On Immigration:Why should Right Believe you Now?

We Republicans were promised in 1986 that we would never, ever have to stomach another amnesty. We were promised by Democrats that illegal immigration was over and that never again would millions of illegal immigrants be given citizenship en masse.

What happened Dems? I want to know why you lied to us. I want to know why you never did anything to assist in keeping these undeserving scum from setting foot on our sacred soil in the first place.

 

Two important facts:

It was Ronald Reagan that was endorsing amnesty for "illegal" aliens: .

http://www.ldnews.com/politics-national/2013/01/what-reagan-said-about-undocumented-immigrants/

Second is the fact that in 1986 Congress did not provide for immigration laws that would allow all of those that wanted to come here in search of the American Dream a means for doing so. Congress retained a quota system that made it impossible for millions of immigrants to come to the United States legally so they came here illegally. Becoming an American was so important to them that they often risked their lives and the lives of their families just to get to the United States.

It was the immigration law prior to 1986 that created the number of "illegal" immigrants and the problems with the law were not fixed. If we don't fix the law so it allows people wanting to become Americans then the problem will repeat itself. Prohibition, which is what the quota system created, simply doesn't work and never has worked. When we tell a Mexican, for example, to wait until their number comes up based upon a quota system but they know that they will die before they're ever allowed to immigrate to the United States then they will come here illegally. It's really that simple.

Fix the problem by eliminating quotas from our immigration laws. The only people that should be excluded are violent criminals and those that would come here for identifiable nefarious criminal purposes.

 

First and foremost, there are very few ways of effectively internalizing the negative externalities resulting from illegal immigration. For those already in the country, the best option is amnesty. I support such a measure. From here, policies need to be taken to continue to secure the border. This will require greater coordination between ICE agents and state national guards, and improving Mexican law enforcement through capacity building measures. It will also require making concerted efforts to improve the well-being of the Mexican economy while serving our interests. After taking these steps forward, to combat the illegal immigrants that still get past border security and seek jobs, establish an E-Verify system where both employers and illegal immigrants are forced to pay fines. Lastly, begin the process of immigration law liberalization by eliminating quotas established on VISA programs. We should have little to no barriers on establishing residency in the United States, whereas naturalization law should be strictly enforced. That is how the United States operated prior to the advent of quota systems, and while immigration then is incomparable to immigration now, the policy worked.

 

The best way to "secure the border" is to ensure that those individuals that want to come the the United States to become Americans and are seeking the American Dream are not denied the ability to do so. If the United States immigration laws had allowed the roughly 11 million "illegal" aliens to come here legally they wouldn't be illegal aliens today.

There would still be a very small percentage of people that would still cross the border illegally because they are engaged in criminal acts like smuggling drugs and they are the ones that we need to focus our border enforcement on. By allowing those that want to come here to be productive Americans to do so legally it greatly reduces the focus of our border patrol because then they know anyone illegally crossing the border is doing so for criminal purposes instead of merely trying to by-pass an immigration law that prevents them from coming here legally.

Think of it this way. During the Prohibition days there were tens of millions of other-wise law abiding citizens drinking bathtub gin. All of the police in America couldn't stop that but they were not the problem. The problems were with the organized crime rings that were engaged in the alcohol business.

Today we have millions of immigrants that are other-wise law abiding people coming to America illegally because we prohibit them from coming here legally. They are not the ones that we want to focus our border enforcement on. We only want to address the criminals that are engaged in criminal activities for profit and not those that simply want evade an irrational prohibition law.

BTW We've made great strides in reducing illegal border crossings in the last four years. Illegal border crossings have been slashed in half under the Obama administration from over 400,000 per year under the Bush Adminstration to about 200,000 per year as I recall. If we allow legal immigration those numbers would drop dramatically to perhaps 10,000 per year (a WAG on my part) and those are the ones we want the Border Patrol to stop.

Of course if we also ended the War on Drugs as well as ending the quota system for immigration then the illegal border crossing would almost literally disappear completely because few would have any reason to illegally cross our borders.

 

Sorry, I don't believe in open borders, and I don't believe that the modern hispanic immigrant loves free market capitalism enough to live in this country.

I don't see it as "immigrants looking for a better life" I see it as a crass and cynical attempt by the mexican government to offload its least desirable people, and by colonization take back what they never truly colonized in the first place, The aAmerican Southwest.

I see it as an invasion. I hate Emma Lazarus and that bull (*)(*)(*)(*) poe m. I want the worlds best and brightest, not the poorest. This isn't 1910. A post industrial economy has no place for immigrant with an elementary school education.

 

Being uninformed on a subject and propagating racial prejudice is not ligitimate rebuttal.

President Reagan was a proponent of amnesty in the 1980's which resulted in the 1986 law. Anti-Hispanic prejudice and discrimination that was continued in the 1986 law resulted in roughly 11 million more illegal aliens that we have in the United States today. The wealth of America has always been tied to the immigrants that come to the United States and they improve the US economy. The Mexican government has absolutely nothing to do with the "illegal" alien problem in the US which is exclusively because of the discriminatory US immigration laws that prevent those that want to move here for a better life from doing so legally. Retaining the same "quota" system which has resulted in large a "illegal" alien population and expecting it to not happen again meets Einstein's definition of Insanity.

 

The problem is that the immigrants Silicon is generally referring to subscribe to an ideology that is not in any way compatible to America's founding principles. The economic point you made is disregarded given that this ideology is based on economic tenets that are harmful to a nation's economic vitality.

 

With much pressure from Democrats

You don't fix the problem by having an open door policy.

 

Basing your post on past practices makes it applicable. The vast european immigration that led to our industrial revolution is the example. That was then this is now, every large gathering place of people have an occupancy limit. That limit not being surpassed is paramount to the safety of all those already there.
France had the unbridled immigration policy your suggesting and that immigration put them on their knees and they had to eventually totally reverse that policy.
If you open the floodgates for our southern border, you have to open them for everyone else. You gloss over that we have many immigration laws that Allow for legal immigration if you follow them. They dont even try to follow them they just run over the border at will. I totally disagree with a You want to come here? Sure comeon Policy for legal immigration.

 

Your right that race should not enter into it

I would say the 1986 amnesty is the result of having 11 million more illegals today. It told them if you can sneak in here, work and wait it out, you'll also be given amnesty and citizenship

You let everyone move here that wants to have a better life, you'll have half this world flocking to our doors. Europe has had that. Do you know what they are trying to do now? Open borders has done nothing but caused all kinds of problems in Europe.



France and Italy in call to close EU borders in wake of Arab protests ...


www.guardian.co.uk › World news › European UnionShare



Apr 27, 2011 – But like the euro, fighting its biggest crisis over the past year, the ... Under European law the border-free regime can be suspended only for ...


Europe closing its borders:France and Italy in call to close EU ...


talesfromthelou.wordpress.com/.../europe-closing-its-bordersfr...



Apr 27, 2011 – Sarkozy and Berlusconi want passport-free travel within the EU suspended as north African migrants flee north.

Europe shuts doors to illegal immigration | Features & Opinion | RIA ...


en.rian.ru/analysis/20110513/164011243.html

May 13, 2011 – Denmark has shocked the European Commission by closing its borders without waiting for recommendations from the EU interior ministers ...

 

A rather interesting proposition because most American citizens today don't subscribe to the ideology upon which America was founded that are predominately contained in these few words:

Even the founders, in penning to this ideology in the Declaration of Independence, in many regards didn't wholely subscribe to it. From the continuation of slavery to retaining the death penality (which has nothing to do with protecting our inalienable Rights) the list of deviations from this ideal upon which America was founded continues to this day.

For example, based upon this ideal, there would be no prohibitions against same-sex marriage or even polygamy and incestous marriages so long as they were between consenting adults. No one's inalienable Rights are being violated by the consentual partnerships of adults. There wouldn't be racial prejudice and oppression which denies equality of opportunity which violates the inalienable Rights of the Person. Women would not be subjected to gender discrimination where they only earn about 78% of what a man earns in the identical job. There wouldn't be a War on Drugs because simply consuming a "drug" voluntarily doesn't violate any other person's Rights. The US wouldn't be involved in foreign wars of interventionism attempting to spread pax-Americana because the People of those nations are not violating the Rights of Americans in this country. The Federal Reserve would not exist or if it did it would be redeeming the Federal Reserve (promissory) notes it issues in species money (American Eagle coins) based upon contract law.

Finally, there wouldn't be any immigration laws except for those to protect us from individuals that would violate our inalienable rights (e.g. criminals and terrorists).

This is because people, especially conservatives, simply don't understand capitalistic economics. If we look at the demographics of an economy it is a pyramid with very few wealthy "capitalists" at the top and at the bottom are the masses of unskilled or semi-skilled workers. In between are the engineers, doctors, and other "skilled" professionals. Social-conservatives, for whatever silly reason, believe that wealthy create the economy but they have the pyramid upside down because it is the consumption by the unskilled and semi-skilled workers that are the foundation of the economy. It take thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled workers to generate a need for the engineers, doctors, and professionals. It takes millions of unskilled and semi-skilled workers to support the "capitalists" at the top of the pyramid. We've seen what production capability without consumers results in.. Both GM and Chyrsler had enormous production capability but when the unskilled and semi-skilled workers stopped buying cars they both went bankrupt. This is why "trickle-down" economics doesn't work.

Rep Marco Rubio of Florida is recommending preferrential treatment for foreign college graduates but how does this make real sense. There are roughly 45 million US citizens that have college degrees but we only have jobs for about 1/2 of them. I'm not advocating not letting them immigrate but instead only note that they won't be filling a "need" in the US economy as much as unskilled laborers that will work at jobs that Americans won't work at. Jobs are actually created for the unskilled labor force that immigration provides. More lawn services, more nannies, more harvesting of US crops that are dying "on the vine" are all examples jobs that virtually no Americans will do because the work is either too hard and/or doesn't pay enough.

President Obama mentioned increasing the minimum wage in his State of the Union and there are arguments for that but one argument that wasn't presented is that Americans won't typically work for minimum wage anyway. They certainly won't do it full time and try to make a living at it. Even McDonalds pays more than minimum wage for full time unskilled new hires and offers health insurance to those workers as well. We're missing an entire segment of our economy because we don't have the unskilled foreign immigrants to provide the labor. If we did then there would be a much higher demand for products and services that provides jobs for American citizens because we're typically somewhere in-between the bottom and top of the pyramid.

But "social-conservatives" live in denial of these simply economic principles that require the unskilled and semi-skilled (predominately immigrant) workers that work at the lowest wages in American that consume and that creates more American jobs that we will actually work at and all of this increases the GDP. Not everyone can be a highly paid engineer if there is no one to buy the products they design. The fewer wage earners the fewer goods are consumed and that translates into fewer jobs for the rest of us.

 

We have close to 20 million Americans out of work or only working part time. Why in hell would we want to add 11 more million to compete with them? Don't you think those Americans out of work want a better life? There is only a small percentage of jobs that illegals do that Americans don't want to and we can fix that problem with a controlled type Green Card.

Granted we can't throw 11 million illegals out, but we can let them stay here and work under federal work laws so it won't under cut those 20 million Americans looking for work. Make them registerso we finally know who is in the country and can deport anyone not registered. Have them pay taxes but they will not be given citizenship. I would make an exception to the young children that were brought here by their parents, but that is all.

 

Why should the Right believe in Churches? They were promised the world was flat. They still believe that, of course, but they hate Christianity.

 

How you can get off subject to put down religion is something else. It has nothing to do with what we are talking about

 

It is to do, surely, with the weird nature of the American Right, and thus entirely relevant?

 

There were things I liked about Reagan and things I disliked, as I have will all presidents, but one thing I believe about Reagan is that he did not succumb to political pressure. He sometimes compromised for bipartisanship support but he was a man of principle and I don't believe he ever sacrificed his principles even for political compromise. Perhaps "conservatives" today don't believe this about Reagan but I do.

The problem is a discriminatory immigration policy predominately based upon anti-Hispanic prejudice. That is an inconvenient truth that "conservatives" live in denial of. That isn't all that suprising considering that the majority of Republicans exhibit explicit anti-Hispanic prejudice according to a study conducted last year.

We can't build walls high enough or afford to put a perimeter guard along the thousands of miles of US border (not even considering all of the water borders of the United States) that will prevent illegal immigration if we deny individuals a means of legal immigration. If we don't fix the problem of discrimination in our immigration laws then in another 20 years we'll have another 10-20 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

As I've also noted we actually need these workers from an economic standpoint but "social conservatives" live in denial of this as well. They keep saying these immigrants take American jobs but the fact is that Americas won't even accept the jobs they both create and fill.

 

Immigrants don't compete for the same jobs. What part of that do so many conservatives fail to understand. A Mexican woman will work as a nanny for minimum wage (less if she's an illegal immigrant) that the vast majority of American women won't work at. We could actually use more "nannys" but we lack the women that will work at the wages that the job pays. An unskilled Mexican laborer will work all day long digging ditches or mowing lawns and doing yardwork for minimum wage but an American worker won't. At the sametime the homeowner can't afford to hire someone for more than mimimum wage to do the work so there isn't a job for an American. The homeowner ends up mowing their own lawn because they can't afford the higher wages for an American to do the work.

About 25% of the harvest in Washington rotted because Americans wouldn't harvest it. That increased food prices and also kept millions of dollars from being infused into the American economy and this was just one state.

The belief that unskilled immigrant labor is taking American jobs is nothing but BS being propagated by anti-Hispanic prejudice. In truth they fill a part of the US economy that actually creates jobs for Americans that provide products and services to these low paid unskilled immigrant workers.

Let's use a simple example. Illegal immigrants have to eat. If we removed 11 million people from our markets then how many Americans working at the checkout stands (earning more than minimum wage) would be unemployed? How many truckloads of goods does their consumption represent and how many truckers would be unemployed? Try running some numbers. Even at minimum wage, and only assuming that 1/2 of them are working, they generated something like $88 billion in income that turned into consumption and all of that has a "mulitiplier" effect on our economy.

 

Some liberals already know amnesty doesn't work and it is one reason why we should be solving our illegal problem on a permanent basis through Commerce that is well regulated among the several States of the Union.

 

No - thinking about it, you are right, Marine. I had been in a grumpy argument elsewhere. Apologies.

 

With some jobs your right. Americans won't do farm work, but there is less than 5% of illegals doing farm work. But in many other occupations they will, for decent pay. Many illegals here in Arizona work in construction, building homes and factories. Many work in grocery stores. As a matter of fact, just over a year ago this one grocery chain in Arizona had over 500 illegals working for them. When they were caught and fired, there was over a 1,000 lined up trying to get those jobs. But we can fill those jobs Americans don't want to work if we did things different. Have an employer put in a request for job openings to the government and show where he tried to fill those jobs with Americans and couldn't. Immigrants could get their self put on a government list of jobs they would be willing to do and the government could issue work permits to those people where they could come in and fill those jobs. But they would have to pay at least the min wage and be covered under our labor laws. I don't know why people think the only way we can fill those jobs is with illegals. Or if they come in here and work, we must make them citizens. Very few countries make foreign labor citizens.

 

One thing I bet though, is Reagan felt by doing it, it would end the illegal problem. We would secure the border and that would be the end of it. All it did was tell illegals is if you can sneak in and stay out of trouble, they will eventually make you a citizen. Now we have over 4 times as many than Reagan had.

If there is anti Hispanic prejudice, it is because most of the illegals coming here are Hispanics. Much of the drugs brought into this country is caused by Hispanics. Illegals cost Arizona one billion a year and places like California, 10 times as much. The trouble is not with Hispanics in it's self, it's illegals. My Daughter is married to a Hispanic and I have two grandchildren from that marriage. My neice is married to a Hispanic and she couldn't have picked a better man. I'm sure there are many like me that have no problem with Hispanics, but have a big problem with illegals.

Yes we can guard or border. But we wouldn't have to make it like a fort. Just make all illegals here now register, maybe even finger print them. Now we know who is here. If anyone is stopped by police or caught working illegally, we'll know if they they aren't registered and can deport them. We will no longer have millions sneaking in this country and working and not know it. Employers caught hiring illegals will be punish.

Answered in another post

 

I think the answer is probably two-part. For the Democrat politicians, amnesty helps their party. And for the average liberal, they have a pathological tendency to "feel" for people in need so they are unable to deport anyone. Even if it's best for the country.

 

States may not impair in the Obligation of the (social) Contract regarding employment at will in any at-will employment State; and especially so if the federal doctrine is recognized.

 

I know how they feel. I was a Democrat when I was younger, from Kennedy to Carter. I saw things much different than I do today. I feel for those that want a better life to. But my Dad told me you take care of your family first and Americans are my family. I can't see making 11 million illegals citizens when we have 20 million Americans out of work, or looking for a full time job. You can't help others until you get yourself squared away.

I know that you can only let in as many as the country can support and it's not right to allow millions of illegals who snuck in here citizenship, when millions of others have waited months or years to come in legally and now will have to wait longer as their place was taken.

We also have tried to be fair and allow so many from many different countries to come in to keep a balance. But the illegals has thrown that way off balance.

When I got older I realized you can't always follow your heart. You must also use your head. Doing the right thing is not always the easiest way. Life isn't fair and never will be. But I know many could have a better life if they made better decisions and no matter what we do to help, we can't force people to make better or the right decisions. It isn't fair to take from others that have worked hard and made the right decisions and give to those that haven't. But we do owe something to those that can't help themselves, need temp. help or help because of no fault of their own. But I also realize that to much help takes away any insentive to help yourself or to keep families together. I get a little angry at my fellow Republicans that say do away with all welfare. I also get angry at Republicans that come off hard and mean. Just because we might disagree with Liberals, doesn't mean we can't do it decently.

 

What is that supposed to mean in PLAIN ENGLISH?