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What some people don't realize is that Mexican workers will go to the US because it pays more. They have fields and homes and so forth down there, but THEY can pay some illegal from Central America less, so they can come up here and make, say $9 a day, and only have to pay the El Salvadorean around, say, $7 a day....
It's just regular everyday greed, only on a smaller scale.
We have bigger problems with illegal immigrants sponging off "uncle sam" rather than legal immigrants. Hospitals in Arizona, California and other border states are actually going out of business and closing down because they cannot afford the extreme costs of handing out free care to illegals.
Then they should only allow people who can show citizenship (if they obviously don't look american). That might be considered inhuman by some, but if its necessary then it should be done
Then they should only allow people who can show citizenship (if they obviously don't look american). That might be considered inhuman by some, but if its necessary then it should be done
That is probably the most ignorant comment I have seen in this post. What makes someone look american?
Some ppl hate them and some ppl love them. Ask farmers, ranchers, cleaning companies, and many, many other industries what they think and you will get a resounding "they are good!" Why? Because these industries are able to maintain themselves thanks to the cheap labor that illegal immigrants supply.
Would you really want to pay $2.50 for ONE apple? Probably not. But, the sad truth is, many crops would go unharvested if it were not for these illegal immigrants working on these farms. Many countries, not just the U.S., rely on illegal immigrants in order to maintain their agricultural societies. Nobody in industrialized countries wants to be a farm hand. People want to go to school and become lawyers, bankers, doctors, business owners, policemen, etc. I don't know of one person (who is not an illegal immigrant) who really wants to work in these back-breaking, low-wage jobs.
Just as with everything, there are two sides. People don't realize how much of a hit our economy would take if we suddenly closed our borders and managed to kick out every illegal alien.
Most people don't like them because of racist or prejudice reasons. Immigrants are no more prone to be thugs and criminals than those naturalized or born citizens that live in the same area they do. For them, crime is a product of their socio-economic standing. I believe it was Stanford that did a 5-year study on this and came to this conclusion. The number of illegals who were criminals was proportional to the number of others living in the same region or socio-economic standings in or around the same geographic locations.
The other thing people complain about is them taking "our jobs." If I ever see a statement this funny again I think I'll die of asphyxiation from laughing so hard. Illegal aliens are, in the grand part (probably over 99%, but I haven't counted), not highly educated people. Most probably never even saw a high school. The jobs they are taking are the low skill and low pay jobs. Those jobs such as shelf stockers at Wal-Mart, farm hands, and burger flippers at McDonalds. Are these really the jobs you want for you and your family or are you really striving to get those lawyer, doctor, engineer, and accounting jobs?
You know who's running into these problems now? Wal-Mart. They sell cheap because they are allowed to keep prices low (be it by buying in bulk, hiring cheap labor, or having mostly part-time workers that, by law, do not require many benefits). People buy there because of the low prices and this helps the economy two ways: as people shop there, they save money leaving them more disposable income to spend in other locations; and, with their patronage, Wal-Mart is able to employ many people who, normally, wouldn't have a place to work. Yes, they are not getting great benefit packages, but at least they have a job where, if it weren't for Wal-Mart, they wouldn't have one. Having a part-time, no benefit job is always preferable to having no job at all. People demonize Wal-Mart but, the fact remains, they are good for economies. If you don't like it then you vote with your dollar by shopping elsewhere. Of course, you will end up spending more money and help to slow our economic growth but you don't care because you really want these people to have a dental plan. That's what helps you sleep well at night.
The economic impact of closing a Wal-Mart has never been felt (they've never closed a store). We can only speculate as to the amount of damage the local economy would suffer if a Wally World did infact shut its doors.
Listen, I'm against illegal immigration too. But, I think the laws are too strict and should allow for more people to come here if they want to. Prior to WWI, there were no immigration laws. If you wanted to come here all you had to do was come and sit in quaranteen for a month if you came from a country where some disease was common. No passport, no visa, just come on down. I like that idea.
Damn... I wish I would have seen this a looooonnnnnggggggg time ago... Not to pick on you in particular, but you don't see the effects on a daily basis. Try growing up in a border city, actually seeing people running across the now dried up river, hiding from "La Migra" (immigration) and then talk about how safe seeing all this is. Illegal immigration is bad, no matter what pro's you may throw out.. Illegal immigrants DO take a good chunk of the jobs here. We actually have one of the lowest minimum wages as a result of illegal immigration. Employers here don't need to provide higher wages because there will always be someone else coming to take your job.
Yeah I understand that they do a lot of the work that most of us would never even concider doing, but guess what... They want to do that work as much as the rest of us. I cannot financial aid for school because it's being offered to someone from Mexico instead. You mention burger flippers or shelf stockers as being a sub-par job. Guess what.... Not everyone can automatically start off with a $50,000+ entry level postion. It's those starting jobs at McDonalds or Wal-Mart that allow for school oppertunities, and such.
Until people can actually live the subject at hand there are limited people that actually speak what they know instead of strictly opinion.
FACT- Jobs are lost to illegal immigrants
FACT- Illigal immigration does promote higher crime
All things things passed off as racist statements are true if you actually live it. Spend a few years in my city and then we'll talk.
And as for the person that mentioned understanding where they came from. I see it driving down the freeway on a daily basis. Hell I can post pictures for y'all if you want them. I've seen the overcrowding, the poverty, the polution, ecetera. Yes it does play on my heart strings and God knows I wish I could do something to help every single person out. It is not fair to other people that were born here to see all their benifits and such being taken by someone that by all aspects shouldn't be recieving them to begin with.
FACT- Illigal immigration does promote higher crime
That's only the biggest understatement...
Illegals are responsible for a HUGE majority of drugs smuggled into the US. They also have virtual ARMIES in the form of street gangs, with military-grade small arms. They are also highly organized.
Anyone seen that documentry about that one gang that has something like, over 10,000 members and spans more than like a few states...? That's one.
And it's made up almost entirely of illegals. Well financed and trained... and growing.
Damn... I wish I would have seen this a looooonnnnnggggggg time ago... Not to pick on you in particular, but you don't see the effects on a daily basis. Try growing up in a border city, actually seeing people running across the now dried up river, hiding from "La Migra" (immigration) and then talk about how safe seeing all this is. Illegal immigration is bad, no matter what pro's you may throw out.. Illegal immigrants DO take a good chunk of the jobs here. We actually have one of the lowest minimum wages as a result of illegal immigration. Employers here don't need to provide higher wages because there will always be someone else coming to take your job.
Yeah I understand that they do a lot of the work that most of us would never even concider doing, but guess what... They want to do that work as much as the rest of us. I cannot financial aid for school because it's being offered to someone from Mexico instead. You mention burger flippers or shelf stockers as being a sub-par job. Guess what.... Not everyone can automatically start off with a $50,000+ entry level postion. It's those starting jobs at McDonalds or Wal-Mart that allow for school oppertunities, and such.
Until people can actually live the subject at hand there are limited people that actually speak what they know instead of strictly opinion.
FACT- Jobs are lost to illegal immigrants
FACT- Illigal immigration does promote higher crime
All things things passed off as racist statements are true if you actually live it. Spend a few years in my city and then we'll talk.
And as for the person that mentioned understanding where they came from. I see it driving down the freeway on a daily basis. Hell I can post pictures for y'all if you want them. I've seen the overcrowding, the poverty, the polution, ecetera. Yes it does play on my heart strings and God knows I wish I could do something to help every single person out. It is not fair to other people that were born here to see all their benifits and such being taken by someone that by all aspects shouldn't be recieving them to begin with.
Ah, but I did grow up seeing illegals every day. In Puerto Rico, Dominicans and Cubans were a big problem. Cubans eventually stopped, but, each year, more than 1000 Dominicans die trying to cross the straight between Hispanola and Puerto Rico.
Most Puerto Rican produce would go unharvested were it not for the Dominicans. Nobody in PR wants to do those jobs because they see them as inferior. Dominicans are glad to do it. The same happens here. People do not want to work on a farm unless they were born and raised there. It's quite simple, really.
As for the low-paying jobs and having the lowest minimum wage, Congress has repeatedly voted themselves a raise ($28,000 since MW was last raised) yet denied the poor the money they so desperately need. We have a low MW because Congress won't increase it. I understand people work the MW jobs in college to get through school, but that doesn't mean that they want to keep working there. Write your representatives and ask him to raise the MW.
As for your scholarship, colleges and universities cannot give aid to illegal immigrants. People who get the help either have a student visa or are legal residents or citizens.
As for your FACT of illegals being more apt to become criminals, I don't buy it. Where I grew up, in Puerto Rico, we had many immigrants and they were not more prone to crime than any other resident of the area. I've read studies that actually contradict your fact and state that crime is due to socio-economics more than anything. If that's the case, then anyone in a certain socio-economic spot would act the same, regardless of being an illegal immigrant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZapThyCat
It's no wonder we are losing the "war on drugs".
We're never going to win a war against drugs, or poverty, or hunger or any of that other crap we've been fed since we were kids. It's not going to happen.
PR is not the mainland USA Silverdevil, you don't have people from Mexico trying to get there, nor do you have major problems with drugs getting in there. We're talking about the greater US here.
Just like prohibition during the 20's, the Drug wars have caused criminal elements and organized crime to get massively strong and powerful. Of course you cannot win the war on drugs, as it is being fought right now. It's not a real war. If you really treated it as a war, then you would get some pretty serious victories. For example: anyone using drugs gets a one way trip to the prison for several years, even for the smallest crime. Try to run you get shot. That's called "treason"... your fraternizing with drugs, who we are at war with. Find the drug dealers and move up to find the distributors, as well as move into mexico and force them to use their resources. Attack the source, where they are grown at in columbia or jamaica. home grown drugs? you can take steps to take them down too. It's just that the gov't has "pooh-poohed" this "war" until it's not a war.
That's the only way to win a war. Actually have a war.
However lets face it: the organized criminal elements that are here illegally are very numerous. especially in Southern California.
Illegal immigration is definitely a problem, but it's not going to be easily solved. They really help the economy, especially the agricultural and construction/demolition industries, but you also have to consider the effect they put on government programs and the natural citizen's lives. There is a balance somewhere in there, it's just that there is a lot of debate on what that balance is and how to come about it.
Them coming over here legally under a working visa requires that they get paid minimum wage because they have to report their earnings. If we made every illegal immigrant a legal seasonal worker a lot of things would go up in price because the extra wages would have to get transfer to the consumer. If they are over here illegally, then they can get paid under the table for real cheap, but they can't easily live over here during that time on those wages so they have to leech onto the government programs by falsifying papers and using other people's SSNs. It's the government and taxpayers taking the biggest hit, but it's easier to hide the reason why we pay higher taxes than it is to hide the reason why we pay $2.50 for an apple or $200,000 for a house that use to be $100,000 before enforcing strict immigration laws. It's a very complex issue that won't be solved for awhile and probably never fully solved.
PR is not the mainland USA Silverdevil, you don't have people from Mexico trying to get there, nor do you have major problems with drugs getting in there. We're talking about the greater US here.
Just like prohibition during the 20's, the Drug wars have caused criminal elements and organized crime to get massively strong and powerful. Of course you cannot win the war on drugs, as it is being fought right now. It's not a real war. If you really treated it as a war, then you would get some pretty serious victories. For example: anyone using drugs gets a one way trip to the prison for several years, even for the smallest crime. Try to run you get shot. That's called "treason"... your fraternizing with drugs, who we are at war with. Find the drug dealers and move up to find the distributors, as well as move into mexico and force them to use their resources. Attack the source, where they are grown at in columbia or jamaica. home grown drugs? you can take steps to take them down too. It's just that the gov't has "pooh-poohed" this "war" until it's not a war.
That's the only way to win a war. Actually have a war.
However lets face it: the organized criminal elements that are here illegally are very numerous. especially in Southern California.
Ahem: "Beginning in the early 1990s, Puerto Rico has enjoyed the dubious honor of being the leading Caribbean platform for Colombian cocaine traffickers"
Here's antother quote from a DEA publication to Congress: "More than ever, international drug trafficking organizations utilize Puerto Rico as a major point of entry for the transshipment of multi-ton quantities of cocaine being smuggled into the United States."
Puerto Rico is rampant with drugs and illegal immigrants. Don't tell me that we don't have a problem with it. And, you're right, we don't have Mexicans, but we do have Dominicans, Hatians, and even Colombians and Venezuelans popping up every day. Puerto Rico has one of the biggest illegal immigrant populations in the world, not just in the U.S. The Puerto Rico police and the U.S. Coast Guard do not have enough resources to keep them out nor to successfully patrol our waters. Puerto Rico is one of the biggest ways drugs get into the U.S. since most shipments originating in PR are not inspected (it's considered interstate commerce, just as if it came from Hawaii).
I know what it's like to live in a town where the illegal immigrant population is in the double digits. Last I read (about 2 years ago), the illegal immigrant population was 13% of our whole islands population. Name one state that even comes close to that. With about 3.7 million people counted in the 2000 census, that means that we have about 480.000 illegals. That's a huge number for an island smaller than Rhode Island.
My point is that I did grow up in a place where illegal immigration was/is a problem. But, I look at it from an objective point of view now that I've lived away from it for 9 years. I, just as many people who live in that situation, couldn't see the forest through the trees.
