superbadgirl | (no subject)

I'm against illegal immigration, because I know too many legal immigrants and have to consider how they'd feel when people sail past them and get rewarded for breaking the rules.

That said, I'm always open to reconsidering out immigration policies if there is any chance people who really deserve to come here are being kept from doing so legally. The legal immigrants I talk to here in L.A. assure me our policies are fair - they're from Latin America, Iran, Iraq, Canada, England... seems like a fair sampling for anecdotal data to me.

That said, I'm always open to reconsidering out immigration policies if there is any chance people who really deserve to come here are being kept from doing so legally. The legal immigrants I talk to here in L.A. assure me our policies are fair - they're from Latin America, Iran, Iraq, Canada, England... seems like a fair sampling for anecdotal data to me.

The reform bill itself doesn't sound unreasonable to me. I dunno. I tried some years ago to move on up to Canada (Pre-Dubya, in fact. That's how un-American I already was before he got elected) and was denied. Did it make me upset? Sure, but I realize they can't just let everyone who wants in, in. It's not practical or possible.

And if I had gone ahead and sought a better life (which I still believe I'd have in Canada) illegally and was caught? I'd expect to be shipped off home. Because I broke the rules. I've been told about how people come here to escape terrible oppression and suffering, which I also get. I just think proper channels should be used, and if they're not and people are caught? Then the decision to come illegally has to be faced.

I know. I sound terribly conservative about the whole issue. I just get this sense, also, that people are distracted by this and are placing other big items on the back burner. Convenient.

Ever the conspiracy theorist,

sbg

I guess I'm unclear about this particular issue- but as illegal immigrants, do they get support without *paying for it* through taxes? Oh, sure, if they buy goods they have to pay the sales tax (which is one reason I'm starting to wonder if that's why the CA sales tax is so friggin high) but what about the taxes that support the school system their children use? What about the hosptial system they use and burden?

I have a friend from Korea who's been jumping through INS hoops to get a greencard, and she married an American! So why should I feel all that sympathetic to people who feel the hoops don't apply to them? They have their OWN American dream; it doesn't belong HERE. They should try bettering their own countries first, hard as it is. Bah. It's a simple/complex issue. They come here because this is where the money is. Hey, it's what I did in Korea - but I ALSO was there legally.

Yeah, I really don't like the idea of under-the-fence illegals trying to bypass the system that's been set-up and then start crying when the country that is hosting them starts to question their right to be there.

That's how I feel. Also, I think maybe we need a sales-tax only system, so that no one can escape income tax (which is all too easy for both the rich and the poor).

If you want US services, you pay US taxes. This is not conservative. This is just logical. I already have to pay for wars I don't support, a school system that's so bad I'm not sure it's better than nothing, etc.

I can't believe they're worried about illegals having health care when so many of the people who are legally here don't have it. I don't think some of these arguments are what they seem. Like SBG said, it's a smokescreen for something else. Or it's just the US trying to bring in a valuable consumer market that our businesses can't wait to sell crap to. Or it's the US trying to bring in a new, lower class of wage slaves to further drive salaries down while the cost of living continues to skyrocket.

Wow, you know I was starting to feel bad and thought I was the only one who felt this way about immigration. I've always felt that ill.

It makes sense to me. Legal immigrants I am all for. They worked hard to get here. I'm not saying illegals don't work hard, but it's not fair on the people that have been dealing with the INS for years.

I think people just want freebies.

You should see some of the looks today when I stated I wasn't interested in participating in the march. You'd think I'd just grown a second head.

That's just it.

While I appreciate and sympathize with the fact that some of these immigrants are thrilled to be getting US minimum wage, and I'm glad for them to get a better life, the thing is, I'd like their grandkids to be able to get a bit more than minimum wage, and that just isn't going to happen unless we get our economy under control. Immigration is far from the only area where we need to face some hard economic realities, but it is an important one, because it can have more far-reaching effects that just the costs we're incurring right now.

My Guy put forth the theory that the politicians want an group that they can use for votes - as you said, an underclass.

Thing is, once you make an underclass like this legal, then once they're legal, they won't want to work the shoddy jobs anymore, and won't want their children working the shoddy jobs either - and then more people will have to be "imported" to take their place, and then where does it end?

That's what I'm thinking, too - that it just never ends, because you always need an even lower class, if this is your approach.

And as I said in a response to Moonshayde, I *want* the children of immigrants to do better than their parents. Hell, I wanted that for my generation of natural-born Americans, but it ain't happening. The whole country's standard of living is backsliding. And while I appreciate that immigrants still want to come, because it's better than the standard of living some of their native countries offer, I don't think the longterm economic hit can be ignored.

So let them come here legally, or not at all.

And WTF are Bush and Fox doing, working on how to bring Mexicans to the US rather than trying to fix Mexico? Why doesn't Fox seem to want to fix Mexico, which was not a bad place to live until the 90's when that criminal president of theirs basically embezzled the cash value of the whole nation and made the peso so worthless that people's retirement savings fell by many thousands overnight, leaving them little choice but to do something drastic.

And as I said in a response to Moonshayde, I *want* the children of immigrants to do better than their parents. Hell, I wanted that for my generation of natural-born Americans, but it ain't happening. The whole country's standard of living is backsliding. And while I appreciate that immigrants still want to come, because it's better than the standard of living some of their native countries offer, I don't think the longterm economic hit can be ignored.

If we let people in unchecked to do these undesirable jobs (Americans area actually quite entitled themselves - no one wants to stoop to do these jobs. How many of you know unemployed people who refuse to work at McDonald's as a stop-gap until they get a 'real' job?) and generation after generation gradually moves up and opens those jobs to even more people coming in for minimum wage, our economy just isn't going to be able to support anyone. I'm not convinced it's supporting us NOW. Now is the time for reform.

Sure we're the home of the free and brave (ha), but we'll eventually be the home of the destitute. I might exaggerate, but I dunno.

How many of you know unemployed people who refuse to work at McDonald's as a stop-gap until they get a 'real' job?

I'm afraid I do know people who refuse this, because it would bring them down psychologically. When I was at my most unemployable, I took the shittiest retail job I've ever had, working for a psychotic woman-hater I can just about promise you had what my father had. He was fucking nuts, and he terrorized every woman there but me. Even though he didn't mess with me, it was still such a nightmare, and it just about destroyed me psychologically, because I tried to help the women who were being harrassed, and I guess they liked being victims because they sure turned on me as soon as I took him down a peg for them.

That's where my sympathy for other members of the human race pretty much died.

Maybe I shouldn't have taken that job, but I think I'd have ended up homeless rather than state supported. You just can't get unemployment or welfare or disability if you truly deserve them. They're reserved for scam artists.

It boggles my mind, frankly, to read these kinds of articles and statements. This one from here: Immigrant Boycott

"I want my children to know their mother is not a criminal," said Benita Olmedo, a nanny who came here illegally in 1986 from Mexico and pulled her 11-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son from school to march in San Diego. "I want them to be as strong I am. This shows our strength."

Because, well...you ARE a criminal if you came here illegally. As a rule, things that are ILLEGAL are often considered criminal, are they not?

I understand those here without proper authorization are upset to be told they're, well, breaking the laws of the country they wish to live in, but the simple fact is that they are. I'd be upset, too, but as I've said before - you live with the consequences of your actions. If you cannot wait for proper authorization/paperwork or you simply are turned down or don't even bother trying to make a legitimate start here and come anyway, then it's you who has to face the results if/when you're caught. It may not be pretty, but it's certainly not unreasonable, IMO.

Amen.

I believe also, that to get into the US, you have to be sponsored. I tutored a Russian Jewish family that came into the US via a sponsored Church program (I think it was a church).

If you want to start out legally, you need a sponsor. The usual way to get a sponsor has been for one member of a family to cross into the US, then get the paperwork going for naturalization, then ship the relatives in afterward with the first person over as the sponsor. It's in a grayer area than a bunch of folks who pay a coyote to sneak them over en masse.

The hugest turnoff that I'm feeling from these illegal immigrants is
A) the huge sense of entitlement
B) the ASSUMPTION that because this is the land of the free and free speech, that legal residents and citizens will become sympathetic to them as a mass movement.

I may feel sympathy, even sorry for, some of the individual's stories I hear on NPR, for instance. And some of these people have genuinely heartbreaking stories. BUT - their little girl or boy wouldn't have been murdered on a train going through central America if they hadn't left their country of origin in the first place. It's not the 1900's anymore. Ellis Island is a museum now. It's a different era.

The hugest turnoff that I'm feeling from these illegal immigrants is
A) the huge sense of entitlement

They're allowed to earn money they're not supposed to earn.
They don't pay the taxes the rest of us do to support the country (because if they paid, their bosses would get caught breaking the law by hiring them in the first place).
Their children go to school for free, eat breakfast and lunch for free... supported by those taxes that they don't pay.
They exercise the right to assembly and protest, which is not guaranteed to them, with impunity.

And they're think we're wrong if we get pissed off about it and try to stop them.

Entitlement? Understatement of the year.

B) the ASSUMPTION that because this is the land of the free and free speech, that legal residents and citizens will become sympathetic to them as a mass movement.

The sad part is... look at just how many of "us" are stupid enough to do it.

I don't know enough about the issue to comment about the actual issue because I don't really know what you're talking about specifically, but I do feel like we *shouldn't* be tougher on immigration in general.

Ah well, I just read the other comments. *g* I'm unashamedly liberal. *g* But I'm not joining demonstrations. heh

I'm all for legal immigrants. I work with 2 of them here, and we have a wonderful refugee resettlement program that does amazing things. It's just...it's the people who come in illegally and expect there to be no ramifications if they're caught out (no matter how long they've been here) with whom I take big issue.

I dunno. I just think if some of the illegal immigrants spent as much time and energy fighting for their rights in their own countries, things might slowly change so that coming here to take advantage of our (quickly decaying) economy isn't necessarily their 'only' option.