nods, 100% true. my uncle has had to wait 10 years before his applicatin even got considered. Meanwhile if we had flown him to Mexico, he coulda been here 8 years ago.
Equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment definitely doesn't allow what I've suggested. That detail would have to be sorted out.
My father got in with an education visa and then won citizenship with the lottery. He went through proper channels, but I wouldn't consider his luck fair for other immigrants. If there was a genuine discussion on immigration reform, I'd hope it covers all levels instead of the more controversial aspects. Right now, there's a work visa that allows companies to cherry pick educated immigrants and coerce them to work at lower salaries. After all the time being educated in our schools, they have to go back home or earn one of those limited visas. The whole system is convoluted and based upon subjective political whim.
Deckard takes the points and the round. I know people who have spent years and thousands of dollars to get into this country legally. If you've ever known someone who has legally immigrated to the USA, you know the problem with illegal immigration.
So do you think that because they had to go through a ridiculous, cumbersome system, everyone should?
Besides many of us might want to move to the parts of the EU with better climate, provided we could take lots of relatives and friends.
If given a chance I can promise you hundres of millions (if not billion +) of poor people around the world would come to the US. Is it a good thing? I am not sure.
sishir, you dont want any protection for american workers? or even the legal immigrant workers? i know it is a global market, but at what point do we have to look at protecting our ownselves? when wages in this country are on par with mexico? actually, that is probably the only way to "fix" the illegal immigration problem. my great grandparents immigrated from germany and mexico. my grandmother immigrated from india. i dont have a problem w/ immigrants. i have a problem with illegal immigration. unfortunately, it is necessary to limit the amount of people who can come in each year. in a nation of 280 million, we let 1 million immigrants in a year legally. at the same time 1.5 million get in illegally. obviously everybody wants to come to this country, but if they are allowed in uncontrolled it creates problems in our own economy and infrastructure (hospitals, schools, ect). the united states allows in more legal immigrants than the rest of the world combined. there are currently 35 million legal immigrants living here. and at the same time there is no other country in the world which allows their borders to be violated like the u.s. does. the free market in a global marketplace is good news for poorer countries, but bad news for the wealthier ones. imo, a big misconception about globalization is that everyone else would be brought up to our levels, when it is more of the case that we are slowly being brought down to theirs.
not really, and i could hardly be considered a social conservative (smoke em if you got em!). a bunch of middle easterners w/ fake south american passports have been caught crossing. not saying they are all terrorists, but if i was one thats how i would sneak in. ask a few soldiers if they would rather be in iraq or patroling on our borders.
Of course I got a problem with it. Just like I have a problem with all those people smuggling coke instead of figuring a way to legally get it in or all those people smuggling mar1juana in and undercutting our hardworking mar1juana growers in Humboldt county and West Virginia. I mean there people in Thailand who never get a chance to have their mar1juana sold in the US so why should Mexicans with their cheap brown mar1juana get to illegally be sold in the US when there people all over the world growing marijuan that never gets sold here. How is that fair? I believe we need a rule of law but sometimes you have to recognize that the laws are out of touch with the reality of the situations. Illegal immigrations is that situation. So yes it sucks that people from Indonesia have to wait years to get in when El Salvadorians can slip across the border but that is reality that El Salvador happens to not have the Pacific Ocean in the way and that employers here are happen to hire them. So sure you can argue that its illegal so we should keep them from coming but then again you can go to a Cypress Hill show and tell them that smoking the herb is illegal so you shouldn't do it.
What you are missing though is the seasonal nature of much of the work that is done by illegal aliens. Would immigrants want to stay here during winter when there's no construction or produce picking? Probably not. If we give immigrants the ability to travel back and forth there's little impetus to settle.
What should seem obvious to you is that the current situation encourages having people coming in under the radar. Why do you think there are coyotes and other people smugglers because there is money to be made through the black market. If you want to keep track of who comes in remove the impetus for a black market by greatly expanding legal immigration. I mean why would a Guatemalan who wants to come here and work in a restaurant bother paying a coyote $1,000 when they can come here legally? If you think enforcement is the answer good luck. Its worked great for the drug trade.
Immigration is fine if it is legal. They pay taxes and for education and whatnot if they are citizens. However, why is it fair for someone to live in this country and not have to pay the same fees as the rest of us
Consider though when we tried protecting the US auto and steel industries. They ended producing crappy products that nobody wanted. I don't buy the protectionist argument because what it is is protecting unproductivity. I mean why bust your ass or increase inefficiency when you know you don't have to compete. And you are right the way to solve illegal immigration is to have wages on par with Mexico. You look at it has bringing our wages down because you look at economics as a zero sum game. In a dynamic economy it need not be a zero sum game as innovation in productivity and competiton spur capital creation. Protectionism doesn't. And I don't see the problem with that and personally I think all of us descendents of immigrants from the past 400 years are fairly hypocritical. I mean did the Pilgrims bother to file paperwork with the Narragansetts so they could get permanent resident status. Again you are looking at it as a zero sum gain. Ask yourself if how the heck is the third world going to develop without having capital from the first world? We want things to be good for poorer countries because that's how they develop and in turn when they develop they end up buying our products and services. For example Singapore in 1960 was a very poor country and now they are rich. True they sell a lot of stuff to us but at the same time they buy our products and services. I can attest to that since I've done business in Singapore. Now under your reasoning we shouldn't have traded with Singapore since those sneaky Singaporeans are undercutting us. Well in that case Singapore remains poor we pay higher prices for cheap good produced from Singapore and they don't hire me to consult. In other words its a lose lose except inefficient Americans who can't handle competition.
Yeah, Americans are beginning to have a pessimistic view of the future at a time when a billion people are emerging into industrialized living. All the principles Americans benefited for many generations (comparative advantage, increased immigration, freer trade) seems to have stopped working all of a sudden and is turning against us... Maybe it's still benefiting everyone, but Americans just don't see the explosive gains compared with other countries.
Pretty much. I don't think the system should be so cumbersome but because that's the way it is right now, everyone should have to go through the same cumbersome system. It's not that hard to understand.
Forget the U.S.A. and look at a country like China. To permanently live and work in the better cities isn't exactly that easy either if you were born in the more rural areas. When you have inequality of wealth between to regions, having an completely open border will create situations where the better areas will be flooded with migrants, and a lot of times that leads to social unrest. I would prefer there to be more legal immigration (and citizenship granting) but a open border is just insane.
more important to protect the COMPANIES and CORPORATIONS they seem to have far more rights and consideration than mere humans Rocket River
The way to solve the problem is to eventually have a global economy where every country have about the same living standard. Does people in Korea or Taiwan want to come to the US ? Not nearly as much as in the 1960's.
