More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights

illegal immigration isn't illegal because of jobs, its illegal because the government likes to keep track of who is in this country, for all kinds of purposes. mainly taxes.

there is no constitutional right to a job, therefore there is nothing illegal about a business doing operations elsewhere.

 

Yes, but the main argument I hear is that they are taking away the jobs and that's why people get so upset.

 

I grew up in the barrio and we were as poor as anyone. I know what i'm talking about. I've experienced it firsthand.

I as well as my relatives that were born in Mexico look at these illegals with disdain because we know how things are. Why penalize the legal immigrants that follow the rules and show respect for this country, and try to assimilate and make themselves productive assets to this nation? That's what you're doing by encouraging and supporting these illegals. I truly hate them with a passion. Do you really think they have any regard for this country? Only for what it can offer them I tell you that. Alot of you would be quite suprised to know the light in which alot of them think of the U.S. The very fact of them being here shows that they don't respect our sovereignty and our law.

I bet alot of the people bashing me and my views grew up living a sheltered suburban lifestyle. How else could you be so out of touch with what's really going on with this issue?

 

i don't think anyone who is not white should be allowed to have a job in the united states. i mean, what are you, japanese or something? you're probably taking a job away from a perfectly capable white-boy. you should crawl back into whatever hell-hole country you came from.

 

personally, I would just like to see immigrants pay their fair share for social services, to me that's the real problem.

people don't get upset about outsourcing because they see that as something out of the control of the government. you are comparing gov't, making it legal to just cross, to big business. its apples and oranges.

 

i agree they are different things but i think the outsourcing is the far more harmful situation.

 

This country needs a serious recession to wake up our clueless, lazy, entitled and too good for certain job citizens.

 

I agree, if the U.S. is so worried about immigration, then why not slap tough tarriffs on everything so all products have to be made in the U.S. Officials don't seem to be worried about jobs getting shipped oversee, good paying jobs at that, but they seem worried about illegal immigrants taking jobs that pay squat.

 

Bush disagrees.

 

Actually looking back I liked my mowing yard job better then my current IT job. I was healthier and I didn't have to deal with people as much. I doubt my wife is going to let me ditch the corporate job and go back to freelance lawn mowing though.

 

North of the Border
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 27 March 2006

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," wrote Emma Lazarus, in a poem that still puts a lump in my throat. I'm proud of America's immigrant history, and grateful that the door was open when my grandparents fled Russia.

In other words, I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review of serious, nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular. If people like me are going to respond effectively to anti-immigrant demagogues, we have to acknowledge those facts.

First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent.

Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration - especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study of this effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration.

That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants do "jobs that Americans will not do." The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays - and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants.

Finally, modern America is a welfare state, even if our social safety net has more holes in it than it should - and low-skill immigrants threaten to unravel that safety net.

Basic decency requires that we provide immigrants, once they're here, with essential health care, education for their children, and more. As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, "We wanted a labor force, but human beings came." Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the benefits they receive.

Worse yet, immigration penalizes governments that act humanely. Immigrants are a much more serious fiscal problem in California than in Texas, which treats the poor and unlucky harshly, regardless of where they were born.

We shouldn't exaggerate these problems. Mexican immigration, says the Borjas-Katz study, has played only a "modest role" in growing U.S. inequality. And the political threat that low-skill immigration poses to the welfare state is more serious than the fiscal threat: the disastrous Medicare drug bill alone does far more to undermine the finances of our social insurance system than the whole burden of dealing with illegal immigrants.

But modest problems are still real problems, and immigration is becoming a major political issue. What are we going to do about it?

Realistically, we'll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants. Mainly that means better controls on illegal immigration. But the harsh anti-immigration legislation passed by the House, which has led to huge protests - legislation that would, among other things, make it a criminal act to provide an illegal immigrant with medical care - is simply immoral.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's plan for a "guest worker" program is clearly designed by and for corporate interests, who'd love to have a low-wage work force that couldn't vote. Not only is it deeply un-American; it does nothing to reduce the adverse effect of immigration on wages. And because guest workers would face the prospect of deportation after a few years, they would have no incentive to become integrated into our society.

What about a guest-worker program that includes a clearer route to citizenship? I'd still be careful. Whatever the bill's intentions, it could all too easily end up having the same effect as the Bush plan in practice - that is, it could create a permanent underclass of disenfranchised workers.

We need to do something about immigration, and soon. But I'd rather see Congress fail to agree on anything this year than have it rush into ill-considered legislation that betrays our moral and democratic principles.

link

 

So the fact that you and your family members came here legally is your excuse to hate others who didn't. Is that how you "think" and I do use the word "think" loosely. No matter what color or ethnicity you are, the amount of hate,ignorance and plain stupidity you have shown on this site is reason enough for someone to call you out on it.
People aren't bashing you because you have an opinion on a certain topic but the fact that the only way you know how to defend it is by treating others with contempt and name calling. So just to make sure I can put it in a way you might understand, "You're a F!@#ing Idiot!!!".

I'm also for finding a solution to the illegal immigration problem,but putting up a fence is not going to stop it. But I can see that since you have such a big problem with the illegal immigration problem that anyday now we will see you joining your minutemen brothers along the border and keeping our country safe, right?

So just keep saying stupid **** and thinking we're the one's with a problem. You are beyond saving, even by the big guy.

 

and why should they have regard for a country that offers them nothing? would you love america if you didn't have the freedom and opportunities it presented? why would you identify as an american if you didn't buy into the founding myth of the bootstraps and freedom? thats how self-id works. you identify with a group because of the benefits it offers you.

as far as your serious aggression issues. get laid. it'll help.

 

"I'm sorry, Tyrone... I didn't know you wanted to work construction..."

"Oh, I apologize, CHAD and Jeff... you want to get up here on the roof with me? Well c'mon up here instead of being on your cell phone talking to the owner..."

Sorry, I had to throw these insensitive, we're-taking-your-jobs rebuttal comments... I just had to...

 

My stance on this is that I welcome the illegal immigrants from Latin America. If they want to come here and work in the trenches for in some cases less than minimum wage, I say bring 'em on! My bigger concern is that our Muslim extremist friends do not swim the river with them. If terrorists are getting across, then we need to make a change. This guest worker idea has promise if it serves to document who crosses better.

Coming from somebody who has lived and worked in Mexico for an extended period of time, I can say with certainty that there are not enough jobs to go around there. That country needs to get its act together around corruption, crime, and a host of other problems before a stable middle class can arise. The middle class took a huge hit when the peso was devalued in the 90s.

 

Let me be the first to apologize for the racism and poverty that you must have experienced that has led you to such intense hardening of your heart and hatred for so many of your relatives and people from your country of origin.

 

If you support this . . allow illegal aliens to come in and so as they see fit

Why have borders at all?

I have no issue with LEGAL ALIENS
but Illegals . . . well . .to start with . . THEY ARE ILLEGAL

Rocket River

 

Interesting, you are concerned about the Muslim terrorist, but not the Latino drug dealer? If terrorists want to get in this country, changing the illegal immigration policy or building a fence will not be the most effective way to keep them out, they will find another way, the 9/11 terrorists did.

 

jobs that we won't do are taken by illegals, these are good paying jobs for them that help support their families back home. we have been allowing this for so long that illegals are an important part of our economy, if we suddenly cut off all those workers it will destroy our economy.

i agree we need to stem the flow of aliens, but we can't just stop cold turkey.

 

The general tone of authoritarianism and suppression of dissent fostered by the Administration and what can be charitably described as an "expansionary", perhaps criminally so, view of executive power, combined with the government as arch-conservative moral arbiter on Schiavo or gay marriage, plus the barely disguised xenophobia with which the current anti-immigrant wing is fanning (the Presdent excepted from the last category).......

...makes for a heinous cocktail of oppression and ugliness and is generally worrisome as to the long term path of the country if it continues this way. I'm talking V for Vendetta style here.

It's interesting how for at least half the GOP, there's a new domestic bogeyman for each election. In 2004 it was the gay person who wanted to get married. Now in 2006 it's the immigrant day laborer. That takes real balls to gang up on powerful, society threatening groups like that.