Re: Immigration -- Common Sense is Wrong?

I've been maintaining that the fix is to illegal immigration is to make legal immigration easy.

http://factcheck.org/2010/05/does-im...ion-cost-jobs/

This, and it cites some interesting sources, says that it's widely accepted among the people who research it, that immigrant workers increase the number of jobs. That if you want to lower unemployment, you bring in more immigrants. That goes against "common sense" until you read and look at the actual statistics. The only group of native born citizens hurt by immigration are those without high school diplomas.

H.

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Originally Posted by Hoosier

I've been maintaining that the fix is to illegal immigration is to make legal immigration easy.

http://factcheck.org/2010/05/does-im...ion-cost-jobs/

This, and it cites some interesting sources, says that it's widely accepted among the people who research it, that immigrant workers increase the number of jobs. That if you want to lower unemployment, you bring in more immigrants. That goes against "common sense" until you read and look at the actual statistics. The only group of native born citizens hurt by immigration are those without high school diplomas.

H.

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While I would be fine with allowing more guest worker access if we actually enforced the return trips I think what we see now is not immigration for jobs but immagration for services.

If it were up to me, I would provide temp worker access with no services and no achor babies and forced return dates and then close up the border. Anyone coming across at that point is a bad guy because the good guys can use the front door.

BTW, I would not take factcheck.org as a good source of info. It has a bias as well.

Wrong, lowering legal immigration standard does not equal to a lower unemployment.

Legal immigrants by the current standards (excluding refugee/political asylees) must have certain unique skills or minimum of $1000000 in investment to bring into this country (or minimum $500000 investment into rural area). Yes by that standard, legal immigration is bringing down unemployment rate - and has been a real positive force in this country!

Most legal immigrants I know are against legalization/amnesty for the 20 millions illegals because that would create a huge double standard! Lowering the 'legal immigration standard' instead of enforcing the current law and border security is extremely irresponsible.

I just got back from my very own brother's sworn in as the newest US CITIZEN - Funny how out of 43 new citizens there, there were only 2 from Mexico. I had assumed from the numbers of Mexican illegals in this country, I would see many more than 2 out of the 43. Some folks just gotta stop making excuses!

[Beer]

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Originally Posted by esaabye

While I would be fine with allowing more guest worker access if we actually enforced the return trips I think what we see now is not immigration for jobs but immagration for services.

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Not sure what you mean about immigration for services -- like they come here for services? Welfare and government handouts are a different issue, and should be addressed as it applies to not just immigrants but the truely destitute, down on their luck, and people who abuse the system to live without ever working. I don't know what it's like to have absolutely nothing, and I don't know what services the government provides to someone who refuses to work, but that shouldn't be related.

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Originally Posted by esaabye

close up the border. Anyone coming across at that point is a bad guy because the good guys can use the front door.

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Yes, it would make securing the border much easier if the load was so much lower, I think.

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Originally Posted by esaabye

BTW, I would not take factcheck.org as a good source of info. It has a bias as well.

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Where did you hear that they are biased? Here, ironically, is FactCheck fact checking Snopes, http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FactCheck

Of course, as with everytime I cite anything, people claim there's a bias. I guess bias is going to be left to the opinion of the person making the claim. I would presume someone out there really believes that MSNBC has no bias. Or that Fox News is really "fair and balanced."

One of the more interesting citations from the FactCheck piece was the CATO Institute link, a group that obviously has a point of view they're behind (Libertarianism). I find a lot of what I see from them to be bang on. That's no doubt due to my own libertarian bent.

H.

I find it interesting that no one, Republican or Democrat, really seems to understand what causes illegal immigration to begin with. It seems to me that if there were no one hiring these folks, there would be precious little reason for them to come.

I am a Libertarian, but one area where I strongly disagree is immigration. I do not support an open border/citizen of the world approach to immigration.

It is frequently said that immigrants take jobs Americans don't want. Well, there is some truth to this idea, but one must consider why this may be so. Whenever a country has a huge influx of largely unskilled immigrants, they will usually drive wages down in jobs that are already on the lower end of the wage scale. Often, illegals will work for even less than minimum wage. They effectively out compete the natives on price. While this makes Republicans salivate over the prospect of cheap labor, these low wages are what frequently drive these immigrants to seek the various forms of public assistance which our government provides. So, essentially, various businesses have been able to pass along the real labor cost onto the taxpayers.

If we want to stop illegal immigration, we need to prosecute the businesses hiring them. If wages in these industries which are particularly prone to using illegal labor go up to a level where Americans could actually afford to live on them, there will be less demand for public assistance and greater tax revenue.

There is no societal benefit to cheap labor.

+1

Well said

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Originally Posted by GreenScoutII

If we want to stop illegal immigration, we need to prosecute the businesses hiring them. If wages in these industries which are particularly prone to using illegal labor go up to a level where Americans could actually afford to live on them, there will be less demand for public assistance and greater tax revenue.

There is no societal benefit to cheap labor.

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Exactly! If the owner and ceo's got an automatic 6 month jail sentence, illegals would leave real soon. Auto insurance would go down drastically, as would health insurance.

As could taxes for:

Less Foodstamps
Less Welfare
Less WIC
Less LE
Less prisons (huge numbers of illegals in prison)
Less Medicaid
Less healthcare fraud for free services (many hospitals have closed due to illegals stealing services)
Less schools (California builds one per day to accommodate illegals!!!)

Then there are the benefits of less urban blight, much less crime, fewer DUI deaths, less traffic, 20 million or so fewer polluting vehicles, less water useage, less energy useage, etc. etc. etc....

STILL WAITING TO HEAR A LEGITIMATE DOWNSIDE..

Skilled, legal immigrants are a benefit. Other countries are smart enough to screen their applicants. Apparently many Americans don't think our country deserves decent, productive, and law-abiding people.

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Originally Posted by ColoEnthusiast

Skilled, legal immigrants are a benefit. Other countries are smart enough to screen their applicants. Apparently many Americans don't think our country deserves decent, productive, and law-abiding people.

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66% of Americans, according to the latest polls, support Arizona SB1070. Americans understand what should be done and the problems illegal immigration poses. The problem is that our "representatives" don't give a **** what Americans think, they'll do what they want to do (or don't do anything at all, in this case) regardless. At BEST we'll get another amnesty bill pushed through with the claims that they're attempting to tackle the problem, while simply making it worse.

I say go to the opposite extreme and call illegal immigration an invasion and enforce it with military force similar to actions they would take against taliban.

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Originally Posted by sniper7

I say go to the opposite extreme and call illegal immigration an invasion and enforce it with military force similar to actions they would take against taliban.

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nahhhh..dont want to see M1A2 rolling down Tucson. LOL

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Originally Posted by sniper7

I say go to the opposite extreme and call illegal immigration an invasion and enforce it with military force similar to actions they would take against taliban.

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It certainly is a demographic invasion. But one isn't allowed to say such things these days.

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Originally Posted by MB888

nahhhh..dont want to see M1A2 rolling down Tucson. LOL

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Yeah I was just being facetious.

i definitely want to see them stopped from coming across the border and any that are here illegally and caught punished

HERE IS THE AMNESTY PROGRAM.

All illegals are given 1 year to leave the U.S. with no sanctions.

1. They can sell their houses, furnishings and any other property they choose to liquidate.
2. They may take their vehicles, whatever property remains, and the proceeds from their sales.
3. They may apply for citizenship now, if they have followed these requirements.

Preference is given on these slots to people who:

1. Did not receive illegal services while in the U.S.
2. Were not criminally charged.
3. Can show self sufficiency.

Illegals who have disregarded this program:

Will lose forever the ability to apply for citizenship. Period.
Will forfeit any and ALL property to confiscation.
Will be deported.

Once company CEO's and owners face 6 month MANDATORY JAIL SENTENCE for having illegals working for them, the jobs will dry up immediately.
We would not have to deport most of them, because if it comes to that, they could NEVER become a legal citizen and lose everything. They would leave on their own.

While I don't favor pulling the military into it, especially on our own soil (recipe for disaster), I do think that we can call an open season on illegals... what, $100 a head with solid proof of being illegal? Of course if you shoot without proof, we get to shoot you!

"While all other states are trying to get rid of the death penatly, Texas is putting in an express lane!" - Ron White?

Flame suit on!

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Originally Posted by GreenScoutII

these low wages are what frequently drive these immigrants to seek the various forms of public assistance which our government provides. So, essentially, various businesses have been able to pass along the real labor cost onto the taxpayers.

There is no societal benefit to cheap labor.

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You're conflating two different problems -- illegal immigration and the nanny state. They need to be handled separately.

There absolutely is a societal benefit to cheap labor! You and I and everyone else pays less for the services we obtain. Almost all the low cost jobs that can be shipped overseas have been, what's left are those low paying jobs that can't be off-shored. Agriculture, Construction, and Services.

H.

A good read, worth the few minutes...



May 13, 2010
A New Nowhere Debate?
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The CornerBad Time

Now would be a particularly bad time for the president to push for amnesty under the rubric of comprehensive immigration reform — an approach that failed Bush, despite economic good times and supposedly a supportive base.

With unemployment near 10 percent, with unprecedented violence pouring over the border, and with a divisive healthcare debate not yet healed, why go down that road? Most of the arguments of the last century are now dated: Already we are seeing more Californians mowing their own lawns, and students as never before willing to take most jobs that come up. (Unemployment is near 20 percent in the interior of California and most are not picky about the few jobs out there.)

The public is starting to correlate the massive amount of remittances sent back to Latin American (perhaps well over $40 billion) with commensurate rising public subsidies to illegal aliens, funded by the now-strapped taxpayer.

And Mexico has become far more violent than Iraq, suggesting to most that the border should be less, not more, porous. Simply enforcing the law — finish the fence, keep fining employers, increased patrols on the border, push for verifiable IDs — will stop the flow. Those newly arrived, or in trouble with the criminal justice system, will at some point come to the attention of authorities, if the latter wish it. And long-term, illegal residents can apply for legal residency in ways the Congress at its leisure can fight over — once the border is secure and the powers of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage are allowed to work at last on a static, and soon to be shrinking, population.

An amnesty bill at this time would be about the most divisive move imaginable.

Disobeying Federal Laws Always Trumps Obeying State Ones?

Something is not quite right with this statement:

"If every state had its own laws, we wouldn't be one country; we'd be 50 different countries," said by Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

In theory, Saenz is absolutely right; but his own credibility is questionable on this issue, since, if the federal government does not enforce its own laws protecting states' international borders, then we most certainly will have 50 different countries.

In other words, what is surreal about the current Arizona illegal-immigration debate is that opponents of the new bill argue that we must respect the nation's laws and its constitutional framework — even though they have for years been either advocating for or allowing the neglect of enforcement of federal statutes. Those who for years have been unconcerned with the enforcement of federal law can hardly now be taken as credible defenders of its sanctity.

In truth, the message of protestors is really something like the following — the disregard of federal statutes should always trump the enforcement of state laws.

Deconstructing the Outrage

I have been trying to collate all the furor over the Arizona law, much of it written by those who do not live in locales that have been transformed by illegal immigration. These writers are more likely to show solidarity from a distance than to visit or live in the areas that have been so radically changed by the phenomenon.

On the unfortunate matter of "presenting papers": I have done that numerous times this year — boarding airplanes, purchasing things on a credit card, checking into a hotel, showing a doorman an I.D. when locked out, going to the DMV, and, in one case, pulling off a rural road to use my cell phone in a way that alarmed a chance highway patrolman. An I.D. check to allay "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause" is very American.

On the matter of racial profiling: No one wishes to harass citizens by race or gender, but, again unfortunately, we already profile constantly. When I had top classics students, I quite bluntly explained to graduating seniors that those who were Mexican-American and African-American had very good chances of entering Ivy League or other top graduate schools from Fresno, those who were women and Asians so-so chances, and those who were white males with CSUF B.A.s very little chance, despite straight A's and top GRE scores. The students themselves knew all that better than I — and, except the latter category, had packaged and self-profiled themselves for years in applying for grants, admissions, fellowships, and awards. I can remember being told by a dean in 1989 exactly the gender and racial profile of the person I was to hire before the search had even started, and not even to "waste my time" by interviewing a white male candidate. Again, the modern university works on the principle that faculty, staff, and students are constantly identified by racial and gender status. These were not minor matters, but questions that affected hundreds of lives for many decades to come. (As a postscript I can also remember calling frantically to an Ivy League chair to explain that our top student that he had accepted had just confessed to me that in fact he was an illegal alien, and remember him "being delighted" at the news, as if it were an added bonus.)

On the matter of equality, fairness, and compassion, it is even more problematic. Literally thousands of highly skilled would-be legal immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe wait patiently while others cut in front and illegally obtain what others legally wait for — residence in the U.S. Meanwhile, millions of Mexican-American, African-American, and poor white citizens have seen their wages fall because of competition from illegal aliens who will work for far less compensation. It is a bit strange that those of the upper classes are outraged over Arizona without empathy for entry-level U.S. workers or lower-middle-class taxpayers who end up paying the most for illegal immigration. But then, those who express the most moral outrage often are the least sensitive to the moral questions involved (see next).

On matters of Mexico's outrage: The Mexican government has a deliberate policy of exporting human capital on a win/win/win/win logic: Dissidents leave central Mexico in a safety-valve fashion; Mexico saves on social services; remittances come back as the second largest source of foreign exchange; and a growing expatriate, lobbying community becomes nostalgic and fonder of Mexico the longer it is absent from it. To hide all this, the Mexican government usually plays the racial prejudice card, although most arrivals from Oaxaca will tell you that racism is more pernicious in Mexican society than north of the border. This is a government, after all, that cannot provide the security, legal framework, or social services for indigenous peoples in its central interior but has no such problems when it is a question of attracting affluent North Americans to live in second homes along its picturesque coasts.

There is plenty of cynicism involved — not on the part of the exasperated voters of Arizona, but rather from domestic political, religious, ideological, and ethnic interests that in patronizing fashion seek new dependent constituents; from Mexico that in amoral fashion censures others for the sins it commits; and from a strange nexus between corporate employers and ethnic lobbyists who see their own particular profit and influence enhanced through the ordeal of millions of poor aliens, and the subsidies of the strapped and now to be demonized taxpayer.

The Salad Bowl at Work

For those wondering about the effects of the four-decade experiment with divisive multiculturalism in our schools, consider this anecdote picked up by an NBC affiliate concerning Morgan Hill, Calif.

A few youths were sent home from the local high school for subervisely wearing American-flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. “I think they should apologize,’cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day,” Annicia Nunez, a Live Oak High student, said. “We don’t deserve to be get disrespected like that. We wouldn’t do that on Fourth of July.”

Note the use of “we,” suggesting an ethnic allegiance that trumps the national one; note the equation of a Mexican Heritage Day with the Fourth of July; note the strange idea that the sight of the American flag leads to one being “disrespected”; and, of course, note the action by the school’s administration — banishing the boys for apparently politically incorrect, subversive behavior.

©2010 Victor Davis Hanson

Great article.

+1.. good read... though repeatative.

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Originally Posted by Anton

66% of Americans, according to the latest polls, support Arizona SB1070. Americans understand what should be done and the problems illegal immigration poses. The problem is that our "representatives" don't give a **** what Americans think, they'll do what they want to do (or don't do anything at all, in this case) regardless. At BEST we'll get another amnesty bill pushed through with the claims that they're attempting to tackle the problem, while simply making it worse.

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All the while our "representatives" will continue to push for new and higher taxes.

Didn't we have a little skirmish in this country based off of the concept of "No taxation without representation"?

I get annoyed every time someone responds to my complaints with "If you don't like how they're voting, vote someone else in". That's what I try to do, but either my candidate doesn't win or they do win and just ingore the will of the people.

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Originally Posted by theGinsue

I get annoyed every time someone responds to my complaints with "If you don't like how they're voting, vote someone else in". That's what I try to do, but either my candidate doesn't win or they do win and just ingore the will of the people.

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Hence the second amendment.

Plain and simple......

"

Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

'In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.'

Theodore Roosevelt 1907"

[Beer]

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Originally Posted by Hoosier

I've been maintaining that the fix is to illegal immigration is to make legal immigration easy.
H.

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Wrong.

1.We have 8 Guest worker programs now. Why spend billons more on yet another bureacracy when the first 8 worker programs are not respected?

2. We allow 2 million people into this country ANNUALLY and LEGALLY. More than all the nations of the world COMBINED.
We are easy. We need a moratorium on immigration, especially from third world and developing nations.

3. Americans with only high school diplomas will take more from the system than put in, so you want to import people/pverty from the third world nations with only 5th grade educations plus their extended families?
Nah, we are saturated, or haven't you noticed? Now we are having problems with immigration, immigrants(Times Square bomb?) and illegal aliens by the millions.

4. The only thing wrong with our immigration system is the enforcement of immigration law.

5. We need to practice exclusivity, not inclusivity.

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Originally Posted by Hoosier

I've been maintaining that the fix is to illegal immigration is to make legal immigration easy.

H.

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Also, we made immigration easy in 1986's Immigration Reform Act. The "never again" amnesty. It doesn't get any easier than that. Now look were we are presently.
Jesus H. man, speaking of common sense........

Apparently, the City Council of San Diego has issued a boycott against all of Arizona due to AZ's recent illegal immigration law. Now, AZ is fighting back and the people of San Diego are crying foul.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010...est=latestnews

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Originally Posted by FoxNews

That has tourism officials urging Arizonans to consider the resolutions as merely symbolic and local politics at work.

"We're in a very tough environment already because of everything else going on, and we don't need another negative impact to our industry," ConVis President Joe Terzi told the Union-Tribune. "This affects all the hardworking men and women who count on tourism for their livelihoods, so we’re saying, don't do something that hurts their livelihoods."

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It's as simple as this: Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'. You've got a city versus a state. Who do you think is going to lose the most here?

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Originally Posted by Anton

It certainly is a demographic invasion. But one isn't allowed to say such things these days.

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RACIST!

Whoops. Sorry, had a "liberal moment". [Coffee]

I agree 100% with what you say!