Senate The US Politics discussion

One of the families lives on my street and is very open about their status. To the point of being brazen about it. The other two families have sons whom I'm friends with. They were born here. But their voting parents are here illegally. Could my friends be lying to me about their parents' status? I guess. But to what end?

 

Why not call INS if it's such a problem? I'm sure your "friends" will understand that you're only doing your civic duty as a well-meaning American.

 

I'd avoid any continuing discussion with J-Rod with regard to just about anything politics-related. J-Rod is the living embodiment of Fox News sound bites, both in terms of parroting them and in turning various claims ("illegals live on my block and they're proud of it!") into alleged reality. You're just fated to go in circles, and nothing you say will be absorbed.

 

Which, if actually the case, is a legitimate concern and should be addressed.

However, it is not equal to a state party leader openly stating that the law was defined to benefit a specific candidate, especially one for President.

Imagine the fury from the GOP if someone had said that in a red state about Obama.

Peace,

V-03

 

The problem is that no matter how hard I try I just don't believe J-Rod.

 

J-Rod is a sincere person, so I don't actually doubt that he fully believes what he's saying. I just suspect that the reality of his neighbors is somewhat different than what he perceives it to be.

 

Precisely. That statement makes it abundantly clear that the law was never intended to be fair. It was built from the beginning with a hidden agenda and that agenda was not allowing everyone to vote.

Voter fraud is a phantom. It's one of those issues the politicians and the media use to distract us from the real issues. How many people have ever been convicted of voter fraud? How many have ever been arrested? How easy would it be for voter fraud to have a real impact on the outcome of an election? Meanwhile, moneyed interests continue to pull the strings in elections to a far greater extent and with much more impact than any "voter fraud" could ever have. Are we passing laws to correct that? No, it's far more important to focus on the phantom of voter fraud. So the right pretends to be in a frenzy, while the left pretends to disagree with all these new laws being passed. Distraction, distraction, distraction. So, we won't notice who's really corrupting the electoral process: the super-wealthy, the corporations and Wall Street. No, it's not them; it's those five illegals down the street; they're the ones ruining America. Right.

 

Look, the reality is that the easier it is to vote, the more Democratic votes there are going to be. Everyone knows that, and particularly the people who want to make voting as difficult as possible. If Republicans truly believed in what they were saying, they would face the voters as completely as possible. There would be no roadblocks. They know that their rhetoric does not sell at all with minorities, younger voters, ands lower income folks (all of whom face difficulties in voting). They base their actions accordingly.

 

There are a few issues with that. While I have stopped short of actually reporting them, I've asked about it. They would be happy to take a report. But they aren't going to ask for their identification based on my say that they are illegals. And even if it's shown that they are illegals, they didn't vote under their own name and social security number. Unless I could show the false name they voted under I would have a difficult time proving that they voted.

And keep in mind, you don't report illegals here. You can just drive down the street and see them at the intersections waiting for day labor. We ALL see them. We ALL know who they are and where they are. We are ALL looking right at them every day. There is nothing anyone is willing to do about them.

 

yes, he does seem like he's sincere but his claims are laughably unlike the world as i (and, i assume, you) experience it, in the same geographical area and time-period. like the time, in past threads, when he claimed he always has to swerve to avoid "illegals" fresh across the border crossing the freeway. in phoenix. 200 miles from the border. i drive long distance in the phoenix metro area every day, have for many years, (to say nothing of the years i lived in tucson, much closer to the border), and i have never seen anyone running across the freeway

or when he kept repeating (supposedly from personal experience) the popular misconception that Guadalupe, Arizona is entirely "illegal" immigrants, when in fact the vast majority of Guadalupe's population are (spanish-speaking) Pascua Yaqui native americans, and Guadalupe as a permanent settlement is older than the rest of the phoenix metro area. again, while the facts "on paper" are enough to contradict j-rod's wild stories in this case, my personal experience also contradicts his -- to get clinical experience, ive logged several hundred volunteer hours at the only health clinic in guadalupe, so dont tell me i dont know what the reality is there

similarly, our experience regarding the undocumented immigrant community diverges significantly. although i dont normally go around quizzing my friends, acquaintences, clients and work-colleagues about their immigration status, and for some reason it doesnt seem to come up in conversation a whole lot, i did have knowledge of the immigration status of a former housemate of mine, who was in fact "illegal". thankfully, he is currently being mainstreamed under the DACA (deferred action for childhood arrivals -- he falls into the category of folks who were born in mexico but raised in the states, speak english better than spanish, and have never visited mexico or any other foreign country for fear of not being able to return home after) program and is able to work normally, but at the time i was living with him he was undocumented. i can tell you he spent his time keeping his head down, enjoying time with his friends and loved ones, and working as a busboy despite his significant information technology skills and aptitudes. i never caught him nefariously plotting to risk deportation in order to vote (if so many "illegals" were willing to do this, you'd think we'd at least be rid of arpaio by now). on the contrary, prior to seeking DACA, he and my other housemate, (his mesa-born and bred girlfriend), were planning to move to mexico together and start a life there, out of frustration with the american immigration mess. eventually they were advised that DACA was a far better option for him, particularly if he wanted to ever be able to visit his friends and family in america again

i dont know what explains the difference between reality and j-rod's apparent experience (i lean towards overactive fantasy life fueled by overexposure to pathological ideology) but ultimately im far more concerned with refuting it than trying to determine whether he's "lying" or not. i dont care about j-rod. i care about refuting obvious, laughable falsehoods being told about the place i live

 

There are plenty of people who are willing to do something about those people: they hire them to do work. That's why they're waiting there on the corner. There clearly aren't enough people to do what you would like them to do. But there are people who are doing something. It's that you don't agree with what that something is.

Give the people, those who are not violent or drug-addled criminals, a path to citizenship. Have them learn English and pay a fine.

I know a group of kids in my city whose parents are here illegally. The parents don't speak a lick of english but the kids take dual immersion courses at the elementary and they speak english better than me. They are all smart and already have ideas about what they want to be when they grow up. Now why would I want to split that family up?

Americans didn't start out as U.S. citizens when they declared independence. They were all citizens of another country.

Our foundations and beginnings are immigrant based.

And polls and studies consistently show hispanic immigrants are typically more religious and more family-oriented than most.

Sounds like a pretty good mixture of Americana to me.

Was Alexander Hamilton an illegal? He was born in another country(West Indies as part of the Crown). Yet, we embrace him and his ideals as being purely American*

*except for the Jeffersonians but they didn't what they were talking about.

 

oh yeah and Ramza, i assume you provide yet another contra-j-rod version of arizona reality? you lived here until recently, did you not?

 

I live right in the southwest corner of Utah, near the AZ strip NV border and have for 20 years.

I've seen many migrant workers, immigrants, etc over my years here. They should learn the national tongue. Thats about my only gripe.

Otherwise, we need to be open and transparent about it and bring them out of the shadows and into the light by granting them an open path to citizenship. Then we can know who they are and they can work openly and pay taxes and not live in fear.

An open and legal path to citizenship will also drive a line of demarcation between the hardened criminal gangs and cartels who are currently using our broken system to their advantage, and those who are simply moving here with their families so they can have a better life in the U.S. of A.

edit: edited native for national. wrong wording. Native would be Ute.

 

Yeah, I only managed to get the hell out of there a couple of years ago, and I have to concur with most if not all of Rogue's argument that J-Rod's pronouncements have never really jived with my experiences.

I lived in Tucson and went to the University of Arizona, so I've driven through a lot of the poorer parts of town on numerous occasions, as well as the more significantly upscale areas where my parents live and the kind of middling "whatever" area in the immediate vicinity of the university. While I'm not exactly captain observant I've never seen anyone ever running across the freeway, or any street, because, honestly, by the time illegal immigrants make it all the way up to Tucson (To say nothing of Phoenix, good night) it's not really feasible or perhaps even possible for them to remain on foot.

Certainly I tend to assume that the average hispanic American in the street isn't an illegal immigrant by default, because a lot of people walk in downtown Tucson and the hispanic population is quite large. That's before you get into the large amount of wealthy individuals from Sonora that come up to shop there. You're guaranteed every fourth car has a Sonora license plate on weekends if you're at a mall. Those kind of sheer numbers would make it pretty hard to tell, at a glance, if somebody was an illegal immigrant, even in a weird context like freeway running. Which, again, never seen it.

Actually, the only time I ever met anyone who I was absolutely sure was an illegal immigrant, he spoke fantastic English and was just a customer at a Target I worked at. We exchanged a couple of jokes about taxes. I've never seen a bunch of day laborers congregating at intersections waiting for trucks to pull up, but maybe I don't know the right intersections. Or I don't just baldly assume every group of hispanics standing at the corner is necessarily illegal immigrants. One of those.

In any case, anecdotal evidence aside, the big "rationale" for this argument seems to be that illegal immigrants are committing rampant voter fraud across the state. Leaving aside the obvious Joe Arpaio joke that Rogue made, the numbers literally don't pan out: http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20131105arizona-immigrant-vote-fraud-rare.html

 

But taxes bad, Shane.

 

I run into people from Vegas and AZ all the time who use the words: "I had to get the hell out of there" to describe why they left.

Is it the economy? Not much better here. This place is tied to NV. As it goes, so we go.

 

yeah i was just about to say "northern paiute?"

and i thought the usa still didnt have an official national language? did i miss something?

 

Maybe. But taxes necessary.

edit: Rogue_Ten, we don't have a national language. I said national language as a means to say the prominent language we speak.

 

You know that scene at the end of The Searchers, where John Wayne realizes he's fundamentally incompatible with the scene of restored domesticity, and walks out into the desert?

It's like that, but replace "restored domesticity" with "political status quo."

 

I understand completely. Ive lived in Utah most of my life but have to admit that some of my best times were living in California in Palm Springs. I tend to like places that are not culturally homogenous.