Hi there.

[Cleita]

Would this be a good place to discuss the immigrant problem in a rational way? I'm getting weary from the flame wars in GD. I believe that the illegal immigrants need our help, not our hate. The reason they are here illegally is because of grinding poverty. It seems to me that much of what is said in GD about them is racist.

Please let me know if this is acceptable to you and I will post some information that I have.

[JuniperLea]

1. It would be nice

We need to find a way to help these people and to remind everyone that we could very easily be the next group of people seeking refuge in another country. The USA is rapidly becoming the new Mexico.

[Ragin1]

2. Hello.

I don't have any problem with immigrants. I more than welcome them. Illegal entry into my country is quite another subject indeed. Immigrants are not here illegaly. Illegal aliens are. Now if you want to control the conversation by giving illegal aliens immigrant status, that is your choice, but very transparent.

[LisaM]

7. Do you refer to your ancestors as aliens, legal or not?

I'm tired of that nomenclature. I had ancestors who came here in 1635. I have never heard anyone refer to them as aliens. Save that for creatures who land on UFOs.

[Dhalgren]

12. Hear! Hear! Excellent repost!

[Ragin1]

17. Sorry

but addressing illegal entry, as if was legal immigration does a great disservice to those who worked their asses off the legal way. For hence for I will call them illegals. Fair enough?

[LisaM]

33. Well it's better!

I'm not sure that our immigration laws are fair, but that's a different point, and I appreciate that you listened to what I was saying.

[proud2BlibKansan]

42. I prefer to call them undocumented

The reason they come here illegally is that it is nearly impossible to come here legally (especially from Central America). If your ancestors immigrated in the 1800s through Ellis Island, they were allowed to enter the US easily and without much scrutiny. It is not that way anymore. To compare the immigrants today with our ancestors is just ignorant.

[Nay]

39. Up until 1914 or so, there was no such thing as illegal immigration

into the US because we literally had no laws keeping anyone out. The place needed more people to settle it, farm it, etc. This is not the case now.

So you have no point, really. It wasn't illegal up until early in the 1900's.

[flamin lib]

3. I'm really mixed on this one. Torn might be appropriate.

On one hand many of the illegals in my part of the world are in the construction industry and the commercial housekeeping industry. Roofers and such have seen a real decrease in pay as the illegals force wages down. Since most of the roofing is done on insurance claims I can assure you that your roof will be replaced whether the laborers get paid $8/hr or $3/hour and the Hilton will have clean sheets on the beds regardless of who changes them at what hourly rate.

On the other hand how in hell do you track the mass numbers of immigrants without some sort of mechanism, ie, guest worker status?

I am absolutely lost for a reasonable solution to this situation.

[acmejack]

16. Exactly, I am in your part of the Country.

My friends fathers were tradesmen. Carpenters, Painters, Masons. There are no Caucasians in the construction trades now, no one can compete at the prices people are willing to work for. I don't know where those people are, but I do know there has to be a huge underground economy, there are a bunch of people who aren't working, they apparently don't exist for governmental purposes.

[restante]

46. Exactly, I am in your part of the Country. - on construction

Licenses are required for electricians, plumbers, and many locations for general contractors. If you want trades people who are licensed and insured, you will have to pay for these perks. If your contract goes wonky, you have recourse but most any American will hire the lower paid worker and take a chance. The licensed guy makes the money, the immigrant carries the donkey work. I am not against cheaper construction work as I like the best price I can get for services that I need. Many years and two generations in the construction industry have taught me a thing or two. Immigrant labor has built most of America. Italians did the masonry, Germans were fine carpenters, etc. The immigrant, wherever they originate is not welcome when you are making speeches but when you are hiring for some work coming out of your pocket, the lower price is what you want. You cannot have it both ways. Many of those mouthy politicans and Mr. Lou Dobbs have immigrant labor washing their dishes. Don't scream illegal when this labor benefits you.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. I agree, but I also agree that immigration is depressing wages...

Thom Hartman was just talking about it this morning. Agrees with Buchanan that it's part of the problem. I missed most of it because I was at work. I watched my usual industry drop $2 per hour, and a few others (like construction) drop even more. What else is different?
Those jobs are now being filled now with a different demographic of the population.
Very poor illegal immigrants. :(

PS - I would never flame you. :hug:

[Dhalgren]

5. I think that illegal immigration is completely about poverty. This

is a good place to start. And please, it makes no difference what color the immigrant is, what language, culture, religion or anything else about the immigrant. These are poor people who have endure great hardships to make a better life for themselves and their families. When you consider that life on the lowest rungs of American society is viewed as "wealth" by these immigrants, you begin to understand where they come from...

[acmejack]

18. They mostly have been forced to this by agri-business!

Depressing their crop prices so they can no longer make a living farming. They are mostly poor farmers from Southern Mexico.

[Syncronaut Seven]

6. I am but an egg

But, the persuit of rational dialog is a good thing, I think.

My stepmother and grandmother were illegals once. Now that they're wealthy, they have forgotten what it was like and from where they came.

I'm American born, yet seem to feel a deeper empathy than most. Perhaps I hold humanity in a higher regard than I should.

:shrug:

[Orrex]

8. Some years ago

I was having lunch with a coworker (a good friend, at the time). Before returning to work, we stopped by a local store, where she bought a wicker basket or something similar.

My coworker completed the transaction, and we got in her car. On the way back to our building, she said of the cashier, "I really hate Indians. Sometime I think I hate them even more than blacks."

This was out of the clear blue, and I was stunned into horrified silence. The first part was bad enough, but the punchline killed me. After that, I just couldn't talk to her without recalling that racist filth, and she was so casual in saying it that I know it wasn't an embellishment. What can you say to something like that? Since she was driving, I offered a tepid response along the lines of "I suppose I've had a more positive exposure to different cultures," and subsequently our friendship withered pretty quickly.

Her argument was that "they" are taking all the jobs. Well, if a minimum wage cashier job is really the pinnacle of success in America, I can see her point.


Almost all arguments against immigration are based in racism. That's not to say that all people who are oppose illegal immigration are themselves racist, but the arguments used to justify that position can be reduced to "too many brown people are coming into our nation."

But I believe that you've hit it right on the head. No one comes to America to escape the overwhelming wealth and opportunity of their homeland. They immigrate because they are driven to it by desperation and the hope for a better life.

I don't hang out in this forum too often, but I'd be interested to read your information.

Just be sure to watch out for those Indians--they're stealing all the good jobs.

[acmejack]

24. You find it in the most unexpected places

at the most unexpected times. It is always like a body blow, it takes your breath away. It certainly reformulates one's opinion though, doesn't it?

[Orrex]

27. Yes indeed!

I almost felt bad about rethinking my opinion of her. Is she really a different person, now that I know this about her? Of course not, but her outburst reveals that my opinion was based on an incomplete impression of her, too.

Me, I'm too dumb to be racist. I can't keep track of all the epithets and slang needed to categorize one's hate. Heck, I never even heard of "macaca" before a week or so ago. I'm so out of the loop!

[John Q. Citizen]

9. Please post what you have. Whether people have legal status or not

people aren't "illegal."

[Ragin1]

20. Pulease.

You snd they, (illegals), can choose to ignore any law you like, but wishing something doesn't make it true.

[Cleita]

32. Unauthorized workers is the correct legal term.

Many of these immigrants of all races came in here legally on visitors visas and didn't leave when the visa expired. But they didn't enter illegally and if they worked then they are designated as unauthorized workers. The most famous of these immigrants is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who entered legally to do some body building contests. He didn't leave when his visa expired and supported himself working for a publisher of a body building magazine, both against the law. Some fancy immigration lawyers later he got his Green Card and now unfortunately is the mostly disliked Repuke governor of California.

[Warpy]

10. Hello,some of us have been putting the blame where it belongs

squarely on the shoulders of scumbag employers who hire illegals at under the prevailing wage, treat them like shit, threaten them with La Migra if they get uppity about being treated like shit, and know they'll never unionize.

That's the problem. If scumbag employers were targeted by the laws we have on the books right now, the trafficking in human beings from all over Central America would STOP.

As it is, people are DYING, crammed into vans and rental trucks, transported across the country with no heating, cooling, food, water, or toilet stops, just so scumbags can save a few bucks and get a docile labor force.

The problem has never been the illegals, themselves. The problem has been the organized crime of recruiting these people in Mexico and transporting them all over the country to work in near slavery once they've survived the border crossing.

Most folks outside the border states here in the southwest don't even know it is going on.

[Orrex]

14. You have said it exactly

Any attempt to put the blame on the immigrants themselves is an attempt to exonerate big corporations of any wrongdoing. It's basically the same as condemning the poor schlub who shops at Wal*Mart because he has no choice.

Those who are in power should work to hold corporations accountable instead of demonizing the most vulnerable individuals among us, immigrant or otherwise.

[patrice]

11. I have only just started thinking about this problem:

There is a need to avoid false dichotomies when it comes to Racism, while, at the same time, standing up for Human Rights against real Racists.

I'm just not sure how tolerant one should be toward Racism, but then on the other hand, not everyone who fights Immigration is, necessrily, a Racist.

Racists will use false dichotomies, two things that are assumed to be mutually exclusive (e.g. Immigrants employed in the U.S. vs. full employment for Americans) to inspire more Racism - but - others have legitimate concerns about Immigration. How do we respect one while controling the other?

I heard Jerry Springer (opting for Immigration) shut someone down on this issue recently. That's unusual for him.

Racism IS one of the scariest of human phenomena, but there ARE legitimate Immigration issues in this country. I don't have a clue how we are going to deal with this.

[Cleita]

21. I believe there are legitimate issues too, but they keep getting

clouded by the misinformation used by racists to obscure the issue. At the very bottom of this is the exploiters on both sides of the border and those being exploited, the immigrant workers and the American workers caught in the middle of this. However, in this forum I'm going to try to stick to the poverty issues that began this whole dilemma.

[patrice]

41. You are right to guide yourself and others by the most essential

issue: exploitation. This will help us to recognize who has what to contribute to the discourse, on both/all sides, i.e. how to differentiate a Racist from someone who has legitimate issues with Immigration Policy.

I will think of this to keep from being distracted by a lot of CRAP that is coming our way.

[Cleita]

13. Well, it seems that there is still some hostility, but

I will put up some studies as well as personal observations of my own over the years about the matter this weekend. I can't today. But maybe some facts will convince those of you who are in the "they are breaking the law camp" see things in a different light.

[Syncronaut Seven]

15. Is a man who steals a loaf of bread

to feed his family, a thief? (New Orleans not withstanding)

What about the man who creates the need to steal for sustinance.

Accountability starts at the top, even Lou Dobbs is waking up to this fact.

I'm taking the most pragmatic approach, I'm learning Spanish.

You want to be truly prepared? Better learn to speak Chinese. :evilgrin:

[Cleita]

19. I already speak passable Spanish, but Chinese is really hard.

It isn't the language so much as all the different sounds you have to make from one syllable, which all mean something different although they may spell "lu" or "wu" or any other of the syllables used.

[John Q. Citizen]

37. Yes, it's a tonal or pitched based language. We use pitch in English to

signify a question and not much else.

[acmejack]

22. Borders are arbitrary lines upon the Earth.

They really shouldn't separate us from each other. I fault no one for wanting the best possible life for his or her family. I fault the current greed driven winner take all system for these problems. Materialism and greed cause babies to starve. If Sudanese were white would they be dying now?

[murphymom]

23. From what I've read

immigrating to this country legally is not nearly as easy as some folks would lead you to believe. A couple of nights ago there was an immigration expert on the Lehrer news hour talking about how long it can take. She gave an example of a man trying to bring over a sister from the Philippines - by the time her case would come up and she would be allowed to enter it would probably be about 12 years or more. TWELVE YEARS! Makes you understand a little better why people come illegally.

Looking back at my own family history, my grandparents (now deceased) were immigrants from Europe in the early decades of the 20th century and it's humbling to realize that if they tried to come today under current policies, they probably wouldn't get in - they were ordinary working people with no wealth, no advanced degrees or special skills.

One of the things that scares me is the racist "logic" going around - brown people = immigrant = illegal immigrant = criminal, which is ridiculous. What a lot of people forget is there has been a hispanic subculture in the southwest for a very long time. They didn't move, the border did, back in 1848.

[Syncronaut Seven]

26. They didn't move, the border did, back in 1848.

Just had to repeat that! :)

[Cleita]

29. Yes, and a lot of people don't see the truth in this.

Also, there are illegal immigrants from all parts of the world not just from south of the border. The thing is that the illegals will gravitate to the neighborhoods that they fit in. So the hispanics will go to Mexican neighborhoods, the Chinese to chinatown and the white illegal immigrants to white neighborhoods to blend in.

Back after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I started noticing that I was hearing Russian being spoken every now and then in stores and on the street. Most of them were illegal as well I was to learn. Unfortunately, people will look at all those Mexicans working at jobs and assume that they are all illegals when it's not true.

In the first place, the official word to use for undocumented workers is unauthorized workers. They may be here legally on a visitor's visa, but not authorized to work so calling them illegal is not accurate. Also, when the law is broken, it's not just the worker who is breaking the law but the employer. The employer has a big loophole to get away with it too. I have posted it on my journal.

[RUZIK1]

25. Immigrants

We are all immigrants. In the 1890-1920, American capitalists went to Europe and made contracts with those immigrants giving them jobs in a specific place, a form of indentured servitude. Nowdays, since there is no growth of factories, American Capitalists get all the help they want from illegals without spending a nickle in expenses. Who is fooling who? Bush wants these people since it is a source of cheap labor for the Capitalist Class he belongs to. We ought to supporting these immigrants as they are a mirror image of our grandparents 100 years ago. Remember who own everything? 1% of the population!

[Ragin1]

28. Badabing

We have a winner. They are not here to immigrate, they are here to earn money.

Solving the illegal problem within a month.

Employers first offense of hiring an illegal-$1000 per offense.

Mulitiplied by 10 for every repeated offense.

[Cleita]

30. Yes, and the rich also depend on these people for domestic

help. I knew women who worked for $125 a month as nannies because they didn't know any better to demand better wages.

[proud2BlibKansan]

43. There is a contractor in my city

who hires day laborers for $1.00 an hour.

[Boojatta]

31. Your words, Law reform, and History

I believe that the illegal immigrants need our help, not our hate.

Do you intend to insinuate that the main motivation for law enforcement is hatred?

Could you ask a question about some general approaches or specific proposals for reform of immigration law?

The reason they are here illegally is because of grinding poverty.

If by "they" you mean "illegal immigrants who immigrate because of grinding poverty", then nobody can question your claim. However, if by "they" you mean all current illegal immigrants, then I would like to see some evidence. If by "they" you also want to include future illegal immigrants, then I would like to see some reasoning to justify the claim.

I wonder whether the US government propped up at least one dictator in South America and, if so, whether the US government automatically gave legal immigrant status to anyone who wanted to escape from such a dictatorship. Of course, now I'm talking about past illegal immigrants, not current or future ones. However, there are probably other examples one could consider and perhaps we can learn from history and apply some of the lessons to current events.

A tyrannical government might, with little hesitation about issues of law or ethics, push a designated enemy into financial trouble. I would say that, just as we wouldn't deliberately confuse a symptom and a cause of physical illness, we probably shouldn't say that in those situations a designated enemy went elsewhere (legally or illegally) because of poverty. What do you think?

[Cleita]

34. I wasn't talking about law enforcement I was talking about we

the people changing the laws to help these unfortunates. I have had a homeless guy living in his car parked across the road from me for a week now. He's never there during the day so I think he probably has a job and is a working homeless person. There are many here in this county who can't afford rent on the minimum wages they are earning.

Now should I report someone who is obviously down and out and not bothering anybody? He has broken the law, first by squatting on the private property of someone who lives in Los Angeles, two hundred miles from here so they don't know he's there. I was apprehensive at first because we are so far out in the boonies we don't really need to lock our doors and even if we do, it's easy enough to break in.

He hasn't done anything destructive or dishonest and he's trying to survive. I won't report him to the sheriffs for that reason, because until we the people really address the problem of homelessness, the system is broken and I guess I'm breaking the law too by not reporting him.

As for the rest of your post, if you don't get what grinding poverty is then no one is going to be able to point out what is under your nose until it happens to you.

[Boojatta]

36. I have no questions about the first part of your reply

but the following suggests that perhaps I made some obvious error that you don't wish to explain to me:

As for the rest of your post, if you don't get what grinding poverty is then no one is going to be able to point out what is under your nose until it happens to you.

Alternatively, perhaps you didn't read my message very carefully before replying to it. For example, I don't recall saying or implying that I didn't know what grinding poverty is. Did you notice that I underlined one word?

[Cleita]

38. True I didn't have time to read it very well as I have appointments

I have to go out on soon for the afternoon. I will try to give you a better reply tomorrow when I have time.

[acmejack]

35. Here are a few links to establish the poverty

The first is just from a politician's position paper but it is eyewitness narrative which I thought was gripping, the other two are more authoritative,

snip>
There are some 12 million illegal immigrants in this country who have come here, for the most part, to escape abject poverty or political oppression in countries throughout Mexico and Central America.

We went to Juarez, Mexico, to look at this poverty first-hand. There were a series of slums with 200,000 people living in tiny, makeshift shacks, no running water, no electricity. Many were hungry. Children were sick, some dying.

We interviewed Tiffin, Ohio’s Sr. Paulette Schroeder who went to Nicaragua on a “Witness for Peace” Tour. She said Contra forces had undertaken a campaign of terror there to undermine strides toward moving people out of poverty. In one village, she heard the story of a Contra attack. Shots were being fired, grenades exploding and a mother grabbed her eight-month-old child and ran. A bullet pierced her back and lodged in the leg of the baby. The mother survived, barely. The baby lost his leg.

This oppression, this poverty, plays out regularly throughout Latin America -- so some people come here.

http://www.voteforjoe.com/stands/position_papers/pos_immig.html

But NAFTA did not deliver. Mexico has grown too slowly to create enough jobs for its people, and the benefits of trade have largely gone to the wealthy, making it one of the most unequal societies in Latin America. Moreover, the agreement flooded Mexico with highly subsidized U.S. and Canadian grain, driving between 1 million and 2 million Mexican farmers off the land and adding to the supply of desperate Mexicans looking for work.

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm?id=2371

Immigration and the Re-creation of Rural Poverty

Rural poverty in California is being re-created through immigration. This poverty may be even more difficult to extirpate than the rural poverty of the past, because it is driven by the expansion of low-wage, immigrant-intensive agriculture. Frequently initiated by U.S. recruitment, the immigration of low-skilled farm workers is sustained by poverty in rural Mexico and then "managed" by family and village networks. This combination of "push," "pull," and "network" effects makes both immigration and the expansion of farm jobs on which immigrants depend self-perpetuating.

Low-skilled workers, primarily from Mexico, migrate into the nation's most prosperous farm economy. Rather than sharing in this prosperity, however, farm workers find low earning and unstable, seasonal employment, with few possibilities for mobility inside the rural sector. The economies and labor markets of rural communities are increasingly layered or segmented in a manner that pushes many of the costs of seasonal farm work onto recently arrived immigrants, the most flexible or absorptive people present. They crowd into rural colonias-incorporated towns resembling overgrown labor camps--whose population during the harvest season often surge to several times their size. California rural colonias now comprise 7 of the 20 U.S. cities in which the highest percentage of people moving in concentrated poverty are foreign-born. some permanent residents of these rural communities benefit by providing needed services such as food and housing to farm workers. However, low farm worker earnings severely limit the potential for economic growth within these communities. Lacking effective demand for their goods and services, business up and down the "Main Streets" of rural California close their doors.

Local policymakers and service providers are struggling to respond to the large and growing public service needs of an impoverished farm worker population. Viewed from one perspective, taxpayers indirectly subsidize the expansion of labor-intensive agriculture (see chapter 3). They provide public services to new immigrants who are drawn to California farms to work but receive poverty-level earnings for the labor. The public assistance needs of low-wage workers are not factored into farmers' decisions to plant labor-intensive crops.

http://www.urban.org/pubs/pap/summary.html

[FILAM23]

40. It does not matter where they are from,

if they entered the country illegally, overstayed their work visa,
their student visa, their tourist visa, or anyother type of visa then
they are in violation of the law and are there fore criminals and deserve
to be treated as such..The reason for their behavior, be it poverty, political
persecution, relegious persecution is NO excuse for breaking the law.

[proud2BlibKansan]

44. Yep let's just let em starve!

That's the American way :sarcasm:

[Cleita]

45. I'll bet the ante-bellum plantation owners in the south said the

same thing about their runaway slaves. There is no excuse for them breaking the law. Let's just chop half of one of their feet off to punish them.