an idiot can say alot of things, there is NO common sense application to be on the net. common sense isn't so common anymore Salty. Unfortunately. :dis:
I can't understand how anyone supports illegal immigration. They break so many laws ... illegally enter our country, forge social security documents, illegally obtain driver's license, those with no documents don't pay income taxes ... the list goes on and on. No doubt that our immigration system is broken, but that's no excuse to violate our laws. There are many laws I disagree with, but that doesn't give me a green light to break them and expect amnesty if caught. I wonder what would happen to me if the IRS found out I was paid cash and not reporting it to them. Think I'd get amnesty?
Read up on immigration history in this country before you makeaccusations. If you don't know about it remain silent. Facts are facts. The services and benefits consumed by illegals totals about 11.4 billion. Their contributions to the economy is around 10 billion. Thats a 1.4 billion dollar shortfall. That isn't even a hick-up on a multi trillion dollar economy. Hereare articles that gives both sides very fairly http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/21/MNGFQIVN991.DTL&type=politics http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309063566?OpenDocument Like I said all along from an economicimpact its a wash short term and its positive long term.
Illegals should be stopped at the border and US employers fined heavily for hiring them and providing a reason for them to come illegally. Illegal foreign nationals should not recieve the full benefits of citizenship. That is my position. But I do have opinions on some of the items Salty listed. No renters pay property taxes including US citizens. The owners pay property taxes for their rental properties from their rent profits. So rental properties do pay property taxes to contribute to schools. It just goes through the property owner middle man. This is very true of those illegals who work for cash and get care at charity hospitals. However those that work with fake SSN cards sometimes pay health insurance like the US employees do. To quote from Section 8 "Participation is limited to U.S. citizens and specified categories of non-citizens who have eligible immigration status." So I doubt if many illegals rent in subsidized housing. Most live in shanties, trailers, and privare rentals. Statistics from Section 8 indicate that 11% of renters are Hispanic which is well below the percentage of Hispanic US citizens. Agreed. However I think we need more border patrol officers anyway for Homeland Security reasons. This doesn't bother me much and is not illegal. The work that they do here certainly more than compensates our economy. The legal immigrants and guest workers that we want to replace illegals with will send their money back home, too. Anything that makes life better in Mexico will reduce pressure to come here. Americans working overseas send their money home also. I can't blame them for this. Well, taxpayers don't pay for their houses, but illegals do evade many taxes which is a real problem. Another reason to register each and every one of them. Only if their kids were born here and are US citizens. Then they have the same rights as you and I. Illegals have no rights to bring family over legally. Illegals are a real problem and need to be replaced by legal workers that can be tracked, pay taxes, and own insurance. But we do have huge sectors in agriculture, food service, housekeeping, and manual labor that cannot fill jobs with Americans and do require foreign workers. We have to fix the problem without hurting ourselves. I think the biggest reasons to eliminate illegals and initiate a better legal guest worker/immigrant program are: 1. Illegals can bring communicable diseases into the US and would otherwise be excluded or quarrantined if they entered on legal status. 2. Our enemies find it easy to hide among the illegals and gain access to the US to cause us harm. Our borders need to be tough to cross, even if we solve the illegal worker problem. 3. Illegals evade income and sales taxes, don't pay social security, don't buy health insurance, or auto liability insurance. Legal workers would.
Noone supports illegal immigration. I just think mass deportation is stupid. We need to increase our border security. A wall in and of itself does not do that. Our true first line of defense would be to go after businesses that hire illegals. Then to locate illegals document them to be guest workers and tax them. I don't care about citizenship. If the individuals wants to go through with it it is up to them. I would prefer a seaonal guest worker program where they come here, work, get paid, load up on goods from Wal-Mart and and go home.
often quoted, a song sung by many who with the stroke of a pen announce what they "think" they know or surmise. We don't have HUGE sectors of anything that HAS to be filled with foreign workers, this is a farce business lobbyists are deperately trying to sell you. Many have bought it. The truth is IF the jobs went UNFILLED they would raise the wage, or invent something that could do the job more economiclly. This is no different than slave labor. In the days of cotton picking by hand, people were paid chump change. I know my grandpaw and Dad were paid by the sack when he was young. My Grandpaw was a sharecropper in South La. This was during the depression era. They DID work because they needed the money, any money.... there are Americans like that in this country and would be more if they took half the people off entitlements that were using the system to avoid work. As the economy got better, My Grandad and Dad moved to jobs that paid better. My Dad joined the military and my Grandpaw went to build ships in the Pascagoula ship yards. They were replaced by other families who needed work. When workers couldn't be found.... farming started to become more mechanized. As long as the famers are ALLOWED to pay chump change for illegal workers, they will. Necessity is the mother of invention. Either pay the correct wage for the fruit, stop growing the fruit or invent something that will pick the fruit better. This applies to many types of labor. foreign labor is just big business' way of avoiding labor laws. They abuse the system for capital gain and as long as there is business and man it will happen. Small business has jumped on the band wagon, half the cement workers in south Texas use foriegn labor. Don't EVEN say this is a job no American will do because they will. You know they will. They still do alot of it up here. There is an old saying that applies to merchandise as well as labor. You get what you pay for. I've seen cheap labor construction and I've seen american labor construction and it doesnt take a building inspector to see which one is MUCH better. Many of you see hard working illegal aliens for low wage, well I've seen PLENTY of not so hard working illegal aliens wanting more of what can be gotten for free here in America. And their numbers are growing. It is up to each and every one of us to allow and compel our Goverment to regulate unscrupulous business practices, whether it is robbing the employee 401K fund or hiring illegal aliens for chump change or running an underground sweat shop with child labor. It is WRONG. if you have the oppurtunity to do right... do so. There is nothing wrong with wanting a better life in America, but there must be respect for our laws from the get go. I don't blame the Mexican people, I blame our politicians, since they no longer respect anything but dollars. The flag means little to them if it doesn't have money tied to it. have a nice day.
Well, you are announcing what you "think" you know or surmise, too. What makes you any different? Can you absolutely prove what you say? Half true. There are many jobs in the construction business being held by cheap Mexican labor that could be paying union wages and hiring Americans. This is something that should be addressed because it is a case of business taking advantage of the system to make bigger profits. On the other hand, this is NOT true about agricultural and housekeeping jobs. Unemployment is around 4% in this country and the tiny percentage of folks that aren't working aren't really interested in working. The American workforce is largely college educated or skilled high school graduates who have plenty of better opportunities and aren't going to be a hotel maid or pick lettuce for any price. You must understand that agricultural products are an international commodity. If South American fruit sells for $4.00 a bushel, then American fruit must compete at that price or go out of business. It takes cheap labor like the foreign companies have for us to compete. All that can be automated already is. Agriculture is a labor-intensive business. If American farmers have to pay union wages then they will not be able to sell their produce and will go out of business. What then? America will no longer be self-sufficent in food production which is entirely unacceptable. Do you not agree? This is a situation where we can have our cake and eat it too. All we have to do is force the employers to hire only legal foreign workers. Their costs will go up only slightly, the US stays self-sufficent in food, and our borders are not overrun with illegals. There is much truth here and it is why much regulation must occur in certain industries. But with 4% unemployment we are not going to be able to fill all of the holes. And it will only get worse as the US public grows more prosperous and educated. You don't want your son to to be smoothing concrete for a living, you want him to be the IT guy for the concrete company or better yet . . . own the concrete company. Yet someone has to tie steel and vibrate and screed that concrete. I hope a lot of american youth would take such jobs to help pay for college so they can eventually become executives and professionals and many do, as I did. But there will still not be enough manual laborers for many jobs. It's not just about the wages, it is about bodies available and willing to do the work. On this point, JS, I agree 100%.
Many highly educated men, and women, agree with me 100%. I made my statement, about early immigrants not draining the system by receiving such a large amount of social services, in an earlier post. Low and behold, the very next day that same point was being used to shoot down RDDB's on national TV. I'd be upset with them for stealing my idea if it wasn't so blatantly obvious. There are few similarities between the 'Legal" Irish immigrants coming to this country and "illegal" mexicans climbing or digging under a fence. The Irish learned our language, worked hard, paid their way (because back then there wasn't any other choice, not a lot was just handed to someone), and overall, contributed to the great expansion of that time. Mexicans do little more than clean toilets or dig ditches, don't care to learn the language, have everything handed to them that paid for by taxpayers, and have not shown a desire to "mix" with our society. They exist as a separate culture and they want it that way. The second one is talking about legal immigration. The first one is nothing more than estimates and opinions. I call it like I see it. With illegals paying cash for everything, living so many to a household, not purchasing property, using free medical treatment, and earning such low wages, there is no way that they come anywhere near to paying for themselves. Concerning the second article, I have no issue with LEGAL immigration. Come on over. Bring your skills and dreams. Just do it legally. Red, don't try and tell me that you believe the federal housing subsidy programs to be uncorrupt. Every other federal program is, why not this one? I see it a lot with people up here living in subsidized homes, even though they make too much money. The problem is, the money they make is cash, paid under the table, so they can continue to receive social security benefits and the almost free housing. We may never know just how much illegals cost American taxpayers. Economist are not immune to personal ideals. If they support illegals, they find evidence supporting their beliefs. Economist that oppose them can just as easily find evidence supporting their figures. The key here is to use common sense. In my opinion, it has to be obvious that they are a drain on the system, and cost way more than they contribute. The proof is staring us in the face. I, for one, don't require some number cruncher to tell me otherwise.
I didn't make any broad sweeping statements, Like HUGE sectors. Everyone knows there ae lobbyists with this agenda, there is a lobbyist for every agenda that can hire one. Broad sweeping statements = fasle. they would be interested if they were'nt being subsidized to sit around on taxpayer's nickle. And you forget about people working their way through school who aren't "skilled" yet. You are making another broad sweeping statement saying everyone is largely skilled. enter word largely..... abstract, broad sweeping statement can't be proved. In fact America is a nation of diversified skills that are qucikly becoming LESS technical, due to lack of secondary education. ( this is not a broad sweeping statement all you have to do is look up HS graduate records from last year and compare. Also compare college education graduates as a per capita of the population versus ten years ago. Do it, instead of using broad sweeping statements. So no they don't have better oppurtunities. You are also forgetting about LEGAL immigrants that are learning to meld into our society. They will often do these jobs. It doesn't have to compete at that price. if it costs more then they will either 1. go out of business, 2. find a way to pick it cheaper, or 3. raise the price of the product. You missed the part about invention didn't you? :dis: another broad sweeping statement...in your analogy, all food production in the US would shut down over the reduction of illegal immigrant workers. :nope: I guess all food produced is somehow picked or processed by an illegal alien. No doubt if things continue that will be so. Red if they go OUT of business, then they didn't need to be IN business. Period. Your problem with overseas goods can again be blamed on NAFTA and our lovely politicians. Doom and gloom..:dis: . IF we dont hire illegals, America will no longer be self sufficeint. this from the same group that was loving all up on NAFTA saying, america doesn't need to be self sufficeint we can import everything.. make up your economic mind. Can you be or cant you? You cant have it both ways? :dis: Newsflash, during the early growing season alot of produce is ALREADY grown in central america and shipped to the US. as long as they aren't MIGRANT workers, that's fine. If American citizens want the job they should be hired also. the wage should be the same across the board, there are minimum wage laws and they should be enforced. The US will always have citizens who aren't ALL techies. There will always be a segment of the population that isn't able to do high end work. How far are you removed from society? where I work we have a guy who works temporary through kelly services. Temporary is a misnomer, he's been there 10 years. He is 64 and he cannot read or write. he was hired as a general laborer. He does anything. I've been trying to teach him a little bit on the side. He can write his name and read some bible versus. He is not alone in this world. I am not sure where you got that 4% number and of course there are those that WILL not work, regardless of the type work. These people need to be cut off the dole plain and simple. Actually Red, Tech articles I read prove you wrong, with technology comes automation with automation comes LESS technical jobs not more. This is in some areas, not all, since the market in this area is still growing. Automation largely replaces low/medium skilled workers. These people cant all re-train to be tech skilled workers, the factory doesn't need 50 techies. They could learn to screed concrete, it pays pretty good around here. Do you know for a fact that illegal alien workers are greater than 4%? or are their supporters more than 4%? maybe all those people who are on entitlements aren't being counted. I know there is something like 7% around here. If it is 4% nation wide then we should do everything possible to get those jobs to Americans first. We arent responible for foreigner's welfare or employement. AND the agriculture business has faced far worse than this in america and survived, I have the utmost faith it will again. :dis: \good day
