1. The Republicans want cheap foreign labor either in the guise of illegal immigration or by the use of H1b visas because they're completely in the pocket of big business who are only interested in driving down labor costs - but they don't want amnesty - see why below.
2. The Democrats want illegal aliens (they don't care about H1b visas except as they help their big business sponsors) and more disastrously, they want amnesty because traditionally, new immigrants have voted democratic.
3. The Catholic Church wants the current illegal immigrants because they come from largely Catholic countries and they represent new church membership.
4. The Chamber of Commerce wants cheap foreign labor either illegal or legal (H1b visas) because even small businesses want to drive down labor costs.
5. The labor unions want the illegal immigrants because of declining membership. They understand how the illegals are being exploited and think that they can organize them.
The common justification is that the illegals only take jobs that citizens won’t do. That of course is bullshit. Who used to wash dishes? Who used to mow lawns? Who used to make beds in hotels? Who used to pick lettuce. Once these jobs stopped paying a reasonable wage, citizens could no longer take them. Citizens expect to be able to buy food, pay rent, and even raise a family. That is the American way. They are not interested in living in communal dwellings and sending all their money to their home country.
So where does that leave John Q Public? Screwed - that's where.
I believe that more legal immigrants would come out against illegal immigration if their leaders explained to them the detrimental effect that illegals have on the economy. Caesar Chavez railed against illegal immigration as he was trying to organize farm labor. He understood how illegal immigrants undermined the wage base at the lowest levels. But again we have a conflict of interest. The leaders want to lead a larger group rather than a smaller group, so they want the illegals. That means that they play the race card and instill fear in their followers. Of course if the legal immigrants from south of our border ever bothered to learn English, they would be able to make informed decisions by reading and watching the general news rather than news in Spanish directed just at them.
We certainly can’t send 20 million people home tomorrow or even 11 million depending on whose statistics you believe. We can fine companies who hire illegal labor. We can make it more expensive for companies to break the law than to hire citizens. We can secure our border and we don’t need a wall to do that. A wall sends a bad message and I am absolutely against it. Somehow the Soviets managed to secure their borders with a lot less technology than we have available. We simply need the will to do it. We can change our law conferring citizenship on anyone born in the US. A simple change saying that the mother must be in the country legally will do. Any kind of visa will do, even a transit visa. We can put more pressure on Mexico to stop the northern migration. If the thousands of people who protested this weekend to convince our congress to let them come by the millions illegally and stay here simply went home and staged the same protests in their home countries, maybe they could have some impact on fixing the reasons that they feel they need to leave in the first place. Whatever sympathy I had for their plight took flight with their waving flags. If they want to be Mexicans let them stay home! How dare they waive Mexican flags in a demonstration designed to let them stay in America!!!!! If you want to be a Mexican, waive a Mexican flag. If you want to be an American, waive an American flag.
I have always been offended by the hyphenated-American people. I don’t care what your country of origin is, you are an American or you are not. OK, on St. Patrick’s day, you can be Irish but then everyone is because they like green beer and corned beef and cabbage. Just like we’re all Italians on Columbus day and Mexicans on Cinco d’Mayo at least in bars. We have no room for divided allegiance. You don’t need to forget your roots, you just need to live in the present. This is a letter from Teddy Roosevelt to the American Defense Society 10 years after he left office.
"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...
There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1919
PS, I also hate the way threads get hijacked by silly one-liners. If anyone wants me to delete the meaningless contributions to this thread, let me know.
