What Does Immigration Reform Mean to You?Follow

And this is why both sides attacked it. Right now, we have a quarter of a million people crossing the border illegally each year, but folks on the right condemn this solution because it'll let them cross legally. Right now, we have millions of illegal immigrants working less than minimum wage (and without taxes or unemployment payments, etc) illegally, but folks on the left condemn this solution because it'll let them do that legally.

See the pattern? What you don't want to do is already happening. Everyone's just sticking their heads in the sand and insisting that since it shouldn't happen, they wont deal with the fact that it is happening and will continue to do so whether they like it or not. Any sane solution has to fill the economic need which is currently being filled via illegal immigration. Sadly, far too many people on both sides are so stuck in dogmatic positions that they can't budge an inch on this...

Edited, May 26th 2010 4:35pm by gbaji

Nor should they be allowed to. Immigrants on work visas should not have a legally sanctioned advantage for hiring over US citizens. That's just silly.

His plan is going to seriously fuck up Pier One's business model.

What are you to do about those millions of illegals from Canada, Varus is so worried about?

One of our Illegal Poster child's

Alleged rapist caught in Edmonds


EDMONDS, Wash. – The KING 5 Investigators have learned that an illegal immigrant accused of raping a woman in Edmonds Sunday has been deported nine times. That's much more than previously reported.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement won't comment on the case of Jose Lopez Madrigal. But KING 5 got the information through confidential sources and documents.

Larry Klein was the man who heard the alleged victim's cries for help. Police say the suspect pulled the woman off the street to a dumpster and raped her.

"I could see the back of his head. I could see his pants were down. I could see her lying on the ground. I could hear her crying, but I couldn't really see her face," said Klein.

Klein called police, who quickly arrested the suspect. But learning his identity took much longer because of some 30 aliases. It was only through fingerprints that they identified him as Madrigal, a Mexican citizen.

Madrigal's arrest and immigration record includes a staggering number of contacts with law enforcement since 1989. That's the year he was convicted of theft using a firearm in California.

He was deported a couple of times after that. Then in 1999, he was arrested for drug sales in both San Diego and San Francisco. Records show that he was deported three times that year between April and August.

He was arrested for drugs again in Stockton, Calif. in 2000. In 2002, he pleaded to third degree sexual assault in Denver. Later that year, he was deported again. And in 2003, records show he was deported three more times.

People who live near the scene of Sunday's alleged rape wonder how it could keep happening.

"Makes you wonder, what are we doing wrong? How is he getting back in here?" said Kirby Aumick.

"It’s troubling. I mean, if this man should not have been in this country, he should have been behind bars then, really, this is a senseless tragedy," said Klein.

According to our sources, Madrigal's last contact before Sunday was around 2003. So, it's not clear how much of that time Madrigal was in this country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has refused to comment on the case which started making national headlines when it was learned that Madrigal had been deported several times prior to the Edmonds case.
In reviewing records and talking with confidential sources, the KING 5 Investigators learned just how extensive Madrigal’s immigration and arrest record is.
They found he was first deported in California in 1989 and since then he’s returned from his Mexican homeland and been arrested for drug crimes, a sex assault in Colorado and other offenses.

One criminal justice source says Madrigal is a "poster boy" for the federal governments ineffectiveness at keeping the most serious "criminal aliens" – illegals who commit crimes – out of the United States.

Sorry. The "that date" referenced in step 3 is "whatever date the mass deportation mentioned in step 2 occurs on", which, considering the rate the government works at, is liable to be another 90 days.

Ok. But it's already happening. That's kinda the point. If your reason for not making it legal is because there would be negative economic effects from people doing it, it's kinda relevant to point out that it's already happening anyway. You're making the same argument that people who argue against legalizing drug make. As if somehow by legalizing something that a huge number of people already do illegally, it'll make things "worse". Um... No. It wont.



Who's going to be losing a job? This is one of the really absurd points to all of this. The nutty right people like Varus get all upset that them Illegals are going to take away jobs from honest hard working Americans or something. And the nutty left people get all upset that we wont be paying them union wages while they're working those jobs. The combination of the two prevents any reasonable action on this issue.

The right needs to get over their fear that they're somehow going to lose jobs or whatever, and the left needs to get over their dogmatic attitudes towards "fair wages". Neither is a rational reason to continue our current policy of ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.


It's interesting that you can so clearly see that just building a big fence wont work, but can't also see that failing to bend on employment rules and wages also wont work. But I'm the one blindly in lock step with my "side". Lol!

That's not what I'm advocating at all. There's no law preventing an employer from hiring an American citizen and paying all the associated taxes and whatnot if he wants. If he believes he needs a higher quality of labor than he'll get hiring someone "under the table", he'll do that. It's the employers choice. My suggestion is to make it legal to hire someone with one of these Visas in the same under the table manner that they're being hired right now.

This relieves the economic pressure differential. It's self correcting in that as the numbers of people with these visas increases, the wages they can get for jobs at which employers are willing to hire them will decrease. We could presume that this might affect other areas, but it likely wont. Any job requiring skilled English speakers is going to prefer to hire people who meet those criteria. This *only* affects those jobs which don't, which is a pretty small subset of jobs right now, and are primarily being worked illegally right now anyway.



Prominent? Probably not. Why does that matter? Is that a pre-requisite for an idea to exist and perhaps even be a good idea?




Um... Because it's my idea? I know you like to think that I get all my positions and ideas from Conservative pundits on the radio and Fox News, but you're wrong. I'm not telling you what the consensus Conservative position on immigration reform is. I'm telling you what my position is. And yes. It's not what you'll hear the folks on the radio talk about. Shocking, I know...

Of course it is. You're legislating being able to ignore minimum wage laws if someone has a special visa which is available to low-skilled Mexican (or whoever) immigrants. That keeps me from being able to compete for the same job since I have to be legally paid minimum wage.


And this has what to do with your claims of "The Left" or "my side" or whoever pushing against your master plan? A cabal of conspiracy against your idea that no one else knows about?

I mean, hey, go write your ideas down and mail them off to Mitch McConnell. I have the sneaking feeling they won't get far because it's just not a very good idea.

How do you hold a city criminally responsible?

"San Francisco... BEHIND BARS!!!"

So, ThiefX, what do you do if an illegal alien sets off an explosive that drops everything west of the San Andreas Fault into the ocean? I mean, that's clearly an illegal - and/or terrorist - act...