Are we too lenient and tolerant of ILLEGAL immigrants?

[KnitShoni]

Who doesn't need them to do the work? The people employing them need workers who will work at that rate of pay in those conditions that the natives won't do, thus keeping the price of their goods low for the rest of the locals.

Let's face it, if the immigrants didn't come and do the dirty, low-paid work then the prices would go up for everyone else.

They're only taking work that the locals want doing. If they are willing to do the job and can do it right, and if the locals aren't willing to do it for that money, then what's the problem?

Rapscallion

Except, a lot of the jobs being taken are construction jobs that AREN'T being done right. Then, people like my husband have to go in and redo the job 6 months-1 year down the road, and are given grief because they CAN'T do the job for what the illegals were paid and make bills, so they have to charge more.

[Rapscallion]

To correct myself, the jobs aren't being taken. They're being given. I can't think of any search criteria to find reliable information on the topic, but it stands to reason that someone running a business in a country is going to be a legal citizen of that country.

It's the free market at its finest. It's also the free market at one of its nastier points.

In short, the thought processes could go along the lines of, "My countryfolk need the goods cheap, but they expect to be paid the market rate for doing the work. I've got a source of cheap labour that gives them the cheap prices and me the labour at cheap cost. Which one do they want?"

The thought occurs that the illegal immigrants are coming into the well-off countries for a better life and know that they're taking a risk of deportation and imprisonment etc, but they wouldn't stay (or be able to) if they didn't know of places that would take them on. Instead, are we giving sufficient deterrent by being too easy on those who employ them?

Let's face it - what happens to an illegal immigrant? Jail is a roof over their head and three square meals a day. Deportation puts them back where they were, so no real loss, and they can try again. Execution? For trying to seek gainful employment? A touch overboard, methinks. What would deter them other than not being able to get employment, thus forcing them to go home or to the authorities to be sent home?

Rapscallion

[elsporko]

My policy of forcing illegals who are caught to work for free would keep food prices low and act as a determent.

[Boozy]

Ah, slavery. The answer to all our economic woes.

[KnitShoni]

My policy of forcing illegals who are caught to work for free would keep food prices low and act as a determent.

Shall we beat them if they try to escape? Do we own their kids, too, and have the right to sell them off? Come on, now.

[elsporko]

I didn't know making prisoners work was slavery. I guess I better inform the road crews and prisoners who pick up dog poop at the park that they are slaves.

[Greenday]

I didn't know making prisoners work was slavery. I guess I better inform the road crews and prisoners who pick up dog poop at the park that they are slaves.

They actually get paid for their work.

[elsporko]

Find then. The illegals will get paid for their work, and will get to keep all of what they earn as long as they have already paid their court costs and fines. Otherwise the money they earn will go to that.

[ben_who]

This thread is fun.

My favorite Master Debators are the ones who repeatedly and insistently argue in ALL CAPS that they're only against ILLEGAL immigration and that all their ire and wrath is directed against ILLEGAL immigrants and their evil ILLEGAL ways and how what they're doing is ILLEGAL.

Except for the bit where the laws change. Except for the bit where no two people, can define "legal" or "illegal" in an immigration context. Except for the bit where Americans and legal aliens get deported accidentally because political pressure has created this lurching bureacuracy that has to treat all illegal immigrants like murderers or face "soft on crime" accusations.

Pedro Guzman.
Jose Rodriguez-Portillo.
Mark Lyttle.

With so much pressure on law enforcement to produce results, mistakes get made. Mistakes always geet made. I read a story that I'd give my left leg to be able to find these days - it's about someone in exactly my situation who they attempted to deport to Germany: an American born of American parents on an American army base, except I had something he didn't - a birth certificate. They tried to throw him out.

Except that I might not even have a birth certificate. Recently, when I brought it to a DMV to have my driver's license renewed (I actually didn't need it, so it was moot) I was told that they wouldn't have accepted it as a birth certificate if it was needed. And my Boss had some problems with it when I had to sign an I-9 form.

I resent this. I resent having to tote a 37-year-old piece of crumbling hospital documentation around for the rest of my life. If I'd been born in this country, it'd have been moot. I resent that someday some official may just decide that it isn't the right piece of paper and try to throw me out. Even if that doesn't happen, I foresee problems getting a passport. I resent having to spend my life defending myself against this lurching bureaucracy set up, ironically, by the same class of people who usually have a big boner for small, non-intrusive government. Sure, as long as you're part of the Club, you get small, non-intrusive government. The rest of us get to live in Oceania.

But it's more than personal. There's a logic involved here: if the statistics are right, then there are eleven million illegal immigrants in the US.

Wrap your brain around that number for a moment. Eleven MILLION.

You can't put eleven million people in jail. You can't. It can't happen. Our jails are bulging as it is. You can't feed eleven million people through the court system. You can't throw eleven million people out of the country without creating a severe economic and social vacuum. You can bleat all you want about how you think all ILLEGAL immigrants should be thrown ass-first out of the country and never allowed to come back, but your dream will never come true.

And yet, every time some politician ("If you don't like the law, change it," remember?) suggests some plan for dealing with the fact that we have eleven million evil vicious criminals roaming our streets at large, that plan gets beaten like a pinata by the same people who can't face the fact that their dreams will never come true. We will never have comprehensive immigration reform as long as the people who hate ILLEGAL immigration keep flaming any plan offered.

So here we are. Eleven million problems, and no solution. Have a nice day.

Love, Who?

[elsporko]

Its fairly easy to get a new birth certificate. It may be different for military but all I had to do was fill out a form and pay a nominal fee.


11 million immigrants is a lot. Think of how much time and money would be saved without them in America. 11 million jobs open for people who would be paid over the table and paying taxes. 11 million people burdening the health care system allowing public health care to become more of a dream. 11 million less criminals on the streets (and they are all criminals if they broke the law to come to America) needing to be protected by the police. 11 million less people crowding crowded inner cities, taxing school resources, and using up donations from charitable organizations.

People wonder why America has so many problems, I for one can think of 11 million contributing factors.

[Rapscallion]

Those eleven million people are not doing nothing. They're working, generally at low pay, and they're earning and contributing to some extent to the economy. Even if they're paid under the table and not paying taxes directly, you can bet your arse that the majority are paid below the minimum wage (if they're not being taxed, they need less money), but when they go for a burger or a coffee or whatever, part of what they pay for the goods goes as tax to the govermment.

I'm not saying that I want illegal immigrants. I'm saying that if you somehow arrange a pogrom and cleanse illegal immigrants out - and that's going to be a gargantuan task in and of itself - then there are consequences. Uganda found that out the hard way after expelling almost all the asians in the country and then neglecting the businesses they left behind.

Should illegal immigrants be allowed to 'burden' the state health systems? I tend towards being a human and think that a living person is generally not a burden. Should an illegal immigrant be given schooling? That's more debateable - if they're going to be sent back to their own country, then why should the host nation do that? Well, there's the option of saying that if they take the education back and improve the lot of the country they came from, over time that means fewer economic migrants.

Rapscallion

[elsporko]

The trouble with illegal immigrants in school is that they bring down the value of the education for those who are American. Teaching a class of 20 verses a class of 40 where half the students barely speak English is a huge roadblock for teaching.

Illegal immigrants also contribute little to the local economy. They are sending large amounts of their income to their families at home, leaving them with little to spend here. The Uganda example is irrelevant because few have legitiment businesses seeing as they can't get licensed.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Dealing with all the illegal immigrants we have is one thing, I realize it is not really feasible to either jail or deport them.

Having said that, I'm in full support of measures that make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get IN to the country in the first place. We may not be able to do much with the folks that are already here, but we can at least try to stem the flow.

[HYHYBT]

I resent having to spend my life defending myself against this lurching bureaucracy set up, ironically, by the same class of people who usually have a big boner for small, non-intrusive government.

This, of course, is because they're *not* really for small, non-intrusive government. They're for government that interferes with *their* lives as little as possible while simultaneously forcing everybody else to do what they want them to do.

Its fairly easy to get a new birth certificate. It may be different for military but all I had to do was fill out a form and pay a nominal fee.

...and go to the court house where the original is located. IF the country it was issued in didn't give you the original, in which case you're probably stuck.