at face value every night while watching MSNBC and FoxNews. It has the tendency to raise peoples blood pressure and turn discourse into SCREAMING MATCHES -> furthering the divide and tearing us apart.
We're supposed to disagree. It's a good thing. Neither side should have their way, that would be disastrous. But a SCREAMING disagreement bears no fruit.
Personally, I just don't understand how people here don't find the shouting absolutely exhausting. Most in the US do and they tune out. A good thing? Who's to say. All is see is that **most*** of people left willing to engage are those that are pretty firmly attached to their "side's" talking points...
: you know very well that neither party ever has "100% control" of anything at any time. This is particularly true of the GOP
That seems contrary to the facts. Yes, you could argue that Obama does not have full control due to only 59 votes in the Senates - as opposed to 60.
But look what he has done in the first 100 days! Yes, you may agree or disagree, but there are many major pieces of legislation.
I believe in giving people a chance - in government that might mean 2 or 4 years or longer. BUT, to suggest that six years - and six years when the American public was largely in fear and went along with anything that the authoritarians did (wars, debt, more deregulation, stripping of environmental laws, etc.)....that comes up on my "no go" scale.
I don't follow politics that closely, but if I remember correctly there was one bipartisan effort on immigration (McCain Kennedy Bush) somewhere near the end which was squashed. It was squashed because of rhetoric like the post that started this thread - as will be ANY effort.
To solve real problems, real people have to sit down - roll up their sleeves and make compromises. Jumping up and down and yelling and taking advantage of uninformed and uneducated people (whipping them up into a frenzy) works VERY well at stopping things...but not at accomplishing legislation.
__________________
"I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the state governments extends over the individual states"
-George Washington
