Where to start? I must admit, I think the majority of conservative posturing on immigration is out and out bigotry, the same mindset that frets about having the culture of latinos and others influencing our collective identity now hiding under the guise of “protecting the border” from terrorists. Of course, the 9/11 terrorists were not illegals and didn’t sneak across the border. They came with passports on an airplane.
I’m a first generation American. My parents both came to America in the early ’70s from Jamaica, married each other then had me. They waited in line for the permission to come to live and work in America, and both retain their Jamaican citizenship (and live in Jamaica). I think America shouldn’t seal itself off, I believe immigration is what has made America great (partly because I’m a product of it 
, but at the same time I don’t have a lot of tolerance for people “cutting in line”.
Amnesty for illegal immigrants seems like cutting in line to me. It’s rewarding breaking the rules. If people from other countries want to emigrate to America – and I definitely want them to – they need to do so by following the rules. Encouraging otherwise is just wrong.
Related
Immigration: Fail. Again.
Immigration In Iowa
Question On Immigration
I don’t think you can have it both ways, Oliver.
If the “the majority of conservative posturing on immigration is out and out bigotry”, then what do you call the belief that “if people from other countries want to emigrate to America – and I definitely want them to – they need to do so by following the rules.”
Are you saying that some people oppose illegal immigration for “good” reasons, but conservatives oppose illegal immigration for “bad”reasons.
That’s nonsense, and you know it. You certainly have no evidence for it.
Oliver, are you saying that some people oppose illegal immigration because it puts enormous pressure on our already strained infrastructure, reduces opportunities for legal immigrants, drains monetary resources at the state and federal level, and creates a subculture of poverty that undercuts the entire economy? Are those supposed to be “good” reasons?
What would be “bad” reasons, then? Would pandering to Southern conservative xenophobia by openly associating migrant workers with crime and disease rates be improper? Would manipulating your base to continue depressing lower and middle class wages be somehow dishonest?
Next time, think before you spout such “nonsense.”
Immigration is a complex issue, as we all know. But we have to remember that there are push and pull forces for immigration, legal or illegal. The recent driver of Mexican immigration, of the sort that makes Mexicans so desperate to leave that they don’t care if they’re doing so legally or not, is NAFTA. Yes, I’m normally a supporter of NAFTA and free trade. It’s a point of disagreement I have with much of the Democratic electorate and leadership. Free trade ultimately helps America grow business and provide jobs. I really do believe that, even if there are painful periods of transition in places like Flint, Michigan. But NAFTA has many side effects that Americans don’t pay much attention to, and one of them is the prohibition on certain agricultural subsidies. In Mexico, NAFTA forced the Mexican government to end its decades-long program of subsidizing unprofitable bean and rice farmers. As a result, Mexican farmers could no longer compete with global agribusiness and so went belly up. Since 1994, two million Mexicans lost their land. Where do you think they went? El Norte. The other problem is that workers in the maquiedores on the Mexican-US border actually found their relative wages drop since 1994 – in 1994 Mexican workers earned 29% of US wages, now they earn 12% of US wages. Again, if you’re a worker on the Mexican side of the border, where do you think you’ll find the good paying jobs? By waiting for NAFTA to “raise” wages in Mexico? Or by jumping across the border and getting a hand on some of those nice high-paying US jobs? There is the push of economic desperation in Mexico (the sort that is driving Latin American politics to the Left, by the way), and there is an abundance of US jobs that are too low for us but not for them.
In fact, this is nothing new. In the mid to late 19th century, Germany underwent a similar crisis in the countryside. Germany’s political and economic leaders decided that it was time to launch a campaign of full-on industrialization and commercialization of agrictulture. Local princes, dukes and Junkers deliberately jacked up taxes on small farmers in order to drive them off the land, conslidate small land parcels (Germany never had primogeniture, so land parcels were comparably small), and bring about the famed marriage of “iron and rye.” In the meantime, millions of Germans had a choice: either move to the burgeoning industrial cities of the Rhine Valley, or move to America and try to reclaim the dream of land ownership lost in Germany. There was a parallel crisis facing German skilled workers. Artisans who found their own crafts rendered obselete by industrialization also struggled to make ends meet, and sought new places to ply their wares. In America they found a ready home, but there too they ran against the same forces of full-on mechanization. Many of them turned to socialism as a protest – the 8 people hanged after Haymarket riot in 1886 were German immigratns, for example. Leaders of American socialism right up through Eugene Debs were almost all German.
To many Americans at the time, German immigrants brought strange, foreign customs to the country. They drank too much beer, and acted boisterously in public. They refused to learn English, or integrate with Anglo society. And they were politically dangerous, as evidenced by their desire for socialism. Though people like to think of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing movement as driven by hatred of the Irish, it was actually the Germans that drew the most ire from American nativists. Eventually, of course, all of this passed. The American Homestead Act encouraged Germans to settle the prairie states like Nebraska and Wisconsin, where German surnames are still extremely common – how do you think Jim Sensenbrenner’s ancestors came to America?).
But the point is that the crisis that is forcing Mexicans into America en masse is very similar to the one that led millions of Germans to populate the American heartland 150 years agao, and is yielding similar reactions. Many of these migrants may be breaking various immigration laws, but the fact is that when larger social trends within another country force emigration (such as lost land) and economic opportunity beckons immigration in the US, people will find a way into the United States. Just a little perspective on the immigration kerfuffle.
Oliver Willis to blog from Siberia
ODub comes out against illegal immigration, although he can’t help but get his digs in at those evil conservatives….
That’s fine, Oliver, but you are not really addressing the immigration issue.
There are 11 million undocumented souls in this country today. Some have been here for 20 years while others only live here half the year. I met a fellow in Guadalajara last year who works illegally in Utah for six months and makes enough money to support his family for the rest of the year. Your opinion about whether he is or is not playing by the rules is frankly not relevant. He is there and will continue to be there without restraint.
It is far more relevant to state what you think should be done. Should we bar his entry with more dramatic physical force, e.g. a wall, make his employer suffer if caught or enroll him in a guest-worker program. When you can state your position vis-a-vis these options, you will be dealing with the immigration issue.
We know this is not about immigration or any “right way” of doing things. This is about big business wanting slave labor and people who will accept sub-standard wages and treatment. Even many Hispanic immigrants who are legal are only here for the wages (though low by US terms) and will ultimately retire at home as virtual kings. People wouldn’t flood across the border, accept maltreatment and substandard living if there weren’t some incentive. They aren’t like “immigrants” from other countries and many don’t even want full citizenship. They want to work and, ultimately, go home. If there weren’t a demand, there wouldn’t be such supply – PERIOD.
No West Indian, and certainly, no European, is going to cross the ocean and sea to be treated the way that Mexican illegals are treated. Targeting “immigrants” is off base. Big business is the culprit but no one is “man” enough to take them on so, as usual, they take the path of least resistance – poor people of color.
Bottom line: Illegal immigrants are here illegally. Except for (extremely) special circumstances. they should be asked to leave.
They should not be allowed to enter or stay. Period.
Illegal immigration has many negative circumstances, and should not continue.
It doesn’t get any simpler than that, accusations of xenophobia be damned.
Please. Nothing will happen as long as half of Congress has their children looked after by “Maria” whom they swear has her papers and just “misplaced them”. This is an election year attempt to rodeo-clown our attention away from the s**t-hole Iraq has become. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Guest worker” is just a euphemism for slave. Guest workers won’t form unions, won’t complain to OSHA, won’t complain when their wages are not paid on time, because their immigration status is solely tied to their employer. If they complain, they will be out of the country. It creates a serf class of worker, one who doesn’t have normal worker and wage protections.
It also erodes wages and other protections for citizens- if “guest workers” can be hired without limit, they will be preferred over American workers, who are more than willing to challenge workplace conditions.
The solution isn’t guest workers, or making aiding or abetting immigrants a felony, or building a wall, or fining employers, or supporting Mexico and other countries that funnel undocumented workers here.
The solution will have elements all of the above:
-A humane temporary worker program, which offers them a chance to apply for citizenship after only a couple of years, but terminates their worker status if they choose not to pursue citizenship. We also need to increase regular immigration quotas from Central and South American countries.
-Better border control, and providing more agents to chase down people that overstay their visa (one of the biggest source of undocumented)
-Steep fines for employers, and sometimes termination of charter, for businesses who hire undocumented aliens. Hopefully the businesses like restaurants, construction companies, and gardeners will be discouraged from hiring day laborers, and the supply will dry up as demand dries up.
-Fair trade policies with poor countries. If life is better there, they won’t flood here, and if they do come here, they will not be desperate to take $4/hr jobs, depressing our labor market.
Of course, the Sensenbrenner-Tancredo “plan” does none of this. It attempts to brand every alien with a scarlet letter, and drive them further underground. It appeals to the racist base of their party, and does nothing to solve the problem of illegal immigration.
There are a lot of people who want to stop illegal immigration for racist reasons. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to correct the problem. A knee-jerk, hard edged reaction like the one in the GOP Congress is nothing but a ploy to rally the base for the 2006 elections.
>>If people from other countries want to emigrate to America – and I definitely want them to – they need to do so by following the rules.
Would they be able to get in? When a leading scientist from another country is denied a visa to visit the US for a conference what chance does a worker from across the border have?
Well then we agree. Only I don’t pretend to knkow why others agree with me while assuming that my motives are pure.
Good posts here, gang.
Oliver, since you have now openly addressed illegal immigration, I would hope that in the near future (perhaps as part of your forthcoming “Big Ideas”?) you would have some practical suggestions for solving the problem.
That is, other than the already-anticipated “vote for us and we’ll keep those evil bigoted racist xenophobic Republicans from deporting you.”
There are four options:
1) Deport all illegal immigrants, using whatever legal mechanism necessary to do the trick.
2) Give all illegal immigrants amnesty and put them on the road to citizenship.
3) Register illegal immigrants as “guest workers” who can never achieve citizenship and will subsist as a permanent and unassimilable underclass.
4) Do nothing.
These are the choices. There are other issues, of course, like how to prevent future illegal immigrants from coming into the country. That would require we address trade policy in a new way, and build a more secure barrier to entry. But the question is what to we do with the 11 million illegal immigrants right now. What’s your choice?
Bottom line: Illegal immigrants are here illegally.
Bottom line: you don’t know many immigrants, do you?
And if being ‘out of status’ does become a crime, then the US Citizenship and Immigration Service will immediately become the accessory to several hundred thousand crimes. That’ll make for an interesting court hearing.
Oliver: I absolutely understand your sentiments. But the bureaucracy to deal with legal immigration is still stuck in the 70s, while the laws and policies — and, most of all, the load on the system — have drastically changed. If your parents had been thirty years younger, you’d probably be living in Jamaica right now, with a Jamaican passport.
I think factcheck’s plans all sound good. Personally, I have no problem with making it a crime, but I do have issues with making it a crime to help them unilaterally. Can we agree that there is a difference between a pastor helping someone in need and a smuggler driving them across the border? And the whole wall idea is a pipe dream- its not like smugglers wouldn’t find a way around it.
Guest worker is just a euphemism for slave.”
Factheck has it exactly right. His policy points are the only reasonable, real solutions to a problem that will never go away with higher walls and stiffer penalties.
People are risking their lives right now to escape extreme poverty and deprivation. Do you think deportation, a jail sentence, a fine or a higher wall are going to dissaude them? As FC points out, the plan on the table now will only drive the immigrant economy further underground, increasing the likelihood of isolation and exploitation. It will make the problem worse.
That is, other than the already-anticipated vote for us and we ll keep those evil bigoted racist xenophobic Republicans from deporting you.
Illegal aliens aren’t citizens, and cannot vote. Citizens can’t be deported.
According to a recent fatherland Homeland Security estimate, 2.3 million foreigners in this country are illegal because they have overstayed their visa. How is a wall going to keep them out? They came in the legal way.
Another aspect of the Sensenbrenner-Tancredo Racist Enabler act is that by making it a crime to help illegals, this will hurt legal aliens, even 1st generation citizens.
Are you going to take a chance and hire a Latino worker, knowing that if his documents are fraudulent, you could go to jail or be fined? Nope. you’ll hire whitey. Legally admitted immigrants will become unhirable.
Oh, please, let’s cut to the chase. The reason people come to the US illegally is because they know they can get a job.
Businesses know they can sell discounted jobs to people here illegally, profit from their labor, have a snowflake’s chance of being caught and even when they are, if ever, the fine is tiny and labor savings has paid it with one month of labor.
If you eliminate the opportunities by criminalizing criminal behavior by employers and institute steep fines escalating with each infraction, Voila! the problem is solved.
Why is this so difficult to understand?
Are Americans actuall in favor of businesses breaking federal laws to increase their income?
ahem: How many illegal immigrants does one have to know to determine that illegal immigrants are here illegally? 1? 12? 144?
According to a recent fatherland Homeland Security estimate, 2.3 million foreigners in this country are illegal because they have overstayed their visa. How is a wall going to keep them out? They came in the legal way.
And, as I mentioned upthread, many of them are out of status because delays in processing extend beyond the actual terms of their visas. If you’re going to charge priests with felonies for giving illegal immigrants a bowl of soup, then the director of USCIS is going to be facing a rap sheet that stretches the length of the southern border.
I urge everyone on this thread to go out today and rent the movie “A Day Without a Mexican.”
To say that curbing the tide of illegal immagration is a move to curb terrorism is disingenuous at best. Racist at worst.
That’s all I got.
Frank_D,
It doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t come if we wouldn’t give them a reason. These people are virtual slaves who get a little bit of pay. But it works for them because of what is available where they live. If any legal American wants to landscape, pick vegetables/fruit, paint homes … for less than minimum wage with no lunch break (and risk not being paid by greedy employers), please STEP UP!
Like most everyone else in this country I am also the product of immigration. I’m always confused as to whether I am 2nd or 3rd generation though. If the actual immigrants are generation zero then I am second if the immigrants are generation one I am third. I was raised believing in America not only as the melting pot but also as the mother of exiles:
Now with that being said I am not blind to the fact that illegal immigration does cause problems in this country.
I think primarily this needs to be addressed on the demand and not the supply side of the equation.
I would imagine every poster on this comment is tired of being called a lazy, indolent slob by George Bush. This program would create a legal way to match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do.
The problem is not that American workers are not willing to do the work. The problem is business who are unwilling to pay wages that are not insulting to Americans.
I think the first step is to raise the minimum wage — considerably. Hell, that model of American Capitalism Henry Ford knew that he needed to pay his workers at least enough for them to be able to afford to buy one of his cars. Hell the minimum wage has barely grown since the heady $2.65 an hour I was originally paid in the ’70s. If you pay dirt wages the only people who will apply are those who are in constant fear of being deported. The fearful do not demand fair wages nor benefits.
The second step is to increase the quotas from Latin American countries. Now before you scream that by doing this I am solving the illegal immigration problem by legalizing the activity, read the next step.
Step three, which is combined with step two, is to increase the qualifications for an work permit. Prohibit anyone with any criminal record from obtaining a green card. One problem with this, of course, is depending upon the criminal justice systems of countries without due process. Obviously the criminal activity would need to be a crime in this country and not just the country of origin. And the penalties would need to be comparable obviously someone whipped for spitting on the sidewalk in Singapore (whipping I would say is a felonious penalty) shouldn’t be banned from coming to America.
We could create a point based system where the higher your education the more points you get.
By combining an increase in quota with an increase in difficulty you would eliminate much of the controversy surrounding the deportation process. (Yes I do see the irony of raising the qualifications to be considered part of the huddled masses. I just feel this is a way to increase immigration while silencing the anti-immigration crowd and by anti-immigration crowd I mean those who are against all immigration legal or not.)
Finally, we need to be working to help our southern neighbors create viable economies. Most everyone on this board is educated enough to know that US Foreign Aid is an amazingly small percentage of the federal budget. I am not enough of an economist to really expand on this last step. I don’t feel that maquiladora factories are the best way.
The maquiladora phenomenom is a big part of the problem the left has with globalization. (Not being from the right I will not speak to the right’s problem with globalization.) US companies setting up shop just across the border in order to avoid environmental and labor regulations will not build Mexico’s economy at least not enough to eliminate the attraction of a life threatening trip across the Rio Grande or the desert. I feel a company which wants to reap the benefits of being headquartered in the United States needs to maintain US standards wherever their plants are located. Likewise I feel global trade agreements need to have stringent environmental and labor clause.
But now I am straying off the purpose of this post and so will spell check it and post it. (wow, this is a long post.)
sgb — we can’t deny them a reason.
How could we? Duplicate conditions in Mexico?
They come because they can. They wouldn’t come if they couldn’t.
If there were a way for everyone on earth to “sneak in” to the United States with little or no effort, and a few hours walking, then how many people would there be here?
The fact that we are more prosperous than other countries is not a “reason” for unlimited illegal immigration.
You might as well stop punishing burglars, because, after all, you owned a VCR or TV or jewelry or silverware, didn’t you?
Its the same reason there are sweatshops in Asia and telemarketers in India. Buisnesses will always find a way to skirt the law and save a buck.
I think the key issue here was addressed on “This Week” on Sunday by none other than George Will.
We can moralize all we want about how illegal immigrants are here illegally, and we shouldn’t reward “illegal” behavior.
But, as Will said, morality without practicality isn’t morality at all. Practically, if we were to deport 11 million people from our country, we’d have to break up millions of families, some of whom have legalized children. So the parents have to go — but do the children stay or go? Should we kick out American citizens?
We do turn a blind eye to certain other illegal things in this country: college drug use, jaywalking, ticket scalping, et cetera.
If we truly don’t want to “reward illegal behavior,” why don’t we crack down on everybody who has stated they did drugs in college but never did jail time? Let’s spend billions of dollars rooting out those college-drug-use “illegals” and put them in prison. Otherwise, aren’t we “rewarding illegal behavior”?
The bottom line is: It’s not moral to break up millions of families — even though it might be “rewarding illegal behavior” — the same way it’s not moral to round up everybody who behaved illegally in college, et cetera.
The logic of immigration is a tough one to wrap around, but I feel the “morality without practicality isn’t morality at all” is a great way to put the debate in context.
Immigration is not a complex issue. Illegal immigration is being conflated with legal immigration and muddying the waters.
If people want illegal immigration legitimatized, I believe they should lobby for an open rules change. The fact that they have not reveals the truth; it’s hugely unpopular.
The argument that “morality without practicality isn t morality at all” is simply nonsense, a snake swallowing its own tail.
Right — do nothing until we solve the unsolvable “problem of the 11 million.” Maybe they’ll get homesick and go home. Maybe they’ll decide to do the right thing and go home, OR, maybe the government will begin the unpleasant, but necessary, process of deporting them, one person, one family, one case at a time.
That’s how crime has been dealt with in this country for some time now — not by bemoaning the fact that some people don’t get caught, or that criminals may have to leave their families to go to jail — or be deported.
“If people want illegal immigration legitimatized, I believe they should lobby for an open rules change. The fact that they have not reveals the truth; it s hugely unpopular.”
Or it may reveal the fact that they haven’t had to, so far; it’s been de facto legitimate. But you’re right. People should stand for what they believe.
Good lord, it’s a good thing that many Native Americans didn’t hold the same views of many Conservatives today when the English came over in the 1400’s and started to claim America for their own, huh?
I’d also like to know why many of you would rather blame the immigrants who come here to work and better their lives and not the employers that continue to hire them? I guess it’s just easier to blame the workers, hmm.
Personally, I feel that the McCain/Kennedy immigration bill that’s floating around Washington is a pretty good compromise that would provide a method to document those who are currently already working in the US while still providing them with some basic rights, protections, and a clear path to becoming a legal citizen.
It’s a tough issue, and there are no easy answers. Illegality aside, I think we need to address the root causes of illegal immigration, because I don’t believe that we should persecute immigrants just because they happened to be born in the wrong country.
Don’t get me wrong, what they did is illegal and should be remedied, but the remedy should not victimize people who came here because they couldn’t put food on their family.
Besides the fact that criminalizing immigration doesn’t solve the problem, since we don’t have people to go out and round up all these people anyway.
Immigration Reform Fever Hits Bush, Congress And The Streets
It has been a longtime building, but it has seemingly happened:
The decades long debate over immigratio…
[...] o who may very well run for President in 2008 on an anti-immigrant platform. How quaint. Oliver Willis, a first generation American says: I think America shouldn t seal itself of [...]
Toddb, I won’t speak for others, but I support employer sanctions. Real sanctions like heavy fines, with a potential for prison time for the most egregious. Tyson foods, are you listening?
Illegals are doing jobs that Americans want. In most of the country, nursing home attendants are legal Americans, as are construction workers. The arguement that illegals are doing the jobs no one wants is a clear and open lie.
How long has our bilingual policy been in place? It seems to me, a born and raised so californian, that providing everything from phone books to schooling to Home Depot signs in the languages of minorities (or the majority in certain communities) has been a tremendous mistake!
My grandparents were immigrants. Virtually everyone in the United States has roots in another country. I have fond memories of dressing up in Norwegian costumes and celebrating (May something, forgotten the date) Norway’s freedom from the dirty Swedes. lol. I still feel an affinity for Norway, though I’ve never been there. I even have a flag from Norway….bought it on ebay. I guess I’m not too diffrtent from the immigrants here today….just a few generations
I got a bit off my point….I think bilingualism has failed in a big way! There’s no need for the immigrants here, legal or otherwise, to assimilate; they might as well be in their home country! No need to learn English at all. Did you hear some of the high school students interviewed during the demonstrations yesterday? They were third generation in this country, citizens, and yet still spoke with a Mexican accent! Why is that?
English should be the only language in our schools. Electives in other languages, of course, as always. Immigrants here today will be forever an underclass, kept there by a seemingly helpful bilingual policy. Maybe if it weren’t so easy for illegals to live, work, bank…..maybe if their citizen children were taught in English, just maybe there would be a future in this country for the children of these immigrants
Well Oliver, I agree about improperly rewarding people for doing something illegal… but look at it from the Governments perspective. They cant control what they have allowed for years so they are preparing with detention centers and requiring illegals to all register or suffer the consequences. What choice does the immigrant worker have? This is seen by the nationwide protest of this Bill and its proposal. We are NOT rewarding at all… rather REGISTERING and CLASSIFYING in an attempt to CONTROL!
Illegality aside, I think we need to address the root causes
Reminds me of a joke: Two social workers come across a woman in a park, raped and beaten unconscious. They turn and walk way, and one says to the other, “Whoever did this is going to need a lot of help.”
Thanks for the insight, fastcheck…
I guess it s just easier to blame the workers, hmm.
Actually, no. It’s easier to deport the workers, hmm.
Frank is right in that illegal immigrants are by definition breaking the law. Any country has the right to control entry across its borders and respect for the law is the foundation of any civic society.
But we enforce the laws we have with differential dilligence and severity. How many people drive the speed limit on the interstate? We let it slide for the most part. When I first came to Texas in the early ’70s, it was not uncommon to hear of someone sentenced to 30 years for possessing an amount of marijuana that would earn a misdemeanor conviction today. Because of practical concerns (manpower for catching all violators) or changing mores, speeders are often allowed a free pass and pot smoking is treated a lot more leniently. I’m not saying that’s good or bad.
The law says all illegal immigrants should be deported. Is there an immigration lawyer or other professional who could detail what that would involve? Is counsel mandated for someone facing a deportation hearing? How long does the typical hearing last and what are the administrative and other costs involved in a hearing. Who actually picks up the tab for returning someone to their country of origin? At a cost of $1000 per case, deporting eleven million illegal immigrants would cost eleven billion dollars. And as noted elsewhere, the children of illegal immigrant parents are legal US citizens if those children are born here.
A while back, there was a thread discussing whether, moral considerations aside, there was such a thing as a material benefit to slavery. In that slave labor largely built the antebellum south, it could be argued that there was. But that was not justification enough for slavery. Today’s dirty not so little secret is that there is a material benefit to illeagal immigration, for the immigrant and for the persons who hire them. Many are coming to the conclusion that that is not justification enough.
I don’t think total deportation is practical. I don’t think a complete amnesty is fair. I agree with many of the proposed solutions posted here and elsewhere.
Well, there are two approaches. RW reactionaries like Frank want to round them up and ship them out, neglecting the fact that that will drain our treasury building detention centers and hiring police. On the other hand, we’re broke anyway so maybe that doesn’t matter.
Adults want to make it so that the illegals go back home on their own. We do that by penalizing employers, and increasing quotas. This is a less expensive solution. We also help alleviate the conditions that make them leave in the first place.
Good ol’ factcheck (If ever there was an inappropriate name, that’s the one).
We do that by penalizing employers
And take a wild guess as to where that money will come from? (Hint: They will either cut back on profits, lower their own salaries, or raise prices. I can’t imagine which option they might choose)
Take a wild guess who will end up really paying the fines? (Hint: everybody)
Take a wild guess as to who will end up unemployed? (Hint: they’re not citizens, but they won’t be going home)
Of course, from the liberal, “adult” standpoint making employers pay fines is a good thing, right, factcheck?
Incidentally, none of you have seemed to notice that I mentioned deporting illegal immigrants “on a case by case basis.” I’m a firm opponent of wholesale, non – selective law enforcement — like mandatory sentences for marijuana posession, and “three time loser” laws.
If someone has a real plan for determing how to divide up illegals into categories, I’d like to hear it. So far all I’ve heard from you is that rightwingers are racists, and “we can’t just deport 11 million people.”
Put your thinking caps on.
Step 1: Provide an incentive for illegal immigrants to turn themselves in.
Step 2: Favor families over singles (meaning would they be willing to be naturalized if their whole family could join them, with priority given to their parents, and extended families later. {That’s extremely important to Hispanics})
Step 3: Favor people who have been good citizens and stuck around, as opposed to people who flit back and forth across the border.
Just a few things off the top of my right wing head.
Got anything better?
Number 4: English speaking preferred.
A nickel to the liberal who can fill in the blanks:
Give it a shot. What do you have to lose?
ToddB: Good lord, it s a good thing that many Native Americans didn t hold the same views of many Conservatives today when the English came over in the 1400 s and started to claim America for their own, huh?
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that you have the English coming over 200 years early, and address the issue you raised.
Years ago, I read a book about the Presidencies of Adams and Jackson, where it was pointed out that the colonization and settlement of America was more like an invasion, where we simply pushed the Indian aside, and took over their country.
I’ve also read that by 2050, Hispanics will be the largest “minority” in the country.
Shortly thereafter, white people may be in a minority, if there is not enough intermarriage to eliminate them altogether. There is more at stake here than who is going to bus tables at Denny’s, and who is going to trim rich people’s hedges.
::Crickets::
Well – thought out response, JSA.
If that took you nearly 2 hours, think what you could write by 8:18 PM…
“Shortly thereafter, white people may be in a minority, if there is not enough intermarriage to eliminate them altogether.
There is more at stake here than who is going to bus tables at Denny s, and who is going to trim rich people s hedges.”
Apparently.
Actually, it took about 5 minutes. Seriously, then, what do you think is at stake?
“Shortly thereafter, white people may be in a minority, if there is not enough intermarriage to eliminate them altogether. There is more at stake here than who is going to bus tables at Denny s, and who is going to trim rich people s hedges.”
Yes, Frank, what is at stake?
This sounds like something out of stormfront.org, seriously.
Our culture is at stake… We are not simply a “nation of immigrants”. We are a nation of assimilated immigrants. Our language, our systems, our entertainment, our food, our religions, are all the result of contributions by immigrants. They have altogether produced an American culture which is not only unique, it is imitated around the world, even in the country that once colonized us.
Thomas Sowell once asked the question, “How did the occupants of a small northwestern corner of the Eurasian landmass come to control the entire world?”
One day, historians will ask, “How did they come to lose that control?”
The debate now seems to be centered on the presence of 11 million illegal immigrants.
When it will be centered on the disappearance of white power?
Will it even matter?
How will white people handle being a minority?
What if English becomes a second language, as it did in Quebec?
These questions will, at some time, require answers.
Calling conservatives racists is neither a question nor an answer.
Pretending that there is no American culture to protect is hiding your head in the sand.
How will white people handle being a minority?
HEAVEN FORBID that happen. HEAVEN FORBID white Americans have to exist the way non-white Americans have had to for hundreds of years. Surely, there’s no way anyone can exist without being in the majority. Those people who aren’t in the majority race are certainly not like THE REST OF US!!!
– Oliver, non-white American for 28 years and counting
Oliver: Try thinking for a moment. I know you’re young and liberal, but try, anyway. If you think that non – white Americans enjoyed living as an oppressed minority, then you might think white people will enjoy it, too.
However, if you think about slave rebellions, the Civil War, the fight against “Jim Crow,” and the Civil Rights Movement from the end of World War II to 1965, you might want to ask yourself, “Would it be a good thing to see that all re – enacted?”
Hint: The answer is not “Yes” or “No.”
So if white people become the minority, we brown people will become the new slavemasters? Man, you believe some fucked up stuff, but that’s some of the worst of it.
You’re seriously saying this? You’re SERIOUSLY saying that us brownies are so dumb that we’ve got to keep white people in the majority to preserve the natural order of things?
Oh my God.
I don’t think I have ever been as completely misinterpreted as I just was by that previous comment. [Not even by frameone, and that's saying something]
I certainly said no such thing, and by no means did I mean such a thing.
I realize that I have opened a huge can of worms by actually admitting that there are races on earth, and that Americans have a culture (two different items, by the way). But I have no problem with that.
In my view, to acknowledge that there are races on this planet — there have been for quite a while, you know — is not even racism, let alone a crime.
And I AM NOT SAYING, nor did I EVER SAY that non – whites are “so dumb that we ve got to keep white people in the majority to preserve the natural order of things” [notice that I did not repeat the absurd usage "we brownies", first because it is so repulsive, and second, I sometimes wonder if a "real" person of color would want you included in the "we").
Actually, I was saying two OTHER things. You missed them both. People like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson already make quite a comfortable living demonizing whitey. Can you imagine their rhetoric when "the devil" is in the minority?
And, two, there are white racists and white supremacists out there. Many of them are armed, and pas themselves off as militias. What do you think their reaction will be to being in the minority? Do you even care? And, if you even care -- and I suspect you don't -- have you even given it a thought? I suspect you haven't.
And, if your reading skills in any way matched your skill at hyperbole, you might have noticed that I said, "When will it [the debate] be centered on the disappearance of white power?” This means, for the reading impaired, that I was asking about when it occurs, not suggesting that it should be prevented.
I repeat, talking about race is neither racism, nor a crime.
“Americans have a culture”
Frank, and if that culture changes due to forces different than the slave holding exclusively christian white men who founded this place, why is that a bad thing? unless you are merely interested in maintaining a status quo that wasn’t morally earned.
When exactly did Jackson and Sharpton start demonizing white people? I thought they attacked racism, which is still very much part of white society. I think they’d very much like it to stop being mainstreamed by certain conservative groups, and are trying to take steps to do so. Minorities want equal access to the law and their rights, not a role reversal of entrenched white privilege.
What will white supremicists do when their race becomes a minority? I expect they’ll continue being asshats, like they have been for decades now. The differences will be they will get even shriller and desperate. Does it make them more dangerous? No, desperate people will take more chances, but I really don’t see a Klansman turning into a suicide bomber because he lost majority status in the census.