And I am surprised to see you endorsing the de facto slavery being practiced. Yeah, some prices might rise if we get real on border control, but big whoop. Maybe then business might actually start paying REAL wages to workers, LIVING wages, if they can’t count on the cheap (substantially below minimum wage) labor provided by illegals.

But on your attempts to personalize things: my workplace is cleaned by me and my co-workers on a daily basis. I wash my own car. And if you double the labor costs on the heads of lettuce I buy, the price might go up all of a dime.

In brief, I don’t buy into the scare stories of the economic havoc that would be wreaked by getting rid of our current slaves, and I’m willing to risk it. I think the costs — both economic and social — of having this continue are much, much higher.

J.

Okay Jay. So now no illegal immigrants are being arrested and deported? And ya, if you can’t see anything but criminals when you see the people who harvest your food, clean your office, wash your car or do any of a hundred other difficult, low paying jobs that just about the most pathetic thing I have ever heard. That you think we should be basing policy your own tragic blindspot is why you can indeed take your concern and shove it up your ass.

As far as the illegal aliens “paying the price” of being illegal: that’s the price for being SUCCESSFUL criminals. The real price, the only one that counts, is the one that is imposed by the government, meaning arrest and deportation. To use an example that ought to drive you nuts, bank robbers “pay the price” when they risk getting shot and killed. I once read about a pedophile and would-be child molester who grabbed the wrong 14-year-old boy — and got his ass kicked by the young black belt.

Again, although I suspect you won’t accept or believe it, but I really do hope your fiancee’ gets through the process soon, and without much more discomfort. It’s people like her that remind me that the ratcheting up of enforcement I repeatedly call for must be paired with genuine reform — including things like increased quotas and streamlining the process.

J.

And what gives you the idea that illegal aliens aren’t paying the consequences of being illegal? They risk their lives to come here and spend everyday in constant fear that they’re going to get picked up and sent home. That fear makes them vulnerable to unscrupulous employers and others who would take advantage of them. But for many of them their situation is still better off here than there.

A few more personal tidbits: Once upon a time I knew an Australian girl who offered me or my roommate a hefty figure if one of us would marry her so she could get citizenship. She was an actress and wanted to be famous. The worst deprivation she faced if we refused was she’d have to go back to Sydney to a comfortable middle class life. Neither of us were interested because it was against the law, the risks were too great and she was a vain, venal idiot. She eventually found some other schmuck to do it and went on to the kind of low level celebrity that helps Access Hollywood pad out its 30 minutes. She’s an example of the kind of person you should really reserve your bile for because she IS thumbing her nose at you. Not the woman who scrubs the toilets in your office after you go home.

Every other week or so at my day job I go over 0-1 visa applications from companies looking to hire foreign workers, “artists of extraordinary ability,” to fill jobs that pay on average $52/hour and up. These immigrants have major corporations and heavy legal firms behind them to get them into the country. They’re the international leaders in their fields and their names carry big cache in the industry so the companies put the money into getting them but they are essentially taking jobs that there are Americans trained to do. Here’s a situtation in which giving highly paid jobs to foreigners that Americans WOULD GLADLY DO IN A HEARTBEAT is perfectly acceptable, perfectly legal and perfectly overlooked by the anti-immigrant crowds.

I’m not talking about blaming anybody. What I’m saying is that if you want to fix the system don’t do it on the backs of the people in the most desperate circumstances, who struggle the most to overcome those circumstances and who take the biggest risks in doing so. You keep using these analogies that suggest you have no idea what people who come here illegally from Mexico or further south actually go through to get here, let alone what they actually contribute to this society once they get here. Ditzy blonde in stilletos? Come on. I’ve had this same argument with idiot after idiot who wants to describe these people as criminals, freeloaders, “enemy combatants” etc. etc. None of you seem capable of stepping outside the bullshit rhetoric and seeing these people as PEOPLE who want to work to better their lives but found themselves trapped in an impossible situation that WE, through our trade policies, helped to create. And these people do contribute to our society both economicallt and culturally. They and their children do assimilate. Esepcially their children, just like every other wave of immigration in the past, it takes a generation or to to achieve assimilation. If you keep focussing on the new arrivals, as the anti-immigrant forces do, you won’t see that assimilation occurring. But trust me, it’s happening in California and all over the place.

The bottom line is this: Anti-immigrant forces have presented a distorted picture of the illegal immigrant community and so they present solutions that come down hard on the symptoms of the larger problem rather than it’s cause: economic imbalance that the US itself has helped to create and has a vested interest in maintaining. They overlook the actual real cause of illegal immigration while doing everything they can to denigrate hardworking, otherwise honest people who only want to take care of themselves and their families.

There’s a post awaiting moderation but on this I jus have to say: Why don’t you tell that Bush? His whole argument for the existence of his NSA prgrams is that he has the authority to violate federal statutes like FISA because they put an unconsitutional limit on his power. But Bush isn’t trying to challenge the law in the courts or asking Congress to change it. He’s simply ignoring it. He is doing exactly what you claim you despise the most. But once again a conservative (please stop with the “I’m a moderate” crap) comes to the defense of the powerful while stomping all over the powerless. So typical.

You present a compelling argument for changing the system, which I’ve been for all along. I am a big believer in working within the system, of changing the rules when they’re wrong instead of just ignoring them. To have laws on the books that are freely flouted decreases the respectability and credibility of all laws, and carried to its logical extreme ends with every single person having their own personal penal code.

So why don’t you argue for changing the law? Why do you think it’s fine for you and your fiancee’ to be forced to obey the law, but not others?

Sorry to personalize it so much — I normally eschew that — but you made an example of yourself.

WHen confronted with a law that you believe is wrong, you have three choices: live with it; violate it and accept the consequences; or change it. Ignoring it is not an acceptable option.

And finally, you say that the government is to blame for the immigration problem. I think it’s a confluence of government interests (both here and abroad), business interests, human self-interest, and a bunch of other factors. But I don’t give a tinker’s damn whose fault it is. I just want it fixed, and fixed now. We can play the blame game later. When the lifeboat is springing a leak, you patch it first, THEN toss overboard the ditzy blonde with the stiletto heels.

J.

J.

My fiance is Canadian and we’re beginning the exact process you describe this fall after we get married. Neither she nor I feel that amnesty or a legitimate worker program (with a path to citizenship) is unfair to us because we recognize that the whole “fairness” part of this debate is just another dodge to avoid the real role that the US government plays in creating the immigration problem in the first place. It’s totally hypocritical to put in place trade policies that allow US companies to exploit Mexican labor in Mexico and then condemn those Mexicans who come here to escape the poverty and environmental disasters that we helped to create.

I don’t have a problem with enforcing the laws and arresting people at the border for crossing illegally. But let’s recognize why those people are crossing the border in the first place. And it isn’t because they’re greedy, disrespectful monsters who want to destroy our way of life. Talk about lazy fucking thinking, Jay. I’m sure immigration really burns you up if you sit around all day imagining that the people picking strawberries, washing dishes and emptying your office trash cans are secretly thumbing their noses at you.

I have yet to hear any one on the anti-immigrant side of this debate discuss trade policyand its impact on immigration. Maybe I wouldn’t be so inclined to consider anti-immigrant groups a bunch of racists if they spent more time talking about the minimum wage, labor unions, environmental protection etc. etc. instead of entertaining paranoid fantasies about Aztlan. Please. Grow. The. Fuck. Up.

Why is immigration such a big deal all of a sudden? Especially when we’re at “war?”

The answer is simple; AWOL George’s poll numbers are waaay down, Iraq’s a mess, Katrina was mishandled so badly, and most of his illegitimate administration is either under indictment or will be shortly.

Capturing OBL and defeating OBL is too hard–so AWOL George is cracking down on those illegal immigrants whose major crime seems to be working hard at jobs American won’t take and pumping money into the US economy.

Frankly, there is a solution to illegal immigration—-but the Repugs don’t want it. Illegal immigration would dry up tomorrow if the US cracked down on companies and firms that so eagerly hire and recruit illegals.

But Repugs like the idea of some fat white guy pointing a gun at brown-skinned folks.

A post got eaten but in the meantime, why don’t you ask my Canadian fiance? We’re beginning the whole drawn out and EXPENSIVE (if you hire an immigration lawyer which everyone highly recommends) legal immigration process when we get married in the fall.

We have the most open and generous immigration policy not only in the world, but in history. But that still isn’t enough for you. You can’t come up with ways to change it to make it more to your liking, but just want them to ignore the law when it doesn’t suit you.

One final note: no, it’s not about “punishing the poor” to me. No more than it’s all about rewarding the criminals to you. That’s lazy thinking. Poverty is no more ennobling than it is debasing.

(BTW, that last bit was an attempt to actually elevate the tone of discourse and reduce the personal attacks. I hope you agree that’s a good thing.)

J.

It’s a remarkably efficient debating tactic. Jade gives his/her/its arguments, then makes up stuff to attribute to me. It’s a guarantee of success, since he/she/it is writing the scripts.

Pity I don’t feel like playing along, so enjoy your monologue. It’s an interesting form of rhetorical masturbation.

J.

Though you occasionally forget to put the seat back down on the credibility toilet.

So much for the heretical notion of actually CHANGING the laws, huh, frame? It’s so much easier to pick and choose which laws are enforced, and which are not.

And who gets to choose which laws are and are not enforced? Why, it must be those who are properly enlightened, and sensitive, and correct.

No, thanks.

J.

Again, it’s alway about punishing poor people, never the politicians and CEOs who create the system of inequality that produces the poverty in the first place. Yup, Jay, you’re a true hero.