IronMonk and I agree

[Iacobus]

Argh, I am getting upset about illegal immigration. I am not opposed to immigration by proper channels, but I am strongly opposed to illegal immigration and do not think that cracking down on it is "wrong." The current bills before the Congress may be, but trying to stem the flow is not wrong.

Firstly, one of the reasons many people are crossing over is for jobs. Most of the jobs they are taking are low paying jobs and the workers are often exploited or in a postion to be. The reason that these jobs are open and filled by these workers, we are told, is because they are jobs that American's will not take. That is not a fully true statement, a more qualified statement would be in the form, "They commonly fill jobs that Americans won't take for the offered pay." An American has a higher expectation of benfits and support from a job then many people throughtout the world. We, as a society, allow these postions to remain open at lower pay because we consider them to be sub-human at that pay. If you paid someone 15 dollars an hour to work on a farm, many would do it, they wouldn't do it at 5.15 without benfits. These are jobs that Americans will fill, but not at the rate those in charge of them are willing to pay. In order to stem illegal immigration, and to protect those that still do cross, we need to stop this wage-slave pay system and strongly enforce labor laws with teeth. As long as we allow illegal immigration, we cannot do that, we hurt the illegals and the natural born and the legal aliens.

Secondly, there is a reason for visas and access control. While of the known terrorists, all entered the US legally or via Canada, the Mexico/US line still is dangerous. There is a large amount of human trafficing there, as well as trafficing in illegal drugs, etc. It would not be hard to sneak something, be it a terrorist or a bomb or anything under the BNICE roof, through. This isn't to say that we shouldn't concern ourselves with our Northernly Neighbor. But neither boarder needs a wall like in the Israel. Regulating traffic, legal and otherwise, into the US, or any nation, is wise and is based on homeland defense.

Illegals are just that, illegal. They are breaking, at least, federal immigration law. If we grant immunity from that law to one section of that population, it is saying "While you broke the law, we won't take anything from you." We could empty our overpopulated prisons by doing that as well. If we make everything legal that is illegal now and grant amnesty to those that broke the law, what are we doing? Society needs laws to function, we cannot remove the laws because we don't agree with them in part.

People are tossing around numbers, normally at least 7 million, for the population of illegals in the US. When your population of "undocumented persons" is over 2% of the total population (7/300 million), there is a problem that needs addressing.

Today there was a march on campus that I witnessed shouting for immigrant rights. Their logic isn't solid, immigrants are not being denied any rights (right now). A legal immigrant is afford the protections granted to a citizen. An illegal immigrant is not. Should we make the illegal immigrant legal, reward him/her for breaking the law? There is, and should be, a distinction between illegal and legal immigrants. If we are going to punish people for breaking the law, such as trepassing on Federal property, then perhaps, we should also punish people for illegal enter the country.

[jasJis]

Ah. But what is the alternative to illegal immigration? The US turned a blind eye to it for years and did not enforce current immigration laws because it got cheap labor. Illegals and others took adavantage of a system that was not enforced.
Now, 11 million people later, what is the reasonable thing to do?

[Socrates]

[quote name='Iacobus' date='Apr 10 2006, 02:58 PM']Argh, I am getting upset about illegal immigration. I am not opposed to immigration by proper channels, but I am strongly opposed to illegal immigration and do not think that cracking down on it is "wrong." The current bills before the Congress may be, but trying to stem the flow is not wrong.

Firstly, one of the reasons many people are crossing over is for jobs. Most of the jobs they are taking are low paying jobs and the workers are often exploited or in a postion to be. The reason that these jobs are open and filled by these workers, we are told, is because they are jobs that American's will not take. That is not a fully true statement, a more qualified statement would be in the form, "They commonly fill jobs that Americans won't take for the offered pay." An American has a higher expectation of benfits and support from a job then many people throughtout the world. We, as a society, allow these postions to remain open at lower pay because we consider them to be sub-human at that pay. If you paid someone 15 dollars an hour to work on a farm, many would do it, they wouldn't do it at 5.15 without benfits. These are jobs that Americans will fill, but not at the rate those in charge of them are willing to pay. In order to stem illegal immigration, and to protect those that still do cross, we need to stop this wage-slave pay system and strongly enforce labor laws with teeth. As long as we allow illegal immigration, we cannot do that, we hurt the illegals and the natural born and the legal aliens.

Secondly, there is a reason for visas and access control. While of the known terrorists, all entered the US legally or via Canada, the Mexico/US line still is dangerous. There is a large amount of human trafficing there, as well as trafficing in illegal drugs, etc. It would not be hard to sneak something, be it a terrorist or a bomb or anything under the BNICE roof, through. This isn't to say that we shouldn't concern ourselves with our Northernly Neighbor. But neither boarder needs a wall like in the Israel. Regulating traffic, legal and otherwise, into the US, or any nation, is wise and is based on homeland defense.

Illegals are just that, illegal. They are breaking, at least, federal immigration law. If we grant immunity from that law to one section of that population, it is saying "While you broke the law, we won't take anything from you." We could empty our overpopulated prisons by doing that as well. If we make everything legal that is illegal now and grant amnesty to those that broke the law, what are we doing? Society needs laws to function, we cannot remove the laws because we don't agree with them in part.

People are tossing around numbers, normally at least 7 million, for the population of illegals in the US. When your population of "undocumented persons" is over 2% of the total population (7/300 million), there is a problem that needs addressing.

Today there was a march on campus that I witnessed shouting for immigrant rights. Their logic isn't solid, immigrants are not being denied any rights (right now). A legal immigrant is afford the protections granted to a citizen. An illegal immigrant is not. Should we make the illegal immigrant legal, reward him/her for breaking the law? There is, and should be, a distinction between illegal and legal immigrants. If we are going to punish people for breaking the law, such as trepassing on Federal property, then perhaps, we should also punish people for illegal enter the country.
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While I'll be darned! I agree with Iacabus on something!

Wonders never cease!

[Jaime]

here's an area where you disagree

you say



[quote]Firstly, one of the reasons many people are crossing over is for jobs[/quote]

Ironmonk states
[quote]I do not believe the majority of illegals are well intentioned. I have seen far to many be the problem.
[/quote]

and

[quote]The biggest problem with so many illegal aliens coming over is that they bring so many illegal drugs and stolen goods.[/quote]

You say that you agree with Ironmonk. And yet no one has argued against stronger borders or that we should open the borders. Most of the arguments on the various threads have been against one particular part of one bill that goes against Catholic teachings.

Also something to consider for all folks. Our jail systems accommodate a little 2 million prisoners and its rising. There are not enough jails currently.

If we make all 11 million illegal immigrants felons,

Where are we going to put them? And how are we going to pay for that?

Each federal inmate costs $150 per day to house. That's $54,750 a year. Multiply that by 11,000,000 and you get $602 billion a year for just incarceration. That doesn't include building new facilities to house these folks.

There are practical considerations that need to be considered.

[Iacobus]

I wouldn't suggest tossing them in jail. There should be a one time deal for the gaining of legal status (worker visa, retroactive or something, that will convert to citizenship in say, five years?). But we shouldn't make that a standing law, if we did, why even have the laws regarding immigration in the first place?

The vast majority, per my understanding, are not criminals in any sense of the word other then that they are breaking federal immigration statues. The criminals, the drug and human trafficers, should be punished/imprisioned as quickly as possible. The rest of the illegals can most likely, under some system, gain citizenship via normal legal channels. We need to, most of all, kill the market for illegal workers. If they came here illegally and couldn't get a job because of being here illegally, then they would revert to more legal channels. We can do this without much more effort, but it would require us to turn our eyes on this issue.

I don't see Bush's (or any one else's variation on it) of a workers visa type thing, Bush's at least, promotes illegal immigration. The worker, under the orginal plan, can't get a job in the US until he has a permit but can't get a permit until he has a job. I.E. he has to get one of the jobs currently open to an illegal and from there he has to apply to get a permit to work that job he is worker. If he was hired for that job as an illegal, do you think his empolyer is going to let him apply or threaten to fire him/report him? These plans are flaws, moreover, like I said, it isn't so much that Americans won't do the jobs but that Americans won't do that job for that little.

We need to have a required living wage for all jobs (5.15 or 6.50 in IL doesn't cut it as a living wage) so that people will take these jobs. We need to require more extensive documentation from hires as to their immigration/citizenship status (and that means everyone, no bases on racial or ethnic traits). We need to cross reference the data, he if gives me a address of XYZ Ubuntu Town and his drivers number matchs to YZV Ero Street, something odd is going on. If we cross references these things, addresses on forms with drivers numbers with SS numbers it would be a start. We can do it with guns, why can't we do it with this more pressing problem?

[AngelofJesus]

Unfortunately, economics also plays a dirty deed in this equation. If farm workers are paid fif dollars an hour, the farm owners will have to raise the price of their produce, which puts them in a no win situation since they won't be able to compete with produce imported from other countries. Here in california alone, we have seen a decline in tomato growers because imported tomatoes from mexico are so much cheaper. We can't very well ask all produce growers to match our prices, unless the U.S. government puts a tariff on it. Which in turn forces those countries to tack tariffs on what we export. It snowballs. So raising the wage, unfortunately, can spell disaster for these businesses.
What to do, what to do...

[Iacobus]

[quote name='AngelofJesus' date='Apr 11 2006, 02:27 PM']Unfortunately, economics also plays a dirty deed in this equation.  If farm workers are paid fif    dollars an hour, the farm owners will have to raise the price of their produce, which puts them in a no win situation since they won't be able to compete with produce imported from other countries.  Here in california alone, we have seen a decline in tomato growers because imported tomatoes from mexico are so much cheaper.  We can't very well ask all produce growers to match our prices, unless the U.S. government puts a tariff on it. Which in turn forces those countries to tack tariffs on what we export.  It snowballs. So raising the wage, unfortunately, can spell disaster for these businesses. 
What to do, what to do...
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Have the consumer smell of elderberries it up and pay more. If I had to pay 2 dollars more per pound of some fruit and me paying those extra two dollars directly helps American farmers, American workers, and our nation as a whole, I shouldn't whine. People talk about the "blame America first" people. If they exist, they aren't hurting the US as much as the people who seek out the cheapest product because all they do is talk. When I choose to buy Japanese steel over American steel I am directly hurting American workers and our national security. If we ever, God forbid, have to enter into another huge war, like World War II, we will be at a severe disadvantage because we no longer have any active (or enough active) steel plants because we decided that the system of lowest bid was good during the peaceful years. People need to make a concious effort to seek out American products and buy them, even if they cost more. The problem isn't fully economicly based, a good part of it could be fixed if people were more selfless in their buying habits.