Immigration Reform: Why We Need It, Why It Won't Happen

I think immigrants are an invaluable component of American society. I think illegal immigrants are not, and even if they arguably are, they need to face the law (like everyone who comes to or lives in this country).

EDIT: also LOL at Eric Holder for criticizing the Arizona Law, and then when asked under oath, admitting that he never read it(I think the response was something like--this is ten pages, as opposed to the 2,000 page health-care bill...really?). He listened to the news. That's where he gets his info.

EDIT 2: And I'm a second generation immigrant, so I like immigration (grandparents especially enjoyed it ) .

 

A lot of things have to change. We're basically stealing Mexico's most precious commodity at mere pennies a cup. Mexico should be hording its oil for its own future domestic needs. Instead, it's giving it away to us at prices it will begin to regret as the amount of oil it has for export rapidly dwindles.

Given that, it seems fair to me that Mexicans come in and work here illegally. It's a small way of recouping a tiny fraction of the wholesale theft of public property that their own government has conspired with the U.S. to undertake.

We can sort out these things in a few years when Mexico's economy and potentially entire government collapses as their oil export market fails. It will be ugly.

 

Asterix, first let me say thank you for bringing in actual statistics into the debate. I fully appreciate that you're tryign to work off of facts.

However, I am going to have to take serious complaint with the study you cited for one main reason.

The cost of illegal immigrants it describes is mostly due to one factor, children of illegals born in the US, that is to say, US citizens. The cost therefore is the difference between the various guarantees to a child who is non productive(but presumably future productive) vs the income derived from a worker who generally has less than a high school education.

In point of fact if they were a legal immigrant with the same situation the problem would be much worse since the immigrant themselves would be granted the same rights and privileges. Unsurprisingly the cost of a US citizen to the government without a high school education is far higher than the direct tax income from that person.

So, the argument then is that the children of illegals, be they ever so citizens do not contribute and can not contribute to the benefit of the country simply because they are not paying taxes now. I find this inherently false. The point should be the necessity of educating children of illegals so that they increase our economic prosperity over the long term instead of taking snapshots and trying to eliminate anything that "costs money" right now.

Immigration is a process, not a snap shot. Unless you're a zero summer there is no benefit to be derived from trying to prevent anyone from being here who costs us money this very second without regard to the needs and possibilities of the future.

 

Interesting point. I'll say that given that children born here are legal, it's also a shame that their parent broke the law. If said parents have to be deported because of it, it affects the children. I had several friends in high school who either were illegal themselves, or their parents were. The unfortunate thing about the illegal kids, was that they were only illegal because they were brought over by their parents in the first place (when they were very young). This is where, despite the law, I still feel a lot of sympathy--when the children suffer because of the parents. I don't blame the law, but it is unfortunate. As for the costs of illegal immigrants in this country--you might be right, but I'm no expert on the matter. I've heard many many people who make the case that they really do cause major problems financial and otherwise due to being here illegally. I suppose if someone made a strong enough argument, however, I wouldn't be above amnesty.

The thing about "borders" is that I'm not sure it fits with my "crazy" religious philosophies. I want everyone to be welcome, and essentially, free (in a broad sense). Sigh, still I think the border simply needs to be enforced and owners who hire illegals need to face the consequences (because they're just as guilty as the illegals they hire).

 

I also think borders need to be enforced, I'm just not as sanguine with the idea illegals are inherently harmful. Borders are important for knowing who and what is coming in and out of the country, not so much for preventing travel based on poorly conceived notions of societal harm.

The necessity of a comprehensive re evaluation of immigration can not be accomplished by addressing the illegal immigrants already in situ since the cost of trying to remove them far exceeds even the most pessimistic valuation of their snap shot cost tot he economy. Therefore the only logical thing to do is to readdress the creation of illegal immigration which, I contend, can only be accomplished by prohibition and harsh punishments by destroying the fundamental value of our country.

Open up immigration, give illegals a pathway towards citizenship that doesn't involve half conceived notions of forcing them to go back to their country of origin to apply. That's simply deportation by proxy and fails the same tests.

No it isn't "fair" that they jumped the line, but you have to deal with the situation as it is. If nothing else they are already contributing to society now and in the future in a way someone simply applying is not guaranteed to do so.

Green card should be widespread. Far better that they come here to contribute as they work for citizenship and pay fully above board while being unable to receive the full extent of our privileges than sneak in and pay below board while failing to receive the full extent of our privileges.

 

The Border:
Sealing the border would be ridiculous and impractical. It would also be a militant reaction to a economic and human problem. We're not Sparta.
But we can enlarge the border patrol and build the double fencing, like that in the Tijuana sector, along the Arizona Sedona/Tuscon sector and like areas of New Mex and Tex.

Migrant workers and Visa workers:
What we should and can do is enlarge the number of high-tech visas available(H1B?). We should create an orderly system allowing migrant seasonal workers to enter the country and then return home at the end of growing season. I don't know if it's some sort of ID card or what but something that shows who they are and some type of valid ID method.

We should also allow people to bring family members into the country sooner than they are currently allowed.

This is a similar plan to Sen. Gutierrez'(D-ILL) plan for the workers here.

For those who are currently in this country illegally:

This is also a bit similar to Gutierrez' plan:

ID those who are here. Those with criminal records(aside from illegal entry) are either incarcerated or deported. Those who are here but are working and contributing to society and who have extended families here should be required to:

Pay a fine.
Become proficient in English.
Take basic history class and constitutional law class.
Then they can earn citizenship.

 

A lot of those ideas are good. Limiting the future supply of illegals is critical. It's a primary reason why it's difficult for working class people to earn a living wage. Working class people are squeezed on the one hand by external outsourcing of manufacturing to countries with few or no standards for workers and where living costs are low, and on the other by internal outsourcing of services to illegals who can be hired with few or no standards and can afford to live on less money in any case because they can dodge a certain level of taxation.

But this is of course great for the people in my neighborhood. We hire where I live I'd say on the average of 4 illegals per family. One provides daycare if we have young children. Another cleans the house. Sometimes we have a third who only comes once a week to do laundry and fold it, iron it and put it away. And we have a fourth or fifth we contract out to cut the grass and trim the hedges and lay fertilizer and so on.

If we had to pay their SS and Medicare tax and do the paperwork for all that, or if the ones we contract out to had to do that for their employees, then most of us wouldn't be able to afford all these services. We'd have to cut back, which we've already done of course as the result of the recession. If you think the recession has been brutal for us, imagine what it's like for the undocumented workers whose livelihood depends on our disposable income. If we ended illegal immigration, most of the people in my income bracket would have to cut their own lawn, do their own laundry, would have to send their preschoolers to daycare where they would mix in with who knows what kind of kids, and might even have to clean our own toilets although let's face it some luxuries are worth it at almost any price.

I should also note in the interest of disclosure that my wife is not a U.S. citizen but is a legal resident. She runs her own multinational business and is one of those highly skilled foreign types Lord_Vivec was referring to. Luckily she earns a lot of her income in foreign currencies, so although it will be painful for me and the kids to have her deported, it won't ruin her financially.

 

Okay Jabba stop.

Luckily she earns a lot of her income in foreign currencies, so although it will be painful for me and the kids to have her deported, it won't ruin her financially.

 

You'll like what this guy has to say.

 

farraday,
it might help it you switched to de-caf and actually read what was written.
I didn't propose the racial quotas, I was stating that we should all be glad they are over.
When and where did I advocate shooting someone for "raping my bread box"?
Oh, I DIDN'T, just like I didn't advocate shooting someone for breaking the law within the country.
You really make yourself look silly.

Lastly I stand in absolute awe oh how you play the race card once AGAIN. Sure I posted

But I was making a point of a REAL WORLD example of disease spreading and killing people.
An example of specifically Immigrants doing that would be "Typhoid Mary" who was born in the Ireland. The problem with that is that her story isn't that well known, and you seem rather uneducated and ignorant of the past.
IT was YOU who singled out Hispanic Immigrants, there's no reason virus re-assortment can't occur in Canada.
So really Farraday, who has the racism?

 

I like what that guy has to say. It's entirely reasonable, sort of Master_SweetPea lite, although he chooses the standard nutjob web layout style we used to see a lot back in the late 90s.

 

actually I'd say it's almost identical too what I've been saying.
Main difference is he talks about Bullhorns, and I was saying use signs, and I guess I should add pictograms to the messages on the signs.

 

He also says something wimpy about detaining and handing off to border patrol agents as opposed to shooting.

 

I hate that guys black background with colored text. Reminds me of some UFO coverup or Illuminati conspiracy website.

edit: Not that I've been to any of those kind of websites before!

 

You can't detain someone on the other side of the wall, the job is to prevent them from crossing.

 

Jabba, I noticed that you only really posted reasons not to let illegal immigrants in... not much on immigrants.

Statistics man, I want statistics.

 

Exactly. That's where your approach differs from his. He sees the soldier's job as observing someone crossing the border, then confronting/detaining the person and handing him off to another agency as a means of limiting the army's role. No "invasion" has occurred until someone has completed the crossing.

There seems to be an interest to use the least amount of force necessary to end the "invasion" not that opportunities for shooting would never arise, mind you, but at least they wouldn't be required as a matter of policy to shoot a mother carrying her infant child across the border.

For SuperWatto.

Illinois has one of the highest illegal immigrant populations in the country. More than 90% of all foreign born Illinois residents live in the Chicago area, and some estimates are that 1 in 3 are undocumented, which in 2005 may have been as high as 340,000 people and as of 2010 is easily more than half a million, so behind Arizona and California and Florida of course, but still up there in terms of the scope of the problem to the extent you believe it is a problem.

In 2005 the estimated costs to the state of educating illegal immigrant children, providing healthcare to illegal immigrants and incarcerating them in Illinois was put at about $3 billion

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs put out a recent report on Mexican immigration to the Midwest. I highlight not necessarily because I'm a racist but because Mexicans account for the bulk of legal and illegal immigration to Chicago.

from the Executive Summary:

Most Mexican immigrants have relatively little formal education and are concentrated in low-skill jobs. Mexican immigrant households have been experiencing serious declines in income since 2000, and their poverty rate is rising faster than that of the rest of the population. The presence of Mexican immigrants is largely due to the substantial creation of low-skill jobs in the Midwest. Because of the many low-skill jobs still being created, Mexican immigrants are likely to continue migrating to the Midwest. Yet, since federal immigration policy leaves few options for Mexican immigrants to enter the United States legally, a majority of the most recent immigrants are undocumented.

The Midwest is currently home to some 1.2 million immigrants from Mexico, or 2 percent of the regional population and 30 percent of all foreign-born persons in the region.

Because Mexican workers are concentrated in low-skill and lowwage jobs, their social and economic situation is precarious. On average, the immigrants have low levels of formal education, and their household incomes had been falling rapidly even before the recession of 2008. Nearly one in five lives below the poverty level. Their disadvantaged status raises concerns about the ability of their children to acquire higher levels of education and to integrate economically as previous generations of immigrants have done.

Mexican immigration accounts for about 15 percent of all regional population change.

The modern immigration system in the United States has exacerbated the problem, as it leaves out the very type of worker needed for many jobs in the Midwest: immigrants without specialized training who want to work. Policymakers need to understand the limitations of the legal system as it pertains to Mexican immigrants. In an economy creating large numbers of low-skill jobs, many of which are filled by Mexican immigrants, the pressure is on, so to speak, to maintain the flow of immigrants. The current shortcomings of immigration law?resulting in a growing undocumented population?will only become magnified over time in the Midwest.

 

keeping in mind my immigration policy, there shouldn't be any mothers doing that.
If you watched the ReasonTV vids I linked, you'll notice that Drew and crew just said
to open the legal ports of entry and the problem will stop, otherwise go to the
high security approach.

I say, let's do both.

 

Anyway, for those who aren't going to read the pdf file, here are the final recommendations from the report relating to immigration reform:

Reform immigration laws at the federal level.

With Mexican immigration a fairly permanent part of the landscape, considerable thinking is required to address how to best leverage the contributions of these immigrants. One policy solution that is crucial?and which would liberate many Mexican workers to contribute more fully to local economies?is immigration reform.

As this report shows, substantial majorities of Mexican immigrants arriving in a given year in the Midwest are undocumented. Because they are unauthorized immigrants, they are limited in the types of employment they are able to find. They either need to find an employer willing to ignore their illegal status, or they need to risk the use of fraudulent identification. Either way, their mobility in the labor market is constrained, and as a result they are unable to fully leverage the skills they have.

Immigration reform needs to address undocumented migration comprehensively. This means developing a new system of immigrant visas that is based less on family connections and more on the types of workers needed, including low-skilled workers. It means offering a way for many of the undocumented immigrants already in the Midwest to obtain legal status. It also means having the federal government develop workable immigration control policies?at the border and in the interior of the United States?for persons who do not meet the requirements of a reformed system.

I notice a few things. First, it echoes the opinions of a number of the posters above. Also, it very much bucks conventional wisdom of immigration reform that promotes even more the idea that what we primarily need is more highly skilled immigrants.

This report claims that what we primarily need is more unskilled immigrants and the fact that immigration policy is unaligned with actual labor demand is what creates the giant inflows of illegal immigrants.

Another thing in the report related to my own rantings is that the report credits Mexican immigration to the Midwest with stemming the tide of population loss in the region. An interesting point. Non immigrants are moving away from Chicago, and who can blame them. Immigrants are arriving to take their place.

Master_SweetPea's immigration reform policy more or less matches the recommendations of this report if you pull in a few farraday options as well: amnesty for almost everyone already here, comprehensive reform to allow plenty of low-skilled laborers to legally enter the country to work, then bring home our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq to patrol our borders like we mean it.

Honestly, is there anyone who can't get behind a policy package like that?

 

You're right, I did misread your post, not sure how. Apologies Sweetpea.

I do not see how you're making the equation between house and country that you refuse to admit that inside a house you have just as much right to shoot someone under certain circumstances, for example threat of rape. By the same idea your argument is anything you could shoot someone for inside your house the government should summarily execute people for.

Not simply execute but shoot people out of hand for simple trespass. This is the literal comparison you're making because you refuse to admit any concept of threat into your calculus.

I am hilariously amused though that you bring up Typhoid Mary. Seriously, immigrants are plague carriers? Since Typhoid Mary existed... therefore we can shoot anyone who crosses the border because they're a threat, which I brought up by mentioned Spanish flu because it possibly .. maybe.. probably didn't come from immigrants.

Absurd. You would have to lock down all foreign travel and commerce to prevent the spread of germs nowadays. "Immigrants are plague carriers" is about 100 years to late, like much of your rhetoric.

 

okay..so now I'm confused. You posted "raping your bread box" not raping your wife/daughter that's completely different.
Sure, but that's a clear threat issue.

The point is that we don't know if the hypothetical crosser "is" or "is not" a threat. If they arent' then they shouldn't do it to begin with, thus by trying they are assumed to be a threat, that's standard guarding protocol.

awhile back, You mentioned something about how no one has been shot on the Whitehouse lawn, my point being that there is no one dumb enough to try, same with the all the other examples I gave. The simple threat of force is usually enough to stop anyone.

We still do agricultural and livestock inspections. Coming home from Afghanistan we had to scrub our aircraft from top to bottom.
As a nation we do take action to stop the spread of germs, and invasive species, oops I'm not supposed to use the word invasive or invasion my bad!
The hype about swine flu was based on the theory of a Swine-Bird flu hybrid, one that would likely occur on a ranch where birds and pigs are kept close together, like those in many non-U.S. nations. The threat is real, simple precautions should be taken.

 

In point of fact people climb the white house fence with some regularity. So, you're just wrong. I chose raping the bread box because the whole line of argument is absurd, making it a wife or child only bows to your murderous inclination to shoot first ask questions never.

And the fact you think we can prevent global pandemics by shooting immigrants just shows you have no clue what the actual reality is. Swine flu was wide spread in Mexico before we even really started noticing. It was into the US all over the place without the help of illegals. This isn't a stupid video game where you see the Scourge's creep and push it back laterally across the map. It is widespread, endemic, and mobile through the very organs of everyday commerce. Illegals are not the vector, stop pretending.

 

So, I've never been one to believe all the birther stuff, but I just found a video in which Michelle Obama calls Kenya, Obama's home country...she also calls him Kenyan. Has anyone else seen this? Maybe she made a mistake?

link

 

EDIT: Eh, she probably just meant "Kenyan-descent."

 

Farraday, what you're still doing though is ignoring any nuance an issue might have, and instead, using blanket statements as counter points. And I'm not sure why. Well, to me, the answer is that you always seem so focused on proving anyone who disagrees with you "as wrong," but that's something only you know.

Since I was the one who initially brought up the White House example, I think you should go review what I said. It's there in the same post, unedited. Because there's a VAST difference between what I said, and what you're trying to attribute it to. So again, let's compare these two statements:

1)If you scale the White House fence and while running toward the building, ignore all orders to stop, you could get shot and killed.

2)Anyone who climbs the White House fence is shot and killed.

Example 1 is what I actually used as an example, and which comprises an actual policy. Example 2 is completely different in scale, and doesn't reflect what was said. In example 1, the subject person has to purposefully make a series of decisions (-run toward the White House, and -ignore commands) for bad things to happen to them. In example 2, the subject person's decision ability is removed.

Just because someone could get shot for scaling the White House fence doesn't mean that everyone does, because it still depends on the circumstance. That's what you're missing. But that's also why policies exist in any field.

I could use "company A's" policy on sexual harassment as an example, which says that an employee can get fired for not following it. A rebuttal to that policy wouldn't be "but Mr44, John Doe violated it, and he was only warned, so you're wrong."

But it's not a right or wrong issue, because getting fired is only a possible consequence. Employees could still get warned, issued a letter of reprimand, or fired, all under the policy, because multiple factors come into play.

This applies to any policy, no matter if its maintaining prison order, border security, White House protection, or employees getting free coffee at Starbucks.