I fully understand that the immigration issue in this country is freighted with at least as much emotion – on all sides – as it is reason. I’ve been to some of the poorer places in Mexico, and I have to admit that if I was one of those people living in grinding, hole-in-a-mud-wall-with-a-cardboard-box-for-a-roof poverty, I’d try to find a way of getting out of there and making a better life for myself too. Hell, we are almost all of us immigrants, or the descendents of immigrants and I’ve no sympathy whatsoever for nativist arguments, too many of which sidle up uncomfortably near to actual racism. Too, living in Southern California, it’s manifestly clear to me that the energy brought into this country by our neighbors to the south, legally present or otherwise, is very often applied to doing necessary work which few, if any, of our native born citizens would take on, considering such labor beneath them.
On the other hand, you don’t have to believe in in felonizing what amounts to acts of self-preservation to believe that there ought to be a more effective way to control the borders – one of the very minimum requirements of statehood and sovereignty – and rationalize the way newcomers join the work force. We simply haven’t got the resources to rescue everyone living in poverty throughout the world, and we are, or ought to be, a nation of laws. It is a complex issue that goes to the very heart of who we are as a people, worthy of deliberate debate.
Little hope of that though, these days, and nothing does it help for partisans to put counter-productive messages such as this one out in front of a mass, undecided market.
Madness.
“It is a complex issue that goes to the very heart of who we are as a people, worthy of deliberate debate.”
I’ve reversed my own feelings on this in the past few months. I used to think – just shut the borders and get them all out. Now I realize that’s just not how the fabric of this country was built. The problem is how to make them legal? They aren’t documented, so we can’t track them down. How do you extend amnesty to a population that, by definition, tries to remain invisible? Also, being realistic and honest about all this, how do we know which ones aren’t here to make a better life, but rather to escape the crimes of their old one? We do need to have laws about immigration and border control, but lacking them in the here-and-now, how do we go about ensuring that those people who are here illegally now, don’t get a free pass?
Oh My God – I went to the link and dug deeper after my post above. The site of our flag like that burns in my stomach. I just want to throw up – how DARE they. I’m stuttering.
The thing that gets my panties in a wad (other than my favorite pair of jeans which are now a tad too small), is the sense of entitlement that the illegals have.
“I stumbled across the border in labor… now you have HAVE to pay for the birth of my child, who now has US citizenship and is therefore ENTITLED to US medical care and education”
“You’re the richest country in the world- why should you care if you have to spend a little more on illegals?”
“So what if half of the illegals are now criminals in US jails- they came here to work, and then had to steal when they couldn’t find the work because no one would hire them without a green card. It’s YOUR FAULT for making them steal.”
I have no problem with people LEGALLY immigrating to the USA. None whatsoever. But if you came here illegally, or if your mother came here illegally to give birth to you…. GET OUT. Come back when you’re legal, m’kay? Then you’ll earn your stripes, pay taxes, and get a job here. Until then, you shouldn’t be here.
Y’know, even with all the bullshoot and protests here in Puerto Rico over Vieques & Roosey Roads, and the ongoing status/independence hoohah, I have not, in seven years on the island, seen anything like that here. And when I’m in a bar full of Puerto Ricans and this kind of crap comes on the TV, you can see, hear and feel the hate they have for these idiots.
Ernie
Not that I spend a lot of time in bars, of course.
Not since Don’s Lighthouse closed.
Tanker Brothers, right on target:
http://mikegulf.blogspot.com/2006/03/tanker-brothers-race-traitors-think.htm
This link works better:
http://mikegulf.blogspot.com/
“Too, living in Southern California, it?
“Too, living in Southern California, it’s manifestly clear to me that the energy brought into this country by our neighbors to the south, legally present or otherwise, is very often applied to doing necessary work which few, if any, of our native born citizens would take on, considering such labor beneath them.”
I’ve heard this observation dozens of times over the last few days. I don’t buy it. Of course, I see them too, near Atlanta, every morning (as I’m expertly mixing my daily CoffeeCappuccinoSweetNLow concoction at QuikTrip, 0530 sharp). Their name is El Legion, for they are mucho. They pour out of pickup trucks, covered in yesterday’s dust, paint, and sawdust. They are a rather pleasant and deferential bunch, generally having better manners than the recent high school droputs behind the counter.
BUT… If they weren’t there, Americans still need houses, landscaping, etc. We’d simply have to pay more for it. And if we did, surely more “uppity” Americans (who’s “manual work” ethic has implicitly gotten a bad rap here) would take those jobs. It’s supply and demand: the high school grad/dropout behind the QuikTrip counter is not willing to supply his manual labor for less than minimum wage when QuickTrip will pay him more than that to run the register and mop the floor (mopping–yuck! soooo manual).
We’re no more entitled to a $120K 3 BR / 2 bath ranch than we are to a $1.50 gallon of AutoGoJuice. If these independent builders, landscapers, etc. didn’t have their cheap and illegal labor source, presumably they’d be competing with QuikTrip for the dropouts.
And those QuikTrip guys–surely they’re as capitalistic and cost-conscious as our builders and landscapers. Why don’t they exchange a few of their too-good-for-hammers-and-shovels dropouts for pleasant, hard-working, but “undocumented” moppers? But for some reason, I’ve never suspected a QuikTrip cashier/mopper of being an illegal–perhaps the southern accent is the give away (but I suppose “southern,” in this discussion, is relative. You know what I mean?). It’s not just QuikTrip–it’s many other above-minimum but-still-low-wage-and-unappealing jobs.
It ain’t the work, it’s the industry; some get away with it, some don’t. If the ones that do didn’t, wouldn’t their jobs be full of “lazy American dropouts?” Our would it still be beneath them? Of course then our 2-car-garage-master-on-the-main American Dream might be $200K. Oh well. KineticSauce is $2.50 in Atlanta now.
I’m not sure your logic holds much economic sense behind it, pard. It’s the old saw on Adam Smith’s comparative advantage. Even giving (for the sake of argument) that there are somewhere in the native-borne population 8-10 million people willing to do back-breaking labor in sun-hammered San Joaquin farm fields for minimum wage.
If they won’t do it for minimum wage, we’ll probably have to pay them more – probably significantly more. Don’t forget medical and dental, and oh, yeah: Unemployment compensation.
Labor is a resource with defined costs, and just like any other resource, paying more for what you could get cheaper elsewhere comes at an opportunity cost. It’s the same reason we buy cell phone chipsets from Korea, rather than make them here – they’re cheaper over there, which allows us to re-deploy our (limited) resources to more productive economic activity.
All I can say on this issue is 8 USC Section 1325 (a)(1). Makes odd reading.
As a government employee, I’m required, upon penalty of discipline, to be “PC” in my public statements; often at the concealment of the truth.
1. The health care system in California, emergency and otherwise, is dying. Strangled by the illegal immigrants who cannot pay for the services.
2. The criminal justice system is clogged due to the wanton criminal behavior of some illegal immtgrants. Sorry, but importation of narcotics and engaging in gang warfare has nothing to do with looking for a better life.
3. California drivers pay among the highest car insurance premiums in the nation; largely because of the havoc raised by unlicensed/uninsured illegal immigrants.
4. What part of illegal isn’t clear to everyone?
My kin who came here with nothing and had an O’ in front of their name had to wait in line to enter legally…why can’t they? All it would take is to follow the rule of US law. In my book if you don’t, you FLUNK the US citizen test. No mas.
Without a doubt, our economy demands immigrant labor here to work chicken assembly lines, pick produce, build houses, cut grass and a thousand other services we want to underpay for; but is it right to reward the lawbreakers (yes, lawbreakers) while there are literally millions of folks waiting on lists, worldwide, to come here? What about them?
To those who fly the Mexican Flag above the Stars and Stripes on US soil OR espouse the American southwests return to Mexican sovereignity I say, you are both un-American and treasonous, and remind me of why the US has gone into Mexico several times in the past 200 years. What we have here in the US is immeasurably better than anything the governement of Mexico could even wish to provide or will ever provide. The illegals come here because Mexico is so rotten from within and their own government condones it!
B2
[...] Regular readers of this page – including some who disagree with me – understand that my personal opinion in the immigration debate is quite nearly as muddled as the problem itself. I support border enforcement as a necessary component of national sovereignty, while confessing that I am?Ǭ
[...] Regular readers of this page – including some who disagree with me – understand that my personal opinion in the immigration debate is quite nearly as muddled as the problem itself. I support border enforcement as a necessary component of national sovereignty, while confessing that I am off-put at the probable human costs attaching to the notion of forcefully deporting some 10-12 million souls – people who have come here to make a life and escape grinding poverty by doing necessary work that few, if any, of the native-born would consider. [...]
#6:
I think this is the appropriate link
http://mikegulf.blogspot.com/2006/03/tanker-brothers-race-traitors-think.html
Master Gunner
Editor and Co-Author, Tanker Brothers