Immigration (1 Viewer)

[Rich]

Countless number of American lives were spared by the policy epitomized in the Potsdam declaration.

"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed
forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

You can't isolate the atomic bomb usage from the rest of the militiary campaign. You said yourself there was little difference between the firestorm of Tokyo and Hiroshima. The entire military campaign was in line with the policy defined by the term 'utter destruction'. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were part and parcel of this policy.

I don't understand your argument, Japan was spared utter destruction by Hiroshima and Nagasaki

 

[Pat Hartman]

I never said big business doesn't reap any benefit, they typically don't hire illegals because of laws, and audits.

Correct. Big business uses the H1b and L1 visa programs to get their cheap foreign labor with which they replace citizen and legal resident labor.

I think the presence of so many illegal aliens in our midst simply crept up on the general population. The Border States have had problems for a number of years because of the increased social services such as schooling and healthcare that they have been providing, but the total number of illegals seems to have reached critical mass and now they are on everyone's radar; even in places where their numbers are not overwhelming.

If you have been following the news lately, you will have seen that for the demonstrations this weekend, the illegals carried American flags for the most part. That was of course due to the outcry caused by all the Mexican flags at the last demonstration but I am not fooled They still think of themselves as Mexicans or at best Mexican-American. Also, notice the growing divide in our political representatives. The Democrats want amnesty because new immigrants typically vote Democratic and the Republicans don't want amnesty for exactly that reason plus, once you make the illegal aliens legal, they now have rights. That means that they aren't going to put up with their current working conditions and that means that wages will go up and benefits costs will go up and businesses will scream that they can't get any workers (leaving out of course - "at the price they're willing to pay") and we have to increase our visa program so we can import cheaper labor. It is a vicious cycle.

I think that it is absolutely necessary to penalize companies that hire illegal aliens. Unfortunately, that poses somewhat of a problem given that we don’t have a national identification card. There doesn’t seem to be any way to verify SSNs to ensure that they are valid and belong to the person using them. But I do wonder what the IRS does when they discover a person’s reported wages doesn’t match his return because an illegal has been using an SSN belonging to another person.

I also think that we need to examine what went wrong with NAFTA. NAFTA was supposed to help Mexico so that its economy could support its population. At least that's how it was sold to the American population who was pretty much against the bill. Instead, it depressed wages and pushed poor family farms out of business causing much of the impetus to emigrate to El Norte.

 

[dan-cat]

I see what you're saying, but I don't see it as scapegoating. Scapegoating would be observing a.) my neighborhood is getting visibly delapidated and b.) there are a lot of Mexians moving into my neighborhood and then concluding that c.) Mexicans are responsible for the delapidation of my neighborhood. That's quite different from observing a large portion of Mexicans in the neighborhood repeatedly throwing garbage everywhere.

I don't agree. You say it was simply an observance. I say it was an argument used to support the opinion that Mexicans are part of an inferior culture. If you read back on it I'm sure you'll agree that this was the obvious context. I won't give the quote for fear of provoking another personal attack on me.

Yes, it's quite silly to blame illegal immigrants for all the nation's problems; but it is quite appropriate to partially blame them for the problems they are partially causing.

Yes, it is quite appropriate to take all the contributing factors into account and whilst doing this cast aside the argument that the problem involves an inferior people as fallacious. I brought Aztecs into it to bludgeon this argument into submission. The Aztec culture was the most advanced culture in both the Northern and Southern American continent combined until the arrival of the Spanish. Yes they performed human sacrifice but then you could argue that so did the Spanish. They killed thousands in the name of their religion. That's all I wanted, for this argument to be cast aside and until I spoke up nobody was willing to reject it. That upset me a little. What would have happened if Jews had been marked as inferior, or Blacks or Homosexuals. There would have been uproar. However there was no reaction at all. I'll get marked as being politically correct but I don't care about labels. I'm allowed to react if I want to even if I get described as 'raving'.

I certainly agree. Illegal immigrants cause a problem that needs to be dealt with and technically they are even criminals, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve basic human rights.

Yes technically. I'll expand on this further on

No prob. And the answer is "no". The point is not that illegal immigrants should be prevented from excercising basic human rights, but that they shouldn't refuse to abide by the law and then expect to be protected by it.

Kraj, Kraj... what are you saying? Since when have we not protected convicted criminals with the law? The law is there to uphold humanity. Of course criminals are protected by the law otherwise I could walk into any jail and execute anybody I chose. I'm not saying that people shouldn't obey the law but saying that the law should abandon them because they are illegal is completely false. People should always expect to be protected by the law. This is a critical factor to a civilised society.

This is where my knowledge of the topic fails. If you are correct, it certainly proves a reasonable compromise is needed. It's not exactly entrapment, but it would certainly be unjust to punish people for behavior that was encouraged. However, to the best of my knowledge the law has simply failed to adequately discourage illegal immigration and punish the business that do encourage it. If you have any links to an unbaised dicussion of the topic, I'd be interested in reading them.

This is the encouragement in itself. If you are an impoverished family who is aware that people north of the border are handing out money for a day's work and the authorities are turning a blind eye - then this is the encouragement. It's like offering a glass of water to a man in a desert. Mexicans send a huge amount of money back to their families. This is not a coincidence - they are feeding their starving families. Who would do anything different in the same situation?

I just don't see it as these people are being "held" in limbo; they've chosen it. It may be stupidly hard to become a legal immigrant these days, but the process is there. It may be broken, but's that not an excuse to ignore it.

I know I likened the situation to the black slave trade but I did clarify that they weren't actually slaves. When you say that these people are illegal then technically you are 100% correct. They are illegal on paper but not actually in practice. Perhaps 'held' was too strong a word. What I meant was that this situation cannot be maintained indefinitely. Why? because people don't want to exist in an illegal state indefinitely. Some would say well they can always go home if they don't like it but this opinion completely ignores the reality of the situation. The fact that they have been allowed to settle and raise families here. They have become dependant on the wages provided to them. You can't have it both ways. You have to do one of two things.
a) Enforce the law to the letter and start imposing appropriate legal penalties to the offenders.
b) Start to officially accept these illegals as members of our society. Which unofficially has actually been happening for years

You can't expect a vast group of people to exist somewhere in between and for the situation not to become unstable. Following on from this, it should come as little surprise when these people start voicing their opinion. Let them do it as far as I'm concerned. They are the ones who know most about the situation, we could all probably learn alot about the real situation from them. In any case, what's the alternative, running them over with tanks?

If there was really 11 million+ illegals in the US how can anyone be surprised that they start hearing their opinion in the streets? My suspicion is that most considered them a little stupid but this isn't turning out to be the case is it?

 

[dan-cat]

If you have been following the news lately, you will have seen that for the demonstrations this weekend, the illegals carried American flags for the most part. That was of course due to the outcry caused by all the Mexican flags at the last demonstration but I am not fooled They still think of themselves as Mexicans or at best Mexican-American.

They can't win can they? Now they are actually showing intelligence and respect by being sensitive to general opinion and this is still not good enough.
I put to you that you'd prefer they didn't voice an opinion at all. If so, why you think this is realistic with 11 million+ individuals all in the same situation baffles me.

By the way, I agreed with everything else you said.

 

[FoFa]

Don't you think this is going to spread bad feeling amongst the legal workers considering they pay their taxes and the illegals don't and that their boss actually encourages this?

Has already, for more than just that reason.
This guy is working and not paying taxes, has his wife and kid (in a house with 3 other familes). Kid gets sick, he dosn't have the means to pay or a doctor, so they get free medical care. Guess who pays for that also. There are many issue that go along those lines.

 

[dan-cat]

Has already, for more than just that reason.

I'm struggling to see how this can be construed as good business practice.

Doesn't this conform to my point earlier that the boss isn't actually considering the feelings of its legal workers? Aren't you risking hacking off all your legal workers and relying on illegal workers who you can't hold under any sort of contract just for the sake of short-term cash flow?

 

[FoFa]

I'm struggling to see how this can be construed as good business practice. Doesn't this conform to my point earlier that the boss isn't actually considering the feelings of its legal workers? Aren't you risking hacking off all your legal workers and relying on illegal workers who you can't hold under any sort of contract just for the sake of short-term cash flow?

As with anything, this is a YES and NO answer. The legals put up with the illegals because they are of the same ilk, or friends, or whatever (this is not a negative statement, just a statement). This can be seen by the demonstrations which are being held (as I understand) mostly of legals. Also as I understand it from interviews with those demonstrating (via the news channels) it surrounds the fact that a lot of them have relatives who are illegals, and this could cause legal repercussions against them (if caught associating with the illegals), basically. So the legal workers are typically not hacked off because of some of these reasons. Plus the legals are needed, and make a little more than the illegals. If they were all legals, they could not make as much because of the labor cost, (nasty circle if you follow).

 

[Kraj]

I don't agree. You say it was simply an observance. I say it was an argument used to support the opinion that Mexicans are part of an inferior culture. If you read back on it I'm sure you'll agree that this was the obvious context.

You're right. I hadn't read the post in question carefully; the opinion that Mexicans are part of an inferior culture wasn't the obvious context, it was flat-out stated.

*Ahem*

Joe, I understand where you're coming from and why you think what you think, but you're taking it way too far.

That's all I wanted, for this argument to be cast aside and until I spoke up nobody was willing to reject it. That upset me a little.

Fair enough.

Kraj, Kraj... what are you saying? Since when have we not protected convicted criminals with the law?

My bad, I worded that poorly. I did not mean to suggest a person's status as an illegal immigrant should mean they are not protected by the law, especially when it comes to things like due process. What I intended to express is that it is extraordinarily hypocritical to march in protest of the American government while waiving a Mexican flag. It is unreasonable to demand rights and freedoms in America that they wouldn't have in Mexico when they don't really have the right to be here in the first place.

Who would do anything different in the same situation?

I expect I'd do the same. I also expect I'd steal to feed my starving family, but just because I had a good reason doesn't make it any less illegal or even less wrong.

What I meant was that this situation cannot be maintained indefinitely.

I agree. Something certianly has to give, but precisely what has been the whole point of this discussion.

You have to do one of two things.
a) Enforce the law to the letter and start imposing appropriate legal penalties to the offenders.
b) Start to officially accept these illegals as members of our society. Which unofficially has actually been happening for years

Well, you've argued quite a bit that a) is wrong, but b) does nothing to solve the problem. Accepting illegals as members of society (ie., making them citizens) will do nothing to stem the flow of immigrants into the country and money out of the country. What do you suggest be done about this?

 

[FoFa]

What do you suggest be done about this?

Legalize all of the current ones, and make them live in Chicago and the surrounding area.
Train hungry tigers to partol the borders.

 

[dan-cat]

Fair enough.

Thanks for taking the time to understand where I was coming from. I knew you wouldn't let me down

My bad, I worded that poorly. I did not mean to suggest a person's status as an illegal immigrant should mean they are not protected by the law, especially when it comes to things like due process.

Fair dinkum.

What I intended to express is that it is extraordinarily hypocritical to march in protest of the American government while waiving a Mexican flag. It is unreasonable to demand rights and freedoms in America that they wouldn't have in Mexico when they don't really have the right to be here in the first place.

Now, I'm not saying that an illegal immigrant waving a Mexican flag isn't controversial but isn't that the point of a demonstration. The Mexican flag waving did actually serve a purpose. It made people sit up and take notice of the situation. They're not riots they're peaceful demonstrations and with a little care and consideration from the general public we could actually listen to what these people have to say. Now when all is said and done the law may need to be STARTED to be enforced but whatever we do, we musn't tell 11 million people to shut up. This would be an extremely dangerous policy to follow because of the inflammatory implications.

If you would allow me to dramatize the situation a little. One of my favourite films is Spartacus. The crux of the entire film is when the gladiator trainer tells Spartacus "no talking in the kitchen slave!" and slaps him in the face. This one statement triggered the Roman slave revolt. This is drama obviously but it illustrates my point perfectly. When you have a huge group of people who are unhappy about something, you need to tread with extreme caution.

I expect I'd do the same. I also expect I'd steal to feed my starving family, but just because I had a good reason doesn't make it any less illegal or even less wrong.

I'm completely confused by this logic. I'm not sure how one can have a good reason to do something and for the action to be classed as wrong. Doesn't one cancel out the other?

What do you suggest be done about this?

I admit that up until this point I've been concentrating on the things that we musn't do, so my contributions have been so far limited to this. You're going to have to give me a little time to think this one through.

 

[Kraj]

Thanks for taking the time to understand where I was coming from. I knew you wouldn't let me down

Now, I'm not saying that an illegal immigrant waving a Mexican flag isn't controversial but isn't that the point of a demonstration. The Mexican flag waving did actually serve a purpose. It made people sit up and take notice of the situation. They're not riots they're peaceful demonstrations and with a little care and consideration from the general public we could actually listen to what these people have to say.

Fair enough.

Now when all is said and done the law may need to be STARTED to be enforced but whatever we do, we musn't tell 11 million people to shut up.

Isn't the law being enforced precisely what is being protested? Granted there are new, thougher laws being passed (including some retarded ideas like building a wall. Hello? Perhaps we could hire contractors from Berlin or China. ), but the protests are basically against treating illegal immigrants like they're breaking that law.

I'm completely confused by this logic. I'm not sure how one can have a good reason to do something and for the action to be classed as wrong. Doesn't one cancel out the other?

Of course not. If my family is starving and so I break into your house and steal all your valuables, wouldn't you say that was wrong of me? I may have done the right thing for my family, but I certainly wronged you.

I admit that up until this point I've been concentrating on the things that we musn't do, so my contributions have been so far limited to this. You're going to have to give me a little time to think this one through.

I look forward to hearing your ideas.

 

[dan-cat]

Isn't the law being enforced precisely what is being protested? Granted there are new, thougher laws being passed (including some retarded ideas like building a wall. Hello? Perhaps we could hire contractors from Berlin or China. ), but the protests are basically against treating illegal immigrants like they're breaking that law.

This was one of the points of debate. Like you said, it's not a black and white situation. They are illegal 'technically' but one could argue that this law no longer applies to them because, in reality, they have been accepted as legal. The law has not been applied for years. This is why your speeding driver example didn't work. It's not a one-off. One could argue that it has become policy to not only tolerate but support the speeding driver. There is an element of hypocrisy to it but it is present on both sides. A bunch of people think they have a right to legal residence well let's hear what they have to say and hopefully we can come up with a just response to their request.

Of course not. If my family is starving and so I break into your house and steal all your valuables, wouldn't you say that was wrong of me? I may have done the right thing for my family, but I certainly wronged you.

This is an ethical point which will probably lead to a side-track but what the hay. I was speaking objectively. Can an action be right and wrong at the same time? The house owner feels he is wronged but the thief feels it is wrong for him to have lots of possessions whilst he starves. So his requirements took precedence. One feels he is right the other wrong. Does the action have an objective yes/no moral value. My opinion is yes but this is the beginning of a huge philosophical question.

 

[Pat Hartman]

b) Start to officially accept these illegals as members of our society. Which unofficially has actually been happening for years

This should not even be considered unless we can stop the inflow IMMEDIATELY. Every time the topic of amnesty comes up, border crossings increase because everyone wants to be on this side of the border when the amnesty happens.

I see the priorities as:
1. Impose fines and other sanctions on the employers of illegals. The existing laws are too weak and are not enforced anyway.
2. Secure our ports and borders. This will take some years of building the proper infrastructure and a 700 mile wall isn't the answer.
3. Since they want equality, impose the same sanctions on the illegals who didn't pay their taxes as would have been imposed on citizens.
4. Change our laws so that children born in the US don't automatically acquire citizenship unless their mother is here legally.
5. Lastly, we can consider increasing immigration limits.

I am dead set against rewarding people who have entered the country illegally regardless of their need.

Isn't the law being enforced precisely what is being protested? Granted there are new, thougher laws being passed (including some retarded ideas like building a wall. Hello? Perhaps we could hire contractors from Berlin or China. ),

Actually, hiring Mexicans to build the wall goes a long way toward solving everyones problem

They can't win can they? Now they are actually showing intelligence and respect by being sensitive to general opinion and this is still not good enough.

No because they haven't changed their way of thinking. They only listened to the bad press caused by waiving what they consider to be their own flags. They didn't change their signs and they carried far too many US flags upside down which is downright disrespectful.

When you listen to the speaches of the protest leaders, they are filled with "feeling". The illegals are poor. They have no opportunities in their home countries. They just come here so they can earn money to send to their families. They endure great hardship and danger to come here. They only take jobs that Americans won't take. That last statement really irks me since it is totally untrue. Americans would be happy to take the jobs if they paid a reasonable wage. Americans simply aren't willing to live 15 people to a 2-bedroom house because that's all they can afford on the miniscule wages being offered.

The question that is never raised is why do these particular immigrants deserve special treatment? There are many people in the world who are much worse off. They simply have the misfortune of not sharing a border with the US. Should we reach out to the rest of the world and say send us your poor, your uneducated masses by the millions every year. Just where do you draw the line between charity and self preservation. There is a limited number of uneducated, untrained people any industrialized economy can absorb in any given time period. We have reached the saturation point. The masses already here have had a negative impact on real wages. I just don't think we have the capacity to absorb more.

 

[jsanders]

On Inferior Culture and Language.

There have been basically two topics discussed on this thread:

1. What to do about the illegal alien problem and its economic impact on Middle Class America.
2. The denigration of American society by the infestation of a culture that is not as advanced as ours.

On the first topic I feel the same way I did in my first post. This problem will never go away as long as we don’t enforce existing laws that penalize the people that benefit the most: Namely Employers.

Henry Ford, one of the great American visionaries broke out of the mode of the complete ownership of employees, and helped create the Great Middle Class; his philosophy was that employees of Ford should be able to afford the cars they built.

This flew in the face of previous industrialist like Rockefeller and Carnegie, who believed that workers were to be treated like slaves and that they should buy their goods from the company store.

Unfortunately for middle class America the last 27 years have seen a return to this ethos, in that we are seeing an unprecedented redistribution of wealth, back to the riches one percent; with the company store being Wal-Mart. Owned by the way by the same institutional investors that owns the insurance companies and the oil companies.

So Fofa when you say that the big companies are not benefiting from this illegal alien problem, you are discounting the affect that an excess of artificially low wages (afforded by illegal immigrants) has on the overall low end job market. It allows Wal-Mart to have more leverage with uneducated American workers.

This is just part of the problem.

The other; more insidious, but equally damaging to the American Dream, is the culture from which these workers are derived.

I have to stop here to qualify some of my opinions with a little back ground info.

I grew up in Texas and have had a life time to discern the issues with South of the Border culture. I have traveled fairly extensively in both Mexico and Central America.

The most predominate characteristic of South of the Border countries is the extreme separation of wealth. There the richest one or two percent own virtually everything. The rest live in squalor.

So how does that have any bearing on the North American problem?
Here’s how.

The problem goes all the way back to the days if Imperialism. Countries colonized by the British were provided with systems of government and commerce that were far superior to all of the other ones. Couple this, with them speaking English; which has evolved to be the most advanced language spoken by humans, ever.

Entire books could be written on the differences that the British made to the colonies in those days. And it didn’t end with just government or commerce it included infrastructure and education as well.

So the very foundation of English speaking countries was more advanced than that of the Spanish; who’s only real desire was to ra**, pillage and convert.

So go forward to the beginning of the industrial revolution. Mexico had oil reserves greater than that of the United States. Yet with all that wealth their inferior culture didn’t capitalize on it, innovation was stifled by the ra** and pillage mentality and the peasants were kept poor; sometime at the end of a sword or gun.

So now after 500 years of being in abject poverty, they are bringing this ethos here. And American business is handing out invitations as if to a fiesta.

So when I say their culture is inferior I meant it in measurable ways: in health care, in education, in wealth distribution, in opportunity, and many other ways equally as measurable.

There is an assault, in the United States, on the middle class, and it is fueled by cheep imports from China and aided by labor that is artificially low. If this trend continues we will succeed in creating a society that is inferior to the one our parents had. Unfortunately the lower part will be populated by Spanish speaking people.

So the very nature of their protest and behavior is insuring they will live the same way here; as they did there.

 

[Pat Hartman]

So the very foundation of English speaking countries was more advanced than that of the Spanish who’s only real desire was to ra**, pillage and convert.

Speaking of converting, I just finished reading the Constant Princess which is a historical novel based on the life of Katherine of Aragon. Katherine was the youngest daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and was married off to the heir to the English throne which originally was Arthur. When Arthur died shortly after the marriage, Katherine was forced to wait in England living in gentile poverty while Henry came of age. Katherine ultimately became Queen of England as the first wife of Henry the VIII. Anyway, the book spends a lot of time talking about Isabella's conviction that god spoke to her and it was her duty to expel the Moors and Jews from Spain and convert those who remained to Catholicism. Before Isabella, Andalusia was an enlightened, advanced, country with great universities and hospitals where ALL people of the book lived in peace and prosperity. Isabella and the Inquisition ended all that and Europe suffered for centuries because of it.

Couple this with them speaking English; which has evolved to be the most advanced language spoken by humans, ever.

Please don't tell the French that. They already hate us for usurping the place of French in the world of diplomacy.

So the very nature of their protest and behavior is insuring they will live the same way here as they did there.

I guess that's what bothers me the most about the recent demonstrations. If they expended that energy back in their homelands, they might be able to change things for the better and not need to come here at all.

 

[dan-cat]

I guess that's what bothers me the most about the recent demonstrations. If they expended that energy back in their homelands, they might be able to change things for the better and not need to come here at all.

What bothers me the most is combining the situations of employing a huge group of people, afford them no rights and class them as inferior. These three situations COMBINED are completely unacceptable, IMHO. If a society 'unoffically' accepts a culture of people by employing them, then that society has no right whatsoever to mark them as 'inferior'.
So let's say they are an "inferior" culture. (The phrase just sticks in my throat) What has this got to do with anything? The issue is one of law. Are they made more illegal because they are inferior? Of course not. All one is doing is stamping prejudice on the case. It's a completely worthless argument. Since when has a prosecution used an argument that the defendant is inherently inferior?

"He did it your honor because as well all know, that's what most people of his kind do".

I mean c'mon look at the language being used: "infestation", "insidious". Please don't make me quote propoganda that used similar rhetoric.

They are illegal because they are residing without citizenship or a visa. That is their status. If they tend to whistle at girls or drop trash in the street, this makes no difference to their status. If they didn't throw trash the street would they be excused by the law? Would the law become void?

 

[dan-cat]

The problem goes all the way back to the days if Imperialism. Countries colonized by the British were provided with systems of government and commerce that were far superior to all of the other ones.

Do you have any idea what would happen if Condoleezza Rice said something like this at the UN? Thank God you don't work for the State Department.

 

[Rich]

Do you have any idea what would happen if Condoleezza Rice said something like this at the UN? Thank God you don't work for the State Department.

Well it would make a refreshing change from all the lies currently issued by your state department

 

[Brianwarnock]

I find this a very confusing thread for me personally as my head and my heart are in conflict.
My heart is annoyed at the hypocrisy of a people whose nation is a colonial state whose every inch was stolen from other people, who say stay at home and make your own land better, like the original immigrants? like the mass of Irish fleeing the potato famine? I could go on but my head says Jsanders and Pat make very valid points, and one has to take a pragmatic view, you cannot turn back time, but you do have to look for a just solution, and making criminals out of people you have been encouraged to break the law is wrong. I don't have a solution, but agree with Dan that the rhetoric on this thread is wrong.

Brian

 

[Rich]

What I don't understand is that it's ok for American companies to set up shop in Mexico and use the Mexicans as cheap labour and yet it's somehow immoral for them to come to America as cheap labour for American firms.