What should be done about illegal immigration?

@okie,

Quote:

California should be flying high.

Which it certainly looked to be in that ad I saw the other night on behalf of the Tourist Board.

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@High Seas,

High Seas wrote:

Okie - Francis is generally very careful with his research, there's just no way he would be familiar with our sad economic reality.

Btw, Berlusconi (PM of Italy) finally got tired of people crossing over to Italy from Africa in rickety boats and took to towing their boats back to Africa. Only the other day I saw the Coast Guard had to rescue lots of people attempting to sail to Florida from Haiti on some raft - apparently a daily occurence.

And wasn't it Bill Clinton who had to issue an executive order to intercept boat people from wherever and transport them back to their country of origin? Who refused sanctuary for Elian Gonzalez? (Or that might have been the courts now that I think about it.) Back in the 60's, however, a lot of Cuban boat people were making it to America and were receiving sanctuary from a brutal and vindictive Castro regime. But virtually all had sponsors and/or family here willing to take them in. Back then I helped work with a New York group to find sponsors/jobs/housing etc. in Texas for boat people and also political prisoners as Castro was dumping them here.

By the late 70's and 80's, pretty much all of that had stopped or slowed to a crawl. There were still people coming up from South America and Mexico requesting asylum but they were all illegal as the places they came from were not considered (by us) to be a danger to the people. I was not directly involved in that but some folks involved with the organization I worked for in the mid 1980's were involved with transporting illegals through New Mexico to get to a so-called 'sanctuary city' where they would not be questioned. (We were pretty sure our offices were wiretapped and it was during that period that I am pretty sure my home phone was tapped.) A couple of the volunteers were arrested and convicted and that pretty well shut down all operations that I was aware of locally.

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@Francis,

And not only do they pay into the Social Security system for benefits they will never receive but they also arrive with the considerable costs of their rearing having been payed elsewhere. And presumably they can be rounded up and deported, accompanied by gestures of outrage, once their economic effectiveness diminishes.

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre...

Are you really claiming you were part of the Sanctuary movement? (Other than Elian Gonzalez which was a parental custody case, not a sanctuary one).

Your spin in interesting. First, all of the Cuban boat people are illegal immigrants who are deported back to Cuba (and always have been) unless they make it to land under the very strange "Wet foot/ dry foot" policy.

Any implication that asylum seekers from El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 70's and 80's were in less danger then people from Cuba is ridiculous (do you know why the "death squads" were called "death squads")

I am curious what organization you say you were a part of. I have a deep respect for these Americans who were willing to do the right thing even though it meant breaking the law.

Many of the religious organizations that were part of the Sanctuary movement, the Quakers and the Methodists for example, are now at the forefront of the immigrants rights movement.

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@ebrown p,

People who do not understand the immigration from Central and South America should go see the movie Sin Nobre. It's an eye-0pener. However, some people remain "blind" no matter what they "see."

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@ebrown p,

Quote:

Many of the religious organizations that were part of the Sanctuary movement, the Quakers and the Methodists for example, are now at the forefront of the immigrants rights movement.

It is difficult to see any other choice for Christians.

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@ebrown p,

ebrown p wrote:

Any implication that asylum seekers from El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 70's and 80's were in less danger then people from Cuba is ridiculous (do you know why the "death squads" were called "death squads")

you are right about that, e. i worked with a lot of refugees from both of those countries in the early '80s. i remember this one salvadoran guy (i even remember his name; luis) that got caught in a big shoot 'em up in his little town. he had to play possum among the dead bodies for nearly a whole day until it got dark enough to make a move. i learned the word "propina" from him, as a matter of fact.

see, e? i'm not all bad. Wink

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@DontTreadOnMe,

how bad are you?

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@ebrown p,

I was part of the Santuary movement in the sense that I was in the middle of it, I knew who was doing it, I met many of the folks they were helping pass through New Mexico, and I was at very real risk of being arrested as an accessory because I didn't turn anybody in. I didn't mention any countries other than Mexico did I? Some of the folks being transported were Mexican and they were just as illegal then as they are now. As were the Guatemalans, Hondruans, Columbians, Venezuelans, Costa Ricans, and various others that passed through.

By 1986 there were an estimated three million illegals in the country all of whom were given amnesty courtesy of the Reagan administration. The Sanctuary movement pretty well went out of business at that time.

I have a friend here in Albuquerque whose family did come into the country during the Sanctuary movement - from Nicaragua--she was my church choir buddy for three years. She said it was not because they were in any danger at the time, but her dad was just an adventuresome sort. They had intended to go back, but after amnesty was offered changed their minds and stayed. They still have a lot of family in Nicaragua, however, and go back frequently to visit. She's a neat lady.

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@Foxfyre,

Quote:

and I was at very real risk of being arrested as an accessory because I didn't turn anybody in.

Wow Foxy!!! You are a better person than I ever imagined.

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@dyslexia,

dyslexia wrote:

how bad are you?

i'm bad, i'm bad. sha' mon. uh -whoo-hoo-hoo !

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@ebrown p,

Yeah I'm pretty okay for being such the hard-hearted, selfish, racist, bigoted bitch as you have frequently reminded me that I am all these months, huh? Smile

The other side of the coin is that I've also visited illegals in the hospital and in jail here. I've worked their insurance claims. And I've seen the hardships incurred by the illegals and those who have been affected by them, and I have dealt first hand with the victims of those illegals that never should have been allowed into the country. We are not doing the poor of Mexico or any other place any favors by encouraging them to come here, putting their very lives in danger, being used, abused, and assigning them to what will probably be a permanent underclass.

It is easy to point to our immigrant ancestors and all those who came during a different time, before there was a welfare state, who were needed to build a country. That was then. Now is now.

Open borders and unrestricted immigration is not the answer and it can be the answer for no country that is a nondiscriminatory welfare state as we are. We cannot accept all the world's poor and it is not wise nor fair to accommodate only those who violate our laws to get here. And we do nobody any favors if we so weaken ourselves or put ourselves at such risk that we are unable to help anybody here or anywhere else.

We need to enforce our laws and put programs into place that accomplish the best of both ideals--that of helping folks who need help and that of keeping the country strong and safe. We are much more likely to accomplish that if we stop demonizing people we don't agree with.

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@okie,

Both things would be legal.

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@ebrown p,

I'm hardly a fan of Vitter. However, everyone's views ocassionally coincide.

Why would his provision be a poison pill for the credit-card bill? Why in the hell should illegals get credit cards. They should only get tickets to their home countries.

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@Francis,

Francis wrote:

I found this too:

Quote:
A study conducted by the National Research Council has shown that due to contributions by immigrants,
the total net benefit to the Social Security System will be nearly $500 billion.5 This is so because in order to
get jobs, many undocumented immigrants use false Social Security numbers. As a result they pay into the
Social Security system for benefits they will never receive.

Francis, there are an estimated 12 million illegals in the country. If every single one of them was working--which certainly is nowhere near the case--every single one would have had to contribute more than $40,000 to equal $500 billion. As the average annual contribution of the average working person in this country is about $3500 or so , how likely do you think that $500 billion is? And if that was so grossly overestimated, how accurate is the remainder of the article likely to be?

Most illegals are not working as employees here. Most are doing piece work as contract or casual labor and receive a 1099 instead of a W-2 if the employer even acknowledges they worked at all which many don't. That means the employer withholds nothing and has to contribute nothing and it is up to the employee to file estimated taxes. If you believe many do that, I have a nice assortment of bridges to sell still in stock here.

Meanwhile the staggering cost of free education, including remedial classes, free healthcare, and other benefits are furnished to the illegals and legal people alike, there are considerable social costs not easy to quantify in those who continue illegal activity after they get here--gang activity and worse--and the cost of depressed wages and resulting social costs associated with that are difficult to quantify.

The use of bogus social security numbers--usually somebody else's number--is identity theft that can create problems for the rightful holder of that number if the illegal is associated with crime, tax evasion, or whatever. Most in that situation have been able to sort it out but not without some expense and considerable time and inconvenience. Bogus social security numbers are not something to be encouraged. Some of the illegals I have dealt with are using three or four different social security numbers.

If those who came here were invited, legal, treated decently, and the other problems appropriately addressed, then we could say with no reservations whatsoever that our invited worker guests and those who intend to stay are definitely an asset to the whole.

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@Foxfyre,

Quote:

The use of bogus social security numbers--usually somebody else's number--is identify theft that can create problems for the rightful holder of that number if the illegal is associated with crime, tax evasion, or whatever. Most in that situation have been able to sort it out but not without some expense and considerable time and inconvenience. Bogus social security numbers are not something to be encouraged. Some of the illegals I have dealt with are using three or four different social security numbers.

This argument is now officially bogus by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/us/05immig.html

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@Foxfyre,

I am a bit curious... do you use the word "illegal" in front of your once "illegal" friend?

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@ebrown p,

Nope because she was made legal in the 1986 amnesty and has since become naturalized. But she was illegal when she arrived here and she freely acknowledges that.

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@ebrown p,

ebrown p wrote:

Quote:

The use of bogus social security numbers--usually somebody else's number--is identify theft that can create problems for the rightful holder of that number if the illegal is associated with crime, tax evasion, or whatever. Most in that situation have been able to sort it out but not without some expense and considerable time and inconvenience. Bogus social security numbers are not something to be encouraged. Some of the illegals I have dealt with are using three or four different social security numbers.

This argument is now officially bogus by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/us/05immig.html

Not bogus at all. It is still identify theft so far as negative effects of the person holding the number is concerned. Offenders can just get out of the extended sentence if they can claim that they didn't know it was a real number.

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@Foxfyre,

The people who I know who were naturalized would speak to you sternly the first time you used the term "illegal" as a noun.

If you insisted, you would lose a friendship.

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What should be done about illegal immigration?

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