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[Calipro]

... in response to My  Viewpoint, posted by Ray on Dec 13, 2005

Seems to me that the presidental debates between Kerry and Bush weren't that far off that we can't remember what happened when Kerry asked Bush what he was doing about the 5,000 or so illegal aliens coming across our borders daily. He never directly answered the question but changed the subject in his response.

Having lived in Los Angeles and Phoenix all of my life, I can tell you that no administration in my lifetime has been really interested in securing our border with Mexico. There are hundreds of thousands of illegal Mexicans living and working in the Phoenix are right now.

If we could round them all up and deport them tommorrow this city would have serious problems. A lot of businesses here would be out of business over night.

The INS hasn't done a raid on an employeer accused of hiring illegal immigrants in a long, long time. That is something you see in the movies.

You can not tell me that our government doesn't want them here.

It could be that the Democrates and the Republican alike   are finally realizing that a lot of americans don't want illegals living here. But up until now the Border Patrol agents have been doing nothing more than controlling the flow of illegals crossing the border.

[Gary Bala]

... in response to Re: My  Viewpoint, posted by Calipro on Dec 14, 2005

[This message has been edited by Gary Bala]

"If we could round them all up and deport them tomorrow this city would have serious problems. A lot of businesses here would be out of business over night."

This is key point, CP, that most social conservatives in the GOP don't get, and why the business conservatives are strongly in favor of the Bush plan, or any limited and temporary version of guest worker. The reason Bush didn't answer Kerry's immigration question is that he (Bush) needed the money, support, backing and clout of the business conservatives to help him win the Presidency and get re-elected, and those guys need and want the "illegal" labor. (In other words, in the world of politics, there is plenty of pandering on both sides, but that is a different point.)

By the way, INS (they're called USCIS now CP), and Border Patrol and ICE are just an "enforcement-mechanism-arm" and reflection of the political directives of the Administration and Congress. It makes no sense to blame "lazy" Border Patrol government guys, the solution is to debate and decide: what should be our long-term national policy on immigration reform? And then carry out the political solution.

We get the government we vote for, so if you don't like what you see in the government, then vote it out of office and vote in new political leaders to change the Border Patrol, or any arm of the government.

Why do people migrate "illegally"?, the root causes of "illegal" immigration? Unless a long-term strategy addresses that, we will never stop "illegal" immigration, because neither Main Street nor Wall Street will ever accept building a mountain wall around Mexico, Canada, and the East and West Coasts. "We need more than just brute enforcement" (Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary)

Should we help Mexico and the other countries better their economy and standard of living, contain corruption, and expand their opportunities so as to reduce the "jobs and money" pressure on these people to migrate "illegally"? Yes, we should. But that is a long term answer which will take time.

In the near term, U.S. businesses need to keep running and the domestic economy can't stop. But yes the conservatives are right that we also can't just ignore (and not punish) the "illegals", or give them a free pass, thereby encouraging more "illegals" to come, while the "legals" wait in long petition processing lines. The solution it seems to me is a compromise, compromises sometimes work. A CONTROLLED and CAREFULLY MEASURED immigration plan: First, effectively and finally controlling the border, but also allowing some, not all, undocumented workers to remain on a temporary but legal basis, for the good of business. That way, ICE and Border Patrol can their spend valuable time and money actually going after the terrorists and the real bad guys.

Temporary guest workers plan work fine in other countries such as Dubai and Kuwait, as pointed out by a previous poster. It is a win-win scenario. Only the extreme conservatives are labeling it "blanket amnesty". The top two bills in the Senate propose a guest worker plan as part of the new immigration solution: the McCain-Kennedy Bill and the Cornyn-Kyle Bill.

The public wants immigration reform, and so does the Administration and Congress. So I think that in 2006, the "third rail" will get a face-lift, and a new immigration solution will be tried.

PS: As you point out in your other post, it's high time we tried something. I don't think it's "too late" with animals out of the barn, as you say, but we're getting there, with over 12% foreign immigrants in our country, and growing, and mostly Latinos, so we all better hit the Spanish books.

[Ray]

... in response to Business Ghost Town, USA, posted by Gary Bala on Dec 14, 2005

[This message has been edited by Ray]

But Gary, you're conveniently forgetting about all those liberal elitists who bash Wal Mart for hiring illegals but think nothing of their own illegal alien housekeepers that clean their toilets and scrub the hash marks out of their skivies. It called leftist hypocrisy :-)

Also, just how do you propose that we Americans make Mexico contain their corruption? Should we send the cops down to Mexico City to arrest all of their politicians? :-)

Ray

[Gary Bala]

... in response to Re: Business Ghost Town, USA, posted by Ray on Dec 15, 2005

I'm a left-leaning elitist with illegal (attractive) Colombian ladies typing my visa petitions and cleaning my office, a la Zoe Baird, Attorney General nominee sometime back who (you remember) employed two illegal Peruvian maids in her house...ha

[Ray]

... in response to You caught me Ray!, posted by Gary Bala on Dec 16, 2005

Yeah, I thought so! LOL

Just messing with you Gary. You keep dumping ALL of the blame for illegal immigration on Republicans, conservatives, and business. I was just giving some equal time to the other side :-)

You know and I know that this problem has been around for a long time and it shouldn’t be a political issue, but an American issue. And since the main piece to the puzzle (90%+) is poverty and joblessness in Mexico, let’s start dumping the blame where it really belongs, on the corrupt Mexican government.

And since we really can’t and shouldn’t even try to meddle in Mexico’s internal problems, I say put up the fence and do whatever it takes to get control of our borders, and maybe then Mexico will be forced to deal with it’s poor, instead of dumping their “problem” on their neighbor to the North. THAT is the only way that we will ever begin to find a solution to the illegal immigration problem. All of this talk of guest workers, amnesty, driver licenses, etc, is only ignoring the real source of the problem and will just give us more of the same nonsense that we have now.

Peace,

Ray :-)

[Ray]

... in response to Re: My  Viewpoint, posted by Calipro on Dec 14, 2005

You’re right. Illegal immigration and border control is one of those “third-rail” issues, like Social Security, that the politicians have been afraid to touch up until now. Instead of worrying about offending the Latinos and losing some votes, they have finally realized that we the public are simply fed up with the inaction, like you said.

I think Bush screwed up when he went way out of his way to try to make Vicente Fox happy, hence his dumb-ass “amnesty” plan, whether he calls it that or not. I wish he would tell Fox to shove it for once, in public!

Ray

[Calipro]

... in response to I agree..., posted by Ray on Dec 14, 2005

Ray

All this talk about closing the borders and stopping illegal immigration is like closing the barn door after all the animals ran out.

The fact of the matter is it's too late. There are so many illegal immigrants here that now have american children that it's not really possible to deport them all.

Latinos in the U.S. on average have 50% more children than the rest of the american population and that includes latinos born here. Even without illegal immigration we'll be out numbered soon. A spansih newspaper here in Phoenix estimated that in twenty years half of the Phoenix population will be latinos.

I hear you guys talking about learning spanish before going south. How about learning spanish just so you can live in the southwest U.S.

If you can't beat them join them. The latinos have already taken over Miami. I went there last year and stayed in a neighborhood called Corral Gables. Every single person I met spoke spanish. I went to a mall called 'Mall of the Americas' I think and every single person in the mall was speaking spanish. If I didn't know better I would have thought I was in South America. I stopped trying to even talk in english and just spoke in spanish.

[utopiacowboy]

... in response to My  Viewpoint, posted by Ray on Dec 13, 2005

The Democrats are the worst kind of panderers but thank God, many Latinos are starting to see the light. The leadership of many Latino organizations is still in the Demos hip pocket but the rank and file are wising up and voting for the party (Republican) that still represents their traditional value system.

[Beattledog]

... in response to My  Viewpoint, posted by Ray on Dec 13, 2005

I know that I am stir up some controversy with this statement. When the illegals are caught in this country, they should implant chips with tracking devices in their body so that if they try to re-enter this country again, they could be easily tracked, found and deported.c.   We have the technology to do this.  It would have to be so that the chips would not be easy to removed from the person.

Beattledog

[CelticUrge]

... in response to Re: My  Viewpoint, posted by Beattledog on Dec 13, 2005

How about the chip blows your head off when you cross the border, like the Arnold S movie. A few hundred carcasses lying around makes a new form of "Welcome" sign.

Don't get excited. I'm not serious. No sense in blowing the head completely off!

[mudd]

... in response to Re: My  Viewpoint, posted by Beattledog on Dec 13, 2005

That kind of thinking would classify you as a Nazi by a lot of people, ACLU, LA RAZA and a few others but you do have a point and it would take care of the repeat crossers.

[mudd]

... in response to My  Viewpoint, posted by Ray on Dec 13, 2005

did you read the report about the study  in  the newspaper a few days ago, that the government  thought the illegal’s were coming because they couldn’t find work, but after they interviewed a lot, most had jobs at home, but wanted more money, so guess where they went, north.

This was told to me by a business owner in TJ who owns a circuit board manufacturing business. Most Mexicans who cross the border illegally are of some Indian decent, most have very dark skin, and are not the typical Mexican.   The government doesn’t want the border crossing to stop for a number of reasons. one, the ones who cross have little or no work skills, no education and are the lower class of Mexican citizens.  the government knows they get free health care in the US, so if they have a problem already, it gets taken care of in the US and paid by the tax payers, not in Mexico, saves money. And the biggest reason, they send millions of dollars back to Mexico each year, so no wonder why Fox doesn’t want to stop the crossings.

[Keith NC]

... in response to Re: My  Viewpoint, posted by mudd on Dec 13, 2005

Mudd,

I think they sent something like 13 Billion Dollars home to Mexico last year.  In the meantime the taxpayer foots the bill for everything else. My blood boils when I think about the shit that I have to go through to bring my wife over here from the Philippines legally.  While most of these illegals get the red carpet treatment for breaking the law.

Keith

[CelticUrge]

... in response to Re: My  Viewpoint, posted by mudd on Dec 13, 2005

The concept of "follow the money" digs up interesting information in many areas of life.

[Gary Bala]

... in response to Re: My  Viewpoint, posted by mudd on Dec 13, 2005

[This message has been edited by Gary Bala]

Whether it's for a job, a better paying job, medical benefits,  or money going back to Mexico, they are "dying to get in", as 60 Minutes reported in a TV news story this past Sunday, at a rate of 1000 per year.

CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/08/60minutes/main1108476.shtml

The problem is growing worse, as current U.S. immigration levels (legal and "illegal") are booming, more than 12% of the U.S. population now. See MSNBC report citing Center for Immigration Study findings.

MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10440110/

And the public is becoming increasingly anxious, with recent polls showing less support for immigration coupled with more anxiety about terrorism and "illegal" immigration.

IMO, the status quo is clearly unacceptable, so new solutions need to be tried.