Michael Maiello's picture

    Obama's Brilliant Immigration Move

    Actually, I don't mean brilliant politics here.  It may be.  But I really mean brilliant ethics.  There is no doubt in my mind that people who came to the United States as children, who were raised here and work here and who consider this their culture, not should be allowed to stay.

    This is a personal issue for me.  I know an 18 year old in this situation.  I will, naturally be vague about the details.  This person came to the United States at age 2 and graduated from a public high school here.  This person is as American as anyone I know, except by accident of birthplace.  This person has no emotional connection to Mexico and, if sent back there, would live culturally as a foreigner.

    Did this person's parents break U.S. immigration laws?  Yes.  Do I care?  Not really.  We don't hold children responsible for the decisions of their parents.  Also, I don't think that they should be deported either.

    Indeed, I'd go much farther than the president.  I would make the child a citizen rather than give them renewable work permits in perpetuity.  I would not the child eligible for deportation should they commit a crime.  I would extend to them all of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

    I understand that this is unfair to those who apply for residency in the U.S. through normal channels.  I understand that a line is being jumped.  But I do not think that the sanctity of that line is as important as the individual circumstances of this child.

    To me, blanket immigration amnesty merely admits that we've been living for years on the labor of these "illegal" fellow citizens and that we have to stop.  What about the unemployed people who were born here?  The truth is, it makes no difference.  The 12 million people living and working illegally in the United States are not going to be deported, en masse.  Not only can the government not figure out how to do that, the public would never stand for it.  There would be too many individual injustices for the public to face.

    Also, I don't see how removing 12 million productive people from the economy will do anything for America's unemployed.  This is not going to bring those lost construction jobs back.  This is not going to revitalize American manufacturing. We'd be better off keeping these people, putting them on the books, getting them market salaries, expanding our tax base and expanding the aggregate consumer demand that creates jobs in the first place.

    But, the line!  These people jumped the line!  It's true.  Sometimes that's how you get ahead in life.  I think that these people are very brave.  I've veered away from the core issue, though.  I don't see how anyone can disagree with Obama's decision regarding minors who accompanied their parents to America.  How can you tell those Americans to go back to a home they never knew?

    Topics: 

    Comments

    "How can you tell those Americans to go back to a home they never knew?"

     

    "We are takin' our country baaack!!!!"

     

    The short answer is, they don't give a fuck.  We're talking about brown kids here, and as far as the average white American is concerned, "nits make lice."


    This is such a large issue that has been all but ignored for years and now the web cannot talk about anything else except for economic Armageddon and food stamps and....

    I was reading about Alabama today. I mean that state not only got rid of the 'illegals' but their relatives also left their 'posts'.

    Now the tyrants claim that unemployment has gone from about 9.5% to 7.2%. So citizens have been applying for the jobs abandoned by the immigrants.

    But they are having problems keeping the new employees.

    The one wonderful stat listed was that tomato pickers make $16.00 for every filled crate. And then the article states that a good picker can only fill two or three crates. Well I am not great math wiz but $32.00 would translate to four bucks an hour. And there would be withholding?

    And the descriptions of the headless chickens being defeathered as they go down the assembly line by workers (with a real talent for this feat that I would never master) makes me ill. Think of the smells and the germs and the....all for five bucks an hour?

    Why do demons crawl out of my head every time I think about this? And plantations were destroyed 150 years ago.

    It is hard to even stay on subject when three separate devils are staring at me from the wall in front of my pc telling me I should grab THE LITTLE RED BOOK and begin calling for a.....see? I almost forgot about the Patriot Act!

    But Alabama's 'experiment' is making employers mad!

    http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/14/8760288-immigrant-worke...

    Thats an old link but who cares?

    Then I ran across this from Arizona:

    On the same day that President Obama announced a policy that will make it easier for young undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office arrested a 6-year-old girl suspected of coming to America illegally.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/17/joe-arpaios-arrests-six-year-old_n_1603883.html

    Now there are six spectors hissing at me from the walls and the ceiling.

    I mean do you think Arpaio read the little girl her rights? And what language was used?

    I do know that the President has managed to throw out more than a million folks without proper papers--something w bush never did. And how many innocents were there who simply misplaced their papers?

    See, How in the hell can anyone stay on subject with regard to immigration?

    Anyway, thanks for the post!

     


    I agree with this 100%. I have an example of my own, quite similar to yours, but that person is from SE Asia.

    I can't go into the story, but they deserve to be here as a full citizen and if I could do something to rectify the situation, I would.


    What do think TMC

    We send a ship to SE Asia  requesting 12 million to come to America.

    Maybe we go to France or England, or Bangladesh;  12 million from each country, so as to appear as not favoring Hispanics.

    We could increase our American population by a Billion more citizens by the end of the year. Maybe another 2 or 3  billion the following year. 

    and  according to the article, they would be consumers, paying taxes  and we'd all become rich. 


    WWJD?!?


    I can tell you; he wouldn't have illegally snuck across the US border. 

    He probably would have done, as did his earlier ancestors. when asking for land and Pharoah approved.


    WWJD about the children already here was what I meant.  Would he deport them? Have them live in fear of being deported?  Hold them hostage to the 'sins of their fathers?  


    And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?

    Why do you drag Jesus into this?

    When he told us to always be lawful, so as to avoid these types of trials. 

    Yes, children do suffer because of their fathers and you want to blame Jesus?


    If we as Christians are always to be lawful, was Martin Luther King encouraging Un-Christian acts?

    Are we not our brother's keeper? Are the Catholic priests who argue for caring for the immigrants in error?


    All these people, are they your sisters and brothers?  

    Then you won't mind if they stay at your place, will ya?  


    Short answer is...under God's watchful eye...yes.

    If the Gospels were being written today, I believe Jesus would be shown breaking bread with illegal immigrants.

    The least among us.

    It's hard to imagine him kicking them out or shunning them.


    Just a guess, but you are not really aware of what Jesus would do?

    I suspect he would have gone to them in Mexico, just as he went to the woman at the well in Samaria. 

    The illegals didn't come here to find him either, for he was in Mexico. They were in search of material riches.


    Just a guess, but aren't aware of what Jesus would do either.


    Finally you confess?


    This is just getting offensives.  Just because some of the immigrants we're talking about are Mexican, we shouldn't assume that they are all named Jesus.


    Levon called his child Jesus, he blew up balloons all day!


     A good song 

     


    Typical dodge, reduce to the absurd. They are not hiding in the bushes waiting to come live in our house.

    The battle about foreigners has heated up because of unemployment. If people felt secure in employment, the stress about the foreigners would be lower.

    Tackling the jobs issue is difficult. Tackling education is difficult. Attacking foreigners is easy. The black unemployment rate has been double that of whites for decades. NOW we are worried that foreigners are competing for low skill jobs with African-Americans. Unions are getting creamed by politicians, but less focus on the foreigners.

    Attention gets diverted from the main issue. Gay marriage will destroy traditional marriage. We lose sight of the already high divorce rate between men and women.

    Are we fighting the right battle. Aren't stagnant wages a bigger problem? Aren't loss of employment opportunities a bigger problem?

    Corporations will argue that paying low skill workers a higher minimum wage is a detriment because it causes a ripple effect. Higher wages will have to be paid to all other employees if those on the bottom make more.

    Chasing out those foreigners means that your born in America workers will have to choose those back breaking low wage jobs.


    Typical blindness or stupidity?

    When confronted with truth, people bring up other things, but illegal immigration 

    They are not hiding in the bushes waiting to come live in our house.

    So correct; they are brazen enough, to be out working amongst us, with stolen ID's 

    Oh they're such law abiding citizens? 

    Is having a false ID; sufficient grounds to invoke Napalitanos criminal activity hurdle? 


    No.  Millions of Americans under the age of 21 have false IDs too.  It's hard to think of something that's less a big deal.


    It's hard to think of something that's less a big deal

    Become a victim of identity theft and come back and tell us; it's no big deal.

    Become a victim injured severely, in auto accident and given a fake Id and finding the illegal has fled across the border and had no insurance; then come back and tell us it's no big deal. 


    Oh, come on.  You've really moved into ridiculous territory.  All cool high school kids have fake IDs (purposeful exaggeration alert!).  How do you get worked up about that?


    I'm going to refer you to the comments of a Catholic theologians views on the morality of immigration. It seems Catholic clergy have spent some time considering the issue.

    This from Ronald L Conte who wrote the Catechism of Catholic Ethics.

    Tell me what you think.


    I'm not much into giving the antichrist a place. 

    Maybe if the Catholic Church would sell off their golden images, the poor in Mexico would find relief?

    Maybe if the Catholic priests had behaved themselves; the money that went to the victims of pedophilia, would have gone to solve poverty.  


    Catholic Church = anti-Christ?

    Do you mean this seriously?

    Not in the gadfly sense of serious, but in the serious sense of serious?


    I really don't think we want to know the answer.


    The golden (calf(?)) image reference is the "tell"...

    Even Richard Land of the Southern Baptists thinks that there is a Christian responsibility to care for immigrants and quotes the Bible


    Wasn't it the Southern Baptists that promoted slavery? 


    Your penchant for constructing inflammatory straw men is amazing. In the words of Bryce Harper; "That's a clown question bro'."


    Yeah right. Equating a question about beer with the historical link between Southern Baptists & slavery.

    We're all Clownesians now.


    Yes it is a clown question, it's wildly off-topic. And it certainly had nothing to do with the exchange between rmrd and Resistance. Please, rmrd mentions Richard Land's support of the President's immigration policy, Resistance says the same Baptists that supported slavery? Umm actually, no, they are all dead.  That is the very definition of a clown question.


    To be honest this is another present day Civil Rights issue. The US wanted cheap labor. They were willing to get it from Latin America. If India had been next door, they would have gotten low skill labor from India. In today's economy, the US is shipping jobs to India for cheap higher skilled labor.

    While we worry about Latin American illegals, corporations are shipping traditionally higher paying jobs overseas. 

    So far Catholics have been trashed as the anti-Christ and Southern Baptists who will elect their first Black President tomorrow are being trashed as slave-holders. If you're going to criticize Land just go to his recent foot in mouth disease episode referring to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as "race-pimps"? That's why I said "even" when using Land's acknowledgment of a Biblical basis for caring for "the least of us." including immigrant's

    If you fall to the right of someone like Land on immigration..............Wow.

     


    To be honest,

    I'll choose not to link to anything you provide. 

    You're a person full of deception, who delights in mocking and ridicule. 

    You associated Land with the Southern Baptists , I saw no need to read anything written by him.  

    Your use of the Catholic clergy and this Land fellow as biblical authorities, tells me all I need to know about you and those who agree with you ..... "The blind leading the blind"


    Well, what the Bible says about immigration, for or against, is wildly off-topic - all those people are dead too, and lived in drastically different times.

    So our leaders sitting on opposite sides of the aisle trying to find suitable quotes from 2000-4000 year dead people to battle each other with? Clownish. (ok, agree that the slavery thing is largely irrelevant, except that the same jokers were able to find justification for that in the Bible as well. Anything can be proven through scripture. If it supports our position, it's "serious". If it supports theirs it's "clownish").

    But then again, in other threads, just being from the south, much less a Southern Baptist, makes one a knuckle-dragging racist asshat. Suddenly we're kissy-kissy huggy-huggy with one who says something we like?


    the same jokers were able to find justification for that in the Bible as well.

    Exactly my point; I don't care to have them as my teacher. 

    But the clowns like it, when their ears are tickled. 


    tmac, perfect response to the nonsense. appreciate.


    All bold type? Is this a sign of oxygen depravation?

    What color are your lips? 


    I never blame Jesus, only man's continued efforts to skew the real message and truth of Christianity.  We are to love thy neighbors (without attention to man made borders).    



    We are to love thy neighbors (without attention to man made borders). 

    So saith Aunt Sam. 

    If your neighbor asks for drink, you should give him a drink; you are not obligated to give him the cow. 


    Nor have a cow if he needs a drink or shelter from the storm. Yes?


    The only ones having a cow are those who fear the laws will now be enforced. 

    "Seek shelter all you, that have violated the law, there will be no refuge here." "You built your home on shifting sands and the tide is coming in"

    If you are legal you built your homes on Rock.


    Why do you drag Jesus into this?

    ​ROTFLMAO


    I doubt it. 


    No, really. That's great stuff. The guy with a biblical quote for every occasion, no less.


    I believe the Bible has more wisdom in a few verses, than listening to fools and their idiot wisdom.

    as for laughing it off,  never.......theres to much there.


    Nothing like throwing the moral burden, on the rest of us citizens?

    Of course humanity feels for these kids; more so than the parents that endangered their children's lives in the first place, when they stealthily crossed the inhospitable deserts, in deadly heat.

    Charge the parents with reckless endangerment. 

    Now the supporters of amnesty, want to shift the responsibility onto those who have opposed ILLEGAL immigration from the start;  knowing full well, this day would come. 

    We were LIED to;  when Reagan gave the first Amnesty, and those with a conscience were promised enforcement,  when we compromised for humanitarian reasons back then.  

    How did the moral issue of how to deal with this problem back in Reagan’s day, be so flagrantly ignored so now we have another humanitarian dilemma? 

    Those in support of Open borders and their outright opposition to enforcement, saying in effect

    “It’s not our problem; we made it your problem.  We don't want enforcement, we want open borders.  "You deal with the problems of Open borders, not us.  

    Solution

    I have suggested helping to build an American enclave in the region around Rocky point.  

    An Americanized region, set up just for this very purpose, in response to the moral dilemma thrown upon those, who said all along,  SECURE THE BORDER; ….we don’t want another Amnesty solution which serves the Open Border agenda, we want the enforcement solution, we were promised .

    Secure the border and we wouldn’t need amnesty.  Except;  the Open Border  crowd doesn’t want enforcement.  

    If the government had done its job, we wouldn't have had to give amnesty.   

    Amnesty will never end; it’s the fall back tool for  advocates for Open Borders.

    Unrestrained and illegal immigration, is not the “Open Border” crowds problem, it’s your problem; the more heart wrenching the better.


    "Of course humanity feels for these kids; more so than the parents that endangered their children's lives in the first place, when they stealthily crossed the inhospitable deserts, in deadly heat."

    I did a fair amount of reporting about illegal immigration while I was at Forbes, producing stories both about policy and about illegal Wal-Mart workers who were subject to, at best, questionable treatment.  While, no doubt, some people cross the border in the way you describe, with the assistance of a coyote, there is another way -- you come in on a visitor's visa, which is not so hard to get, and then you never leave.  So you can boil all this down to people crossing the dangerous desert.  A lot of people come in legally on busses, trains and planes.  They just don't leave.

    Charge the parents with reckless endangerment.

    I tell you, the young American I described, would not be better of if the parents were hauled off in handcuffs.  The parents are great people, by the way.  I doubt you could look them in the face and say that so glibly.

    Now the supporters of amnesty, want to shift the responsibility onto those who have opposed ILLEGAL immigration from the start;  knowing full well, this day would come.

    Guilty.  I'm an open borders type, ultimately.  And, you know what?  If you're not a Cherokee or Sioux or Navajo of Apache or Hopi or one of the other original tribes... What the heck?  Now, all of the sudden we declare it's all luck of the draw and you stay where you were born?  How does that make any sense?

    Honestly, the one thing America still has going for it is that people want to come live here.  We should be taking advantage of that.  We should be more welcoming.  But the legal mechanisms for immigration are not keeping up with demand.

    You want the border secured?  It's as secure as it can be, with reasonable expense.  People don't want a fence.  They don't want a constant military presence.  And, like I said before, this won't even solve the problem.  Unless you want to put visitors on an electronic leash that will alert the authorities to people who overstay their visitor visas.  Maybe you do want to do that, I don't know.

    But tell me, Resistance, what you want done to my friends who came here illegally and raised a child as an American.  Tell me why I would be happier if they'd remained in Mexico and I'd never met them.  I'm curious.


     Guilty.  I'm an open borders type.

    I had no doubt; your opinions were biased that way.  

    Let me remind you 

     "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. (1)

    (2) All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party,

    (3) often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests."

    http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

    Destor, we can’t all pick and choose, which laws we will obey. 

    The laws of immigration were before the councils and were enacted; and  "till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all"

    Because you and a handful disagree with the law; you would (3)obstruct, enfeeble, counteract.   

    You want the border secured?  It's as secure as it can be, with reasonable expense.

    Destor, remove the blinders and drop the Open Border advocates, talking points.

    Only the Open Border advocates declare, we've spent reasonably; in reality they wouldn't have spent any moneys.

    The Open Borders crowd to say it’s reasonable is another attempt, to prevent further spending. 

    The Open Borders crowd wants to enfeeble enforcement by cutting off further funding.     

    We spend more defending other people’s borders than our own. 

    Evidently we didn't spend enough to prevent the invasion. 

    Tell me why I would be happier if they'd remained in Mexico and I'd never met them.

    Good grief Destor; your life would be unhappy, because you didn't know, what you were missing? 

    As for the ones that have overstayed; 

    the day of reckoning is upon them. How long did they think they could flout the will of the elected AUTHORITY (councils), that serve for the benefit of the whole America.

    It is a sad day; because our government failed to prevent this moral dilemma.

    It failed because the Open borders crowd enfeebled it.


    shorter Resistance: "We stole the southwest fair and square and we will kill any motherfucker who tries to come and take it back from us even though we stole it from his great great great grandparents in the first place.


    Get with the program Jolly

    America bought the land from Mexico

    In fact they sold land that really didn’t belong to them. Mexicans didn’t own the Southwest.

    "Late one afternoon when returning from town we were met by a few women and children who told us that Mexican troops from some other town had attacked our camp, killed all the warriors of the guard, captured all our ponies, secured our arms, destroyed our supplies, and killed many of our women and children. Quickly we separated, concealing ourselves as best we could until nightfall, when we assembled at our appointed place of rendezvous—a thicket by the river. Silently we stole in one by one: sentinels were placed, and, when all were counted, I found that my aged mother, my young wife, and my three small children were among the slain. There were no lights in camp, so without being noticed I silently turned away and stood by the river. How long I stood there I do not know, but when I saw the warriors arranging for a council I took my place. …….         ” I have killed many Mexicans; I do not know how many, for frequently I did not count them. Some of them were not worth counting. It has been a long time since then, but still I have no love for the Mexicans.

    With me they were always treacherous and malicious."

    Geronimo

    First they sell you a bogus bill of goods, then they steal it back


    Oh please.. that's like a guy with a gun on you buying your phone for a dollar, plus, he says. "don't worry, as part. of the deal. we'll share the phone but when you try to enforce that part, he has you locked up. You are a actually claiming. fair and square, what a hoot!

    The hoot is, you link to a mental patient that says the power grabbing Pope granted the land. 


    Unaccustomed as I am to having religious nuts for heroes, I make an exception for Tijerina. He's still alive btw, and needs a movie of his life made.

    Joe Kidd... The film is about an ex-bounty hunter hired by a wealthy landowner named Frank Harlan to track down Mexican revolutionary leader Luis Chama, who is fighting for land reform. It forms part of the Revisionist Western genre.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Kidd


    History is full of conquest.

    There are winners and losers, nothing to do with fair and square.

    Maybe the Mayans or the Incas threw a hex on the Spaniards?


    Fine, the logic of conquest. we were in Vera Cruz. If we hadn't been creeped out by mestizos, we'd have taken the whole damn country, they would already be citizens -end of problem.


    If Mexico becomes a failed state, because off the Narco wars 

    Baja beaches, here we come. A new settlement for the 12 million illegals, just like we did Oklahoma.


    We didn't want more slave states - would have thrown off our north-south compromise. Otherwise we would have.


    Mexico had already abolished slavery, causing Tejas to secede so they could continue the abomination. Calhoun (no foe of slavery) specifically referenced "10,000,000 brown voters" as a disincentive to annex the populated part of Mexico, and they have been voting with their feet to undo Guadalupe Hidalgo ever since.

    Some quick Googling supports your "disincentive" as a big chunk of reluctance, whereas racist northerners had 2 reasons to resist: more dark-skinned people voting and more slave power to the south. The territories we took were sparsely populated enough to make little difference, & California came in free.


    It's more like thieves arguing over the silverware. We stole the midwest from France (when we were still Britain), we stole the colonies from England, the less defended Mexican territories & Texas from Mexico at gunpoint.

    Mexico stole itself from Spain (who'd stolen it from native Americans), similar to how Bolivar went around South America leading revolts. But just because Mexico got independence doesn't mean it was sustainable in that form. We don't proclaim against Guatemala rising up against Mexico after that independence, or how that new territory then split apart into 7 or 8 countries in the mid-1800's. None of Spain's 4 Vice-royalties in the Americas was sustainable as a contiguous country post-independence. I don't think we have to do much hand-wringing over that; the bloodiness on the other hand....

    Actually it's interesting to compare the breakup of the Ottoman Empire with the breakup of the Spanish-American Empire - 2 powers that couldn't maintain their territories. The Balkans never have quieted down.


    Thanks for the research. I find it interesting. 


    I don't think we have to do much hand-wringing over that; the bloodiness on the other hand....

    Please tell me more. 


    Try "Blood Meridian", one of the greatest anti-war nostalgia books I've read.


    I googled it.

    I am fearful that some of the violence may be too much for the heart.

    I hate violence, I hate violent movies or entertainment.


    This is less entertainment than Lessons In Evil. Though it reads like Faulkner. Have a look - a taste is enough.


    The man could sure write. So descriptive you can imagine yourselve there. 

    Grapeshot rain, electric kite in the sky.  

    Thanks Peracles. 


    You're ranting about yesterday's problem, due in great part to fact that the government HAS been doing enforcement:

    Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less
    by Jeffrey Passel, D’Vera Cohn and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Pew Hispanic Center, May 1, 2012

    excerpts

    The sharp downward trend in net migration from Mexico began about five years ago and has led to the first significant decrease in at least two decades in the unauthorized Mexican population. As of 2011, some 6.1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants were living in the U.S., down from a peak of nearly 7 million in 2007, according to Pew Hispanic Center estimates based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Over the same period, the population of authorized immigrants from Mexico rose modestly, from 5.6 million in 2007 to 5.8 million in 2011.

    deportations of unauthorized Mexican immigrants–some of them picked up at work sites or after being arrested for other criminal violations–have risen to record levels. In 2010, 282,000 unauthorized Mexican immigrants were repatriated by U.S. authorities, via deportation or the expedited removal process.

    During the five-year period from 2005 to 2010, a total of 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States, down by more than half from the 3 million who had done so in the five-year period of 1995 to 2000. Meantime, the number of Mexicans and their children who moved from the U.S. to Mexico between 2005 and 2010 rose to 1.4 million, roughly double the number who had done so in the five-year period a decade before. While it is not possible to say so with certainty, the trend lines within this latest five-year period suggest that return flow to Mexico probably exceeded the inflow from Mexico during the past year or two. Of the 1.4 million people who migrated from the U.S. to Mexico since 2005, including about 300,000 U.S.-born children, most did so voluntarily, but a significant minority were deported and remained in Mexico.


    I'd also like to point out this excerpt for those who have made the "Mexicans have a lot of children" point in past related threads:

    In Mexico, among the wide array of trends with potential impact on the decision to emigrate, the most significant demographic change is falling fertility: As of 2009, a typical Mexican woman was projected to have an average 2.4 children in her lifetime, compared with 7.3 for her 1960 counterpart.


    I've said this over and over again.

    The Mexican-American fertility rate is still well over 3.

    The Mexican fertility rate is probably 2.1 by now.

    The more educated have stayed in Mexico and pursued the path to prosperity - including lowered reproduction - that has happened in most of the developed world. 

    The latest growth in US Mexican & total Hispanic population has occurred through high birthrate, not through immigration. (the latter was decreased post-9/11, later during the economic meltdown, and through Obama's escalated deportations)

     


    Sounds like the more prosperous have stayed in Mexico.


    I was thinking of an analogy yesterday.

    Let's say my grandpa used to own a country club. But he lost it due to back taxes, sold it off for some reason.... But I'm still attached to that club, used to go there every day. So I crawl the wall one day, find someone who lets me work the club, washing dishes or waiting tables, not like an owner as before. But it's okay, so I get a few friends over the wall as well, and they work.

    Eventually the club finds out, and decides I should be thrown out, no hard feelings, but there are members' kids looking for work, there are employment regulations. But this club was once mine! I exclaim. I'm productive! I'm not hurting anyone!

    (If only my dad had snuck me into Stanford, that American "well, we can't punish the child for the parents' sins" attitude would have made me wealthy - I could have founded Facebook!)

    Of course that "productive" has measures - some people are productive to a measure of $500K/year in terms of sales, design output, management skill, etc. Some people are productive to the tune of $20K. Most illegal immigrants are near the poverty line. Many work hard. But in the economic definition of the term, they are not very "productive". That of course partly depends on the shadow economy where they have to work. And part depends on their lack of training, skills, education.

    And then there's the basic of the "get your kids to America" sprint. Of course many people want the best opportunity for their kids. Iran & Congo & Indonesia don't have an adjacent wall to climb. So millions of illegals make the gamble of getting their kids across the line, which we now embrace as a home-free strategy. 

    I'd say this will encourage more waves, though one big change has happened. Mexicans now have fewer kids than Mexican-Americans. There is less poverty, less desperation, less need to come to the US. In some ways NAFTA is working by balancing standards of living, in some ways Mexico is entering the behavior of the successful industrialized/service-oriented world.

    So we've got half the poorest of the poor here. "very brave" - like when I snuck into the Dead concert, right? just climb a fence, I'm in. Ok, they paid someone to get them across and lived underground. For a financial advantage. "get them market salaries" - oh right, among American blacks is up to 13.6%, and here we're proposing acting like headhunters for our illegal population?

    I may sound cynical and wingnut, but I wish someone with liberal ideas would discuss this issue in terms where it didn't sound like we owed them anything. The key to the EU may not be in austerity towards Greece, but the Greeks were tax-evading, double book-keeping jerks on the way in. It may be the way to dealing with illegal immigration here is not deportation, but treating the 12 million illegals as heroes and victims of human rights abuse because we didn't welcome them with stock options gets weary.

     


    "Welcome them with stock options?"  Hardly what I'm saying.  But we definitely could have welcomed them as citizens and we'd have been better off for it.  Heck, the country faces a huge demographic problem.  Importing young workers who want to be here would solve that.

    Also, I don't think of America as some sort of private club that we collectively own.


    Okay, not stock options - a career counselor to find them work? Why would we be better off for welcoming them as citizens? No explanation. And I've talked enough about how a more diverse population than Mexican one fits the melting pot ideal that we used to idealize.

    Yes, I think of America as a private club that we collectively own. We accept new members, but we should be selective, whatever that means in practice. What I don't accept is being unselective and simply opening doors to whoever's closest.


    Is the real problem the lack of jobs.? If employment were good, would we be as focused on illegal aliens? Carly Fiorina, the former head of IBM, said that there was no such thing as an "American job". We have come to realize that corporations exist to create profit, not to create jobs. In fact for a modern corporation job creation is the least profitable option.

    Multinationals solve the need for workers as undesirable as the profit loss from  those jobs might be by hiring cheap labor overseas. Government considers employee layoffs and ending weekend postal delivery. A NOLA newspaper lays off workers and limits delivery.

    Should the focus be on how we create jobs and not on illegal aliens? If jobs decrease, illegal aliens decrease.

    Our biggest task is providing potential workers with good educations and creating jobs here in the US that pay a live able wage.

    Right now our educational test scores suffer and our dropout rates are high. Is arguing that US citizens should be competing for low wage jobs with illegal aliens our biggest priority?

    Is it job creation and education first and second (or second and first) or is it the foreigners?


    people willing to walk two thousand miles, leaving all that is familiar behind, in the hope of a better life, are people you want in your country. Geography is destiny, fuck the line. This is only a problem in the first place because of that racist scumbag Calhoun.


     people you want in your country.

    Yo gringo, we love your country. We only seek a better life for our families. 


    Our country? check out the place. names, vato

    The peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States[2][3] to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico City, that ended the Mexican–American War (1846–48) on 2 February 1848. With the defeat of its army and the fall of the capital, Mexico surrendered to the United States and entered into negotiations to end the war.

    Trist and General Scott, after two previous unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a treaty with General José Joaquín de Herrera, determined that the only way to deal with Mexico was as a conquered enemy.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo

    Years later 

    VillaUncleSamBerrymanCartoon.png

    The Pancho Villa Expedition—…….was a military operation conducted by the United States Army against the paramilitary forces of Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa from 1916 to 1917 during the Mexican Revolution.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa_Expedition.

    It's a never ending story.


    You know, the then-Prince of Saudi Arabia wrote a letter to the UN I believe around the time of the founding of Israel, touching on your point.

    He said that if everyone in the world were to go back to the place he came from and thus the place where he belonged, we would see the most amazing game of "global musical chairs" as the cartographers kept drawing and redrawing and redrawing yet again the map as we all marched backwards along the timeline of world history.

    Could be fun, actually. Everyone would become a "wandering Jew." There are worse things to be.

    Wander where I'd end up? First stop would be Brooklyn, New York, and then Hungary and Roumania. From there, who knows?

    Would we end up having less attachment to place (or tribe) because of our peripatetic histories...or would we have even more attachment when we finally hit upon the one place where we knew we really and truly belonged?


    This is a response to the thread dealing with clown statements. The Southern Baptists have many things that require answers. The church group separated from mainline Baptists over the issue of Slavery around 1845. The supported Jim Crow. They issued a statement of apology in 1995. While some small black congregations have joined, a larger group of black Baptists in the South belong to a different group, The National Black Baptists.

    The Southern Baptists will elect a black President at their convention today. Richard Land has done enough today to embarrass himself on issues of race,. I mentioned his recent statement calling Sharpton and Jackson race pimps for being active in the Trayvon Martin case. We don't have to go back to Slavery to criticize the southern Baptists, we can stay in 2012, But, even Richard Land finds Biblical reasons to address the needs of the immigrants. In this, he differs from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council who interprets the Bible as suggesting that those who work hard are rewarded with wealth. Poverty, in essence, is the plight of the lazy.

    That even Land finds Biblical basis for immigration reform is amazing.

    For all of the faults of the Catholic hierarchy, they have been vocal about immigration justice and very critical of the Ryan budget's impact on the poor.

    I agree with tmac's  POV on this issue. we're cool. Just like you find compliments to hand out to people who agree with you. Human nature.

    You might take a look at what some are saying about Catholics.

    Southern Baptists have a heavy moral burden. The past burden is history. What Land is saying okay impacts the living. On the single issue of immigration, he seems to have a somewhat more modern view.

    I won't be joining his congregation anytime soon. The new black Southern Baptist President has the same view as Louis Farrakhan on Gay marriage, for example. Both find the ritual counter to their religious belief.


    And the Times gives us the story of American kids adjusting to life in Mexico, away from the homes they've always known.

    More heartstrings, or something that demands a policy response, such as the president has provided?


    Reading Jeffrey Isidoro's story, what popped into my mind was 6-year-old Barry Obama going from public kindergarten in Honolulu to an Indonesian-language Catholic elementary school in Jakarta. Just sayin', you decide if it means anything one way or another...


    Thanks all. I'll go a-looking. Appreciate your taking the time.


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