you missed my point max. even though these people were speaking their native languages, they were here to stay. migrant workers today are not coming here to be americans - they are coming for work and to earn money to send home. they dont want to be here. you can lower your b.s. flag now.
the people who are here illegally aren't merely migrant workers. if they don't want to be here and they're not planning on staying, then why are all of you so worried about how they're taxing our schools and hospitals?
I'm still trying to catch up on this thread but I wanted to address this point. Actually many of the immigrants who came here during the previous great waves of immigration might not have come here legally. The process at Ellis Island was very disordered and corrupt, many names were misfiled or not filed at all. I'm not sure if there has been a study done looking into it but its likely that many people came into the US at Ellis Island without going through proper channels. For Asian Immigration in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th C. during the exclusion laws Chinese immigrants weren't allowed in unless they had family that was here prior to the exclusion laws. To get around that there was the paper son practice where someone would pretend to be the son of someone who was here already. Also in the Southwest of the US the border has almost always been hard to enforce and migrant workers have always crossed the border for work, especially seasonal agriculture work. In some places Mexican agricultural workers have been going back and forth for seasonal work for more than a 100 years. Illegal immigration has only become a problem because we legally defined it to be whereas its been here for most of our history. Anyway just consider whether the Jamestown Colonist ever bothered to file for paperwork or even ask the Powaton Indians if they could settle in Virginia or the Pilgrims the Narragansetts.
Still trying to catch up. What's wrong with that? I mean you have people complaining that immigrants are coming here to settle permanently and will take over and now you have people complaining that immigrants are coming here to work and go home.
Well I look around and see non stop development. There is not a patch of land that is safe. I think there is enough people as it is. We don't need millions more. If anything we need less. We need population control and conservation, not millions of more people coming here.
population control? they live in a 3rd world nation right now. there's no population control there. there's less acess to birth control...and they can't afford it anyway.
wow, that doesn't seem like something you'd say at all. seems really out of character. "keep 'em out! protect our land!" doesn't feel like a meowgi sentiment to me. but i don't know you personally.
then i'm certain we won't agree on this issue. i'm all for conservation...but i'm having a hard time relating that with this issue. illegal immigrants are already human beings sharing this planet with us in closer proximity than i am to sishir right now.
You still wont say how many is too many. What will the numbers be if we have open borders? If it is 1 million now, what will it be then 10 million? 2 Houstons coming in a year? I think the concerns are valid. More people = more crap.
i won't say because i don't know. i'm certainly not a demographics expert. what we have certainly isn't hurting our job market. more people = more crap defies the history of this country. it means some more crap..it also means some more remarkable people with remarkable children who become remarkable leaders.
genocide might work, then. have you considered biological weapons? the people exist. we're talking about which side of the border you want them living on.
i have considered your mom. seriously, meowgi...you and i have some very different ideas about the world that intersect at points. this is not one of those points. you just seem like the last person on this board i'd expect to take this stand on immigration. but, as i said, i don't know you personally so that's really assumption from what i've read of your posts.
I understand how it is very impractical to completely open up our borders and that it would cause all kinds of huge problems and issues. I also have trouble justifying that I have more of a right to live in a stable environment just because I was fortunate enough to be born here. Logically I agree with imigration control Morally I struggle
I've read through the whole thread since midday yesterday and glad to see a good discussion shaping up. Apologies in advance if I address a point that has been made or missed a point that was made already. Reading through it I still see three basic problems that haven't been fully addressed by those arguing against more immigration, illegal or legal. The first is the overall economics of it. Rhester, I think, mentioned that US employees will fill in the jobs of illegals if that supply is closed off. Mad Max has pointed out though that we are already near full employment even with illegals. That certainly indicates that illegals aren't a major drain on jobs. Another poster, rage I think, cited the problem of immigrants, coming here and taking higher paying more skilled jobs. Again though that goes to employment numbers. There currently is a huge demand for more high tech and medical workers that is not being fulfilled by the US labor force. I know for a fact that hospitals and rural clinics are offering huge bonuses for nurses and GP doctors to the point of recruiting in other countries to attract those people. It isn't a matter of getting cheap nurses or GP's since they are willing to pay the same to US GP's and nurses but that there isn't enough US GP's and nurses to fill that need. At the sametime hi-tech companies like Microsoft have been clamoring for years to increase the number of H1-B visas to bring in more talented people. In both cases bringing in the medical personel and hi-tech workers is being done through legal channels. Given that we have fairly low unemployment it appears that both at the low end and high end our economy still needs more workers and that bringing in immigrants, both illegal and legal, doesn't hurt our economy but is what the economy needs to continue developing. The other economic problem that I haven't seen addressed though is what happens if we close off our economy to bringing in immigrant labor. Obviously we don't have 0% unemployment, laying aside for a moment the impossibility of having an economy with 0% unemployment, we need to consider what it will take to actually fill in all of those jobs that immigrants are taking. The most obvious benefit of immigrant labor is costs. Mexicans, Guatamalans and etc.. will work for less on menial jobs than their US counterparts. Opponents have characterized this as exploitation but for one they are doing so willingly and going through great hardship to do so willingly the wages they earn are superior enough to what they earn at home that they can afford to work, stay here and send money back home. That is hardly exploitation. Because they are willing to work for less this is a check on inflation that ends up benefitting the economy. If we didn't have access to cheap labor what would happen is that as all costs rise it gets harder to develop more and consequently create more jobs for everyone including those of us who are American citizens. For instance in my own field, architecture, illegals while not draftsmen are used in construction. Lets say that the supply of illegals was cut and contractors have to pay much more to hire Americans to do construction that means that developers are less likely to undertake new projects and hire me to design their buildings. If I don't design more buildings I'm not going to hire people to do drafting. If the costs of construction can be kept down though the benefits reverberate all the way back to me and by cutting down the labor pool on one end affects the labor pool all through the chain. This is basic economics but many seem to feel that we can artificially control the labor supply and costs with no consequence. Finally the biggest problem that I'm not seeing addressed is the problem with trying to address a situation through law enforcement when the economics go so much against it. A few have argued this is a matter of fairnes and the rule of law. That's great we should respect the rule of law and fairness but how fair is it when the law is so out of touch with reality? I compared illegal immigration to the drug trade because they are very similar. The laws trying to stop them have made and exacerbated the problem. Since the ecomonics behind immigration are so strong law enforcment has created an artificial block to market forces. In every situation like that we have a black market. A black market by nature is unregulated so all of the problems we have with not knowing who is coming in are due to that blak market. If we do away with that we can address those problems by creating a legal channel for those who are likely to come in now illegally. This would just recognize the existing situation while bringing it out in the open where it can be tracked and regulated. Yet many seem to feel that through greater enforcement we can shut down the spigot of immigrants coming in. As with the drug trade that doesn't work when the market dictates otherwise. If anything it makes the problem worse. If employers in the US don't feel they are getting enough workers and people in the third world desperately want to get here they will find a way to do it. The question is would you rather pay coyotes to smuggle them across or would you rather have them come to a US border checkpoint and get checked in? We can solve the illegal immigration problem by simply opening our borders more. Further given the amount of money that coyotes are making we could still make some money by charging a nominal fee to enter and assure our security by registering everyone who enters. Think about it this way if you are a poor Guatamalan who wants to come in would you rather pay thousands of dollars to a coyote to smuggle you in a risky desert crossing or pay say a $100 dollars and register to come across a safe US border crossing?
