"As long as people pay their taxes and don't hurt anyone, who cares what someone's status is" is the approach I wish this nation would take.
Who says they're all paying taxes and not hurting anyone? Did I see a stat where 30% of everyone in prison is illegal or something like that?
Illegal immigration also depresses labor costs, so unskilled labor that competes with illegals pay the price.
You us and them approach to this is kind of sad. But, yes if people don't contribute they should go. Cite your stat please.
It's anything but. In fact, it's a hell of a lot more complicated than the blanket-statement approach that many of you want to take.
But you failed to address it before, and you've failed now. If you can't deal with the issues singularly, you are hardly prepared to deal with the complexity that you mention.
Looks like that's your take. Anyways I've gotta go out now and meet a friend and his girl at the gym-have a good weekend.
Actually, that was a misquote. What was meant was that 30 percent of everyone in prision did something illegal.
No, having underground labor pool that is at the mercy of employers isn't "the nature of the beast". Might have been the system 150 years ago, but not today.
So bring them above ground. Here goes.... If you are here to work, you must get a worker number and pay all taxes on time. If you are an employee, you need to keep your job. If you are a contractor, you need to file quarterly just like anyone else. You must pay SSI but here is the catch, you are not able to collect that money until you become a citizen. If you don't the IRS notifies the INS and your ass is out. Same with any felony prosecution. Besides that, work to your heart's content and build a life for yourself. We talk this American dream crap all of the time but we cut of the same people who are here to persue it. If I had my druthers I would gladly trade every trust fund hippy one for one with an undocumented family man.
Now, Injun fightin' is somethin' he knows, so he shoulders his rifle an' off he goes Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear! But, seriously, that is a whole different issue. I obviously meant immigration after the colonialists had established themselves in the United States.
I agree (in the modern sense, see ::::'s take on thing for the long range view.) Most of my questions in here are devil's advocate type of questions. Please don't think I'm picking on immigrants or saying they don't belong here. As mentioned previously, I'm married to an immigrant and have even done as much as possible (short of sponsoring...which I'm not financially able to do) to help someone here illegally to stay.
I assure you that immigrants that don't "play by the rules" do it out of necessity, not because they think it's real fun and neat to live in constant fear because of their undocumented status. It's very hard to play by the rules. It's almost exclusively for middle-class people with steady jobs, so the working and lower classes, who are the ones that need jobs the most, are left out. And very few, if any, of the immigrants that come here on visas, including my family and me, resent the amnesty proposal. Why would they? They're living better lives anyway. This sounds a lot like the typical, uninformed American rhetoric: "Damn illegals want to have it easy, while my grandma/mom/friend had to go through the system"
Since we're calling out uninformed rhetoric.... My brother-in-law (who is Indian), got an arranged marriage to a girl in India. If they'd gotten married in the States, she could've stayed immediately upon completion of the marriage. However, they got married over there and then went through the proper channels to get her over here. They could've done it the way many people do and say they didn't get married over there and then just get a courthouse wedding over here with her on a tourist visa. However, they wanted to totally be on the up & up about it so they went through they system. It took her 1 year, 8 months after their marriage to be granted residency and she stayed in India the entire time until the paperwork went through. Her husband came back here and continued working after the marriage. My inlaws themselves are immigrants and they decided to play by the rules. My wife and I (then fiancee) promised the family we wouldn't get married until she got over here (Indians love weddings) and it ended up delaying our marriage date by about a year. I wish they'd circumvented the system (as is easy and more or less legal to do), but don't tell me that there aren't people that genuinely follow the "proper channels" because I saw it impact my family and in a roundabout way impact my own marriage. ...and it is also an insane assumption that most legal immigrants are/were middle class in their country of origin. My father in law is from a small rural village so poor and so devoid of basic health/sanitation that five of his siblings died in childhood. He was the eldest son and the family basically sunk their entire life savings into a plane ticket for him to come to the US to get educated. I don't have anything against immigrants, but it's absurd to insinuate that all legal immigrants have (or had) it easy.
I saw that intelligence-insulting stat in some internet film trying to scare people. Guess some people bit. Latinos make up 13% of the entire US population and only a little more than of the total prison population. I believe it's somewhere around 18-23%. I've read this in many magazines and scholarly articles. By my own empirical analysis I'd say that most Latinos that commit crimes are US-born. Around 65% of them. If 20% of the US prisoners are Latino and 35% of them illegal, it comes out to 8% of everyone in prison.
As far as I know, it would have been completely legal for her to come with a tourist visa and gotten married here. I don't think there's a "no marrying" stipulation in the visas. But that's not the point. I was simply pointing out that "going through the proper channels" isn't as easy as some think. They're not exactly giving away US visas and residency/citizenship applications in Latin America, or anywhere for that matter. I feel a lot of Americans are misinformed about this and simply think that undocumented immigrants come here illegally because they're just too lazy or deviant to do it the legal way.
I know that. What I'm saying is that they got legally married in India, so they would've been lying to say that she was here as a tourist and that they got married here. Obviously the US government isn't combing the marriage records of India looking for US citizens marrying Indian citizens so they could've lied and done it legally here (that's why I said 'more or less legally'). I know it's difficult. I've seen countless people try to go through the proper channels here (people from Costa Rica, South Africa, Russia, Romania, etc) and it's hard no matter where you're from. I'm sure a lot of people think that, but I'm not one of them. However, in the eyes of the average person it does cast suspicion on illegal immigrants' claims that they respect the laws of the land, because they broke the law just getting here. It's an unfair conclusion, but one easily reached since their very presence shows on some very basic level a lack of regard for the country's laws. I understand that when a situation become so dire that one can easily (and arguably rightly) ignore such laws, but the action of entering the country lays the foundation for the refutation of those claims. It's definately a no win situation in many ways.
Yes, that worked so well in 1986. Let's try something new... how about enforcing our immigration laws and severely punishing companies that employee illegals?
It worked very well in 86. Many people were given amnesty and they have integrated to society, and many of those are now citizens who vote and who have become productive members of society and who are not second class citizens anymore. On the other hand, there is a good reason why the current laws are not being enforced. It is because they are bad laws, and to enforce them would be a disaster. Have you considered the consequences of cracking down hard on employers, as you suggest? The first thing that will happen once the crackdown begins will be a huge wave of mass firings of anybody suspected of being illegal. We are talking about lots of families affected, where the wage earner will be suddenly out of work. We are talking about millions, and many of those are people who've been working here a long time, some who came here as children or even toddlers and know no other country. Others affected are children now, born here just like you. But since they were born to the untouchable cast, children of the second class citizens, they will suddenly have their daddy and mommy out of work. But hey, who cares about those scrubs, right? They're not Americans, they weren't born here like you, so why should they be allowed to work to feed their family? If they lose their jobs it's not your problem. Is that your wish? Nice.
In 1986 we pardoned 2.5 million illegals, now we have an estimated 12 million. Look, I’m not suggesting we boot out every illegal, I just want to stem the flow crossing the borders and crack down on those abusing the visa process. This is something we never done, let’s start there.
I wasn't born here either and I care deeply for immigrants. Immigration is important and vital, I just want it to be controled on our terms rather than the Mexican government's. What's unreasonable with that?