the immigration bill, the untold story,Follow

Last look I took at the bill was something about "proving" you were here on January 1st.

Pretty easy to do in some places, even if you don't get here until tomorrow. Documents are forged all the time. These people aren't stupid. If anyone is stupid, it's the general populace of this country. I really think that government service should be required before citzenship is granted (cue Starship Troopers "newsreel").

I'm for zero amnesty and very tight border control. But no matter what one thinks of current/past/proposed immigration laws, the weak link is enforcement. We might actually have decent anti-illegal immigration laws right now but no one could tell because our cops, cities, and states don't really enforce them. Yet the federal government still acts like making a new law would suddenly bring enforcement along with it. Near-zero enforcement for 20 years followed by amnesty, repeat, is not a grand plan.

There need to be federal penalties for non-enforcement at state/local levels.

Before you can do that, you have to have a transfer of authority back to the states to begin with. You'd also need to make jumping the border illegally a felony, with a mandatory minimum punishment of deportation (to the nation of our chosing would be a nice touch on that), plus anything else we can get out of the deal to recover costs.

I did some thinking and found out what the next step should be to get rid of the problem with illegals, and unemployment at the same time: ABOLISH WELFARE. Kills both birds with one stone. The 5% of the nation that's unemployed has to find a job or die, and hey, guess what? The illegals make up 5% of the workforce in the US. Coincidence? I think not.

I wouldn't mind paying an extra buck for anything, if I knew it was some ******* American doing the work for it, rather than some border jumping *******.


And Paul, you're funny dude. Iceland, HA! Like they could keep us pinned down, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Edited, Jun 19th 2007 6:28pm by Metastophicleas

No, but according to the White House (sorry, don't have the link right now), illegal immigrants make up 5% of the workforce. Unemployment sits at 5%. You do the math.

There is a reason that these people have the jobs: Americans are't willing to do the jobs. They aren't willing to "stoop" to the level of picking fruit, or digging ditches. Everyone who has said that Americans aren't willing to do those jobs is right. Americans ARE too proud to do them, but not too proud to beg for our money to sit on their ***, and then ***** about not having a job.

Lets say for just a moment that those people (unemployed, with that attitude) make up 50% of the total unemployed. Were the other 50% able to get the jobs the illegals have, that would reduce the strain on the individual taxpayer by a few hundered dollers per year (my estimate, based on estimated population and cost of unemployment benifits and welfare, and averaged over the course of a year, then averaged over the total populace). Likely, this wouldn't affect those on the lowest rungs as much as the middle class, or the upper class, but the fact that they could keep a few more dollars is relevent.

Social programs are running this country into the ground. California is in the Shitter financially, and a few other states are only a few years behind. These programs need to be curbed, if not eliminated (one can only pray), and people need to be forced to take their lives back. These same programs are allowing people to become lazy, thus encouraging illegal immigrants to gain employment in the United States.

That would be incredibly bad math. That unemployment rate doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. By most ecnomic models, a 5% unemployment rate is considered ideal because it represents the best balance between employment and economic growth. You don't want everyone to have a job, or no business would ever be able to expand (no one to hire, right?).

There is zero correlation between those numbers. Implying that the 5% who aren't working is because there's an equal number of illegals taking their jobs is absurd (which is what I'm guessing you're getting at).



Yes and no. They have the jobs because they are willing to work those jobs for significantly less then a US citizen would. Certainly, they are jobs that Americans would rather not do if they had the choice, but that's really only half the picture. It's not like the US agricultural businesses go down to Mexico and bus in labor to do this work because they can't find anyone in the US to do it. Those laborers come here all on their own. They come here because the jobs are available. They wouldn't do so unless they gained a benefit for working them.

You can't just look at why employers hire illegal workers. You also have to look at what motivates someone to come here illegally. That's the part of this issue that seems to get lost most often, but it's realy the most important part.



Again. You totally don't understand what the unemployment numbers mean. This effect would not occur. If we removed the illegal workers somehow, the economy would shrink to make the numer of employable Americans account for 95% employment. Cause that's how it works.



Well, I wont disagree with your first statement. However, that's a problem regardless of how we deal with illegal immigration. Certainly, we do make it more attractive to illegals to come here. However, it's not like there's a whole lot of illegals sitting around collecting wellfare checks. The real costs are in social services. Hospitals. Police. Fire. Education. Transportation.


The labor isn't hurting us. It's the illegal nature of the labor that is. This is why I've always supported the idea of a guest worker program of some kind. Legalize the type and method of labor they're doing right now. That's not the broken part of the equation. What's broken is that because they are largely paid under the table or off the books, our system doesn't count them. And since so many of our services are paid based on the numbers from those books, we end up getting screwed. Take the labor out of the darkness and into the light, and most of the problems disappear.

Does anybody remember when they did this back in the 1980's? Even then they all talked about granting amnesty would give everybody a fresh start and make everything perfect from now on. Fast forward 20-something years and they're telling us the same thing all over again =/.

Really? Cite?

Kick ***! Gunbroker.com, your second amendment at work.

I'm sorry, I did not intend for people to actually think that my "perfect" statement was anything but facetious. No, they did not believe that it would be "perfect," but as the article mentions there was "great fanfare."