Paul Ryan: DACA - "Fixing the root cause of the problem"

Discussion in 'Immigration' started by Shiva_TD, Sep 16, 2017.

  1. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/14/pau...ment-between-trump-and-democrats-on-daca.html

    The "Problem" is border security? People come to the United States, bringing their children, just because we don't have enough border security? So they're not coming here for jobs or to be with family? They're not here illegally because they can't get a visa to be here legally?

    Does Speaker Ryan actually believe that spending a metric butt-load of more money, while were running deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars, is going to stop these illegal immigrants from coming to the United States and bringing their children in the future?

    While it's been many years since I worked were immigrant labor was used (much of my career was in defense aerospace that requires US citizenship) there was a time when I did. At that time, working in manufacturing, the senior shop lead-man was an "undocumented" Mexican from Mexico City. He routinely went home two or three times a year and returned without any problem and he never once crossed the US-Mexican border illegally. He simply drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, flew to Mexico City, spent a couple of days there and then flew back to Las Vegas as a tourist. He was what's referred to as a "visa overstay" that enters the US legally and then simply stays here.

    According the a DHS report the estimated number of visa overstays for 2015 was 527,127 people. We're not actually sure because we can only really count people that enter the country with a visa and there are millions of people entering and leaving the US routinely under the Visa Waiver Program that don't have a visa.

    Now let's compare that the illegal border crossing. Once again we don't have an actual number of people that illegally cross the border but we do know how many are stopped or apprehended at the border. From 2012 to 2017 there were about 80,000 people either prevented from illegally entering the United States or that were apprehended illegally entering the United State.
    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-border-apprehensions-20170309-story.html

    The number stopped or apprehended has decline by 40% in 2017 for several reasons. In any case that doesn't tell us how many did illegally cross the border but the rule of thumb is that for every person stopped or apprehended as many as ten evade the border patrol. So in the five years from 2012 to and including 2016 the "rule of thumb" estimate is about 800,000 people illegally crossed our border.
    https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/01/19/dhs-releases-entryexit-overstay-report-fiscal-year-2015

    No, not all of the visa overstays take up permanent residency but some do. And people will still be entering the US by illegally crossing the US-Mexican border regardless of how much money we throw at border enforcement. It produces a never-ending flow and even if improved border security stops 50% as opposed to 10% that still hundreds of thousands of people illegally immigrating across our Southern border.

    Proposals like Trump's wall, that not even Republicans are taking seriously, are worth exactly how much it costs to build a ladder to go over it. Additional border patrol agents do reduce the number of people illegally entering the United State by crossing the border but it doesn't prevent any of the millions of visa overstays that occur over a decade time period.

    But the significance of illegal border crossing is declining annually.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/06/us/politics/undocumented-illegal-immigrants.html

    Speaker Ryan is lying to the American people because border security is not the "problem" at all. Border security can be called a "barrier" that is leaky at best but it's not the problem. The problem isn't even the visa overstays.

    The problem is the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. This signature immigration reform act under President Reagan did not base the immigration upon the reason why people are willing to be come "illegal" or "undocumented" aliens in the United States For example of the estimated 11.5 undocumented aliens in the United State only about 8 million are "workers" while the other are family members sometime of other "undocumented" aliens but often they're family members of lawful immigrants.

    What the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 actually did was create "prohibition" and as we know from the alcohol prohibition during the 1920's and early 1930's and from the drug prohibitions the prohibition does not stop or even significantly reduce whatever's being prohibited. Alcohol consumption actually went up during the prohibition years.

    The PROBLEM is the immigration law itself and it needs to be rewritten so that the allowed immigration is based upon the reasons why people are willing to be here illegally. Jobs and being with family are primary reasons but escaping danger is also another primary reason especially for many of those coming from Central America. Provide them with a lawful means to do what they'll do unlawfully if it's prohibited.

    If we fix the immigration law to allow those into the United States that do so for peaceful and rationally justifiable reasons then we don't need to waste a metric butt load of money the federal government doesn't even have to spend. We're literally wasting the financial resources of the United States by ignoring the actual problem - THE LAW IS THE PROBLEM.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2017
  2. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    No replies yet but there are other considerations that are equally irrational or objectionable.

    No matter how much we spend in border enforcement and even on attempts to address those that enter lawfully on a visa and overstay that visa, and even if we deported all 11.5 undocumented aliens currently in the United States they will return in the future. They can't be stopped as long as the immigration law is based upon irrational criteria that ignores why they're here in the first place.

    It took roughly 30 years for the number of children brought into the United States to reach 800,000 and for the undocumented total to reach 11.5 million. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars without fixing the law won't stop us from reaching these same numbers in the future. It may take longer (or it could happen even sooner) but it's going to happen. The problem of the law is what cause the undocumented alien problem and not how easy or hard it is to get inside of the United States.

    When it comes to the argument to address the employers that hire illegals many Republicans and Democrats seem to miss one significant point. The means for attempting to prevent the hiring of undocumented aliens is E-Verify. E-Verify is not perfect and thousands of cases exist where those that were identified by E-Verify as not having a right to work in the United States were wrong. It's not a large percentage but even a fraction of one percent would effected tens of thousands a year, denying them employment, and arguably over a million people over a decade. The problem is that E-Verify has to be used in every case of employment without exception so tens or hundreds of thousands of US citizens are going to be denied employment.

    E-Verify basically places the US Government in charge of "allowing" all of us (American citizens) to work for a living. We'll need the government's "permission" for us to work. This is like the Republican's absurd position on voting. To "prevent" a handful of people from committing voter impersonation at the polls (32 cases out of over a billion votes cast) the Republicans passed voter ID laws that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of US citizens in many states and millions of US citizens nationwide.

    How many American Citizens will be denied a job because of E-Verify errors? Wrongfully being denied a single job can snowball resulting in the loss of a future career that could be worth millions of dollars over a lifetime.

    Do you believe that a US citizen should require the "government's permission" to have a job? Mandatory full implementation of E-Verify would do just that and it still won't prevent undocumented aliens from working in the United States. The employer can run an E-Verify check on someone working in the United States on a temporary work visa. The person is hired and the visa expires but the person keeps working because E-Verify is only used with the workers is hired.

    Requiring employers to act as de facto immigration agents. Requiring US citizens to get the government's permission to have a job. Spending untold hundreds of billions of dollars on our border when more people are in the US because of Visa Overstays. None of this makes sense and none of it is necessary if we FIX THE IMMIGRATION LAW that's the root problem that Speaker Paul Ryan wants Congress to address.
     

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