Immigration reform: A step forward in Senate, a leap back in House?

The bill is a nightmare, and I hope the House gives it the quick death it deserves.

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Yes; so do the Republicans, everyone understands the game.

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Let's PLEASE get rid of the liberal notion that the only thing wrong with illegal immigration is lack of papers!

Let's look at this from a different perspective.

If you REALLY wanted to make immigration work for your country, and treat imigrants right, what would you do??

Well, you would screen incoming people for criminal past and contagious diseases.

Then you would TEACH THEM THE FRIGGIN' LANGUAGE! And yanno, that bothers the effin' shit out of me. Everywhere I go- Home Depot (no, I'm not looking to hire illegals), school rooms, the Farmer's Market, even the effing demo person with the little sausages at Stater Bros store (How the frak does she think she is going to sell a product??? I asked her what she was demonstrating, and she just gave me this qizzical look and said EH???) ... lots of people who can't speak English. Seriously? How can you instruct someone to properly install an air conditioner? How can you tell them what the minimum wage is supposed to be?

THEN you would make sure they had all of the papers necessary to work legally, and pay all of their proper taxes. (Oh, and BTW- being non-citizens, you have to figure out what happens to their Social Security taxes. Does it go to them if they retire in their home country? Do they lose it to 'the system?')

THEN you would follow up with them to make sure they understood our laws... why they can't beat their wives or sell their girl-children. Provide them with the right mix of old hometown support and assimilation challenge (There is a huge problem with Ethiopian immigrants, for example.) because immigration is very stressful.

Like I said before: "Letting" people in so they can work at subminimum wage jobs is like occassionally throwing bread to pigeons in the park... VERY cheap charity.

The coup de grace, as far as I'm concerned, is the insistence that "we" stop deporting illegals. Why??? That kind of person is the LAST kind of person I would want here! Every other nation south of our border has immigration laws more stringent that ours. If you're a gringo, for example you can't own Mexican land. So why should we be the exception?

Yanno, my hubby is an immigrant, my dad was an immigrant, and my mom's parents were immigrants. It's not like I have anything against immigrants. But every time ANY nation has had a large flux if cheap imported labor, it has led to mass exploitation, a significant underclass, gangs, and riots. That goes for the mass influx of Poles, Italians, and Irish, as well as the mass involuntary importation of slaves. Even EU nations have problems with immigrants: the Dutch with their Moluccans, the Germans and Turks, the Brits and pretty much anyone from the Mideast.

Let's discuss.

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Beautifully said, Sig, I agree. The language thing kinda gets to me, here in CA, and...well, in general you just made good points. But what I'm getting is the Republicans don't really WANT immigration reform, between the cheap labor (so don't go after the employers!) and politics (let's keep hating them "others"), they don't really want to "fix" it, they just want the LEGAL ones here to vote for them. It's all a game; that's what I hate about it. JMHO.

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If I were to reform the system to my liking, 90% of the peeps here would be deported.

So, in YOUR mind, what would a reasonable immigration program look like?? Because it's easy to say that the Repubs are just stalling immigration reform and want to bottleneck the path to citizenship, but the reality is that people assimilate rather slowly. A nation, a culture, an economy, can only absorb so many people per year.

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Let's just say I disagree. I'm on my way in a few minutes to run the dogs at dawn, and don't want to start a long debate. If you want to get into it, I'll TRY, but I'll say up front I have no answers, all I know is, if you deported 90% of them, our economy, our country, would fall flat on its face, in my opinion, pretty damned fast.

I disagree with your idea that a country can only handle "so many"; a PLANET can only handle so many, we're in trouble there already, and we are becoming more and more a global village every day. Maybe if more cultures were forced to handle more assimilation, we'd all have fewer problems in the long run. In the long run, please note.

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if you deported 90% of them, our economy, our country, would fall flat on its face, in my opinion, pretty damned fast.

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Absolutely not the case. I know workers... good, skilled workers... who were displaced by people with no training who were willing to do a crappy job with half-assed tools in dangerous situations for very little pay. That's why, every few years, we have some poor sod from Mexico killed in a trench cave-in because he and his buddies were digging a large foundation with shovels in an unreinforced hole. You can find that everywhere: auto repair, truck driving, construction, pumbing, caregivers, manufacturing. What we would lose would be incredibly low-skilled, low-wage labor. I'm sure we could fill the gap.

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I disagree with your idea that a country can only handle "so many"; a PLANET can only handle so many, we're in trouble there already, and we are becoming more and more a global village every day.

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What are you trying to say? If a planet "can" only handle "so many", then surely any subunit of that planet... a nation, for example... also has it's limits. Those limits don't go away if you internationalize everything. Maybe I misunderstand, please explain. But so far, what you wrote makes no sense whatsoever.

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Maybe if more cultures were forced to handle more assimilation, we'd all have fewer problems in the long run. In the long run, please note.

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What's that got to do with anything? We are being forced to handle more assimilation without any power to actually SOLVE PROBLEMS, either the problems caused by mass migration, or the problems causing mass migration.

Let me give you an example: Let's say there is a nation which, due to it's internal problems has a tremendously high birthrate. This nation just pops out kids faster than the ecology can absorb them, and the kids are sent out to every other nation in the world. Everyone squeezes over a little, everyone shares more, and every year the problem gets worse. Tell me - how has more assimilation helped solve the problem?

In my view, that's not problem-solving, that's enabling.

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Okay, so here's the deal:

NIKI

I think what you're saying is that, since we created a lot of the problems south of the border (and, we did) that we should shoulder some of the burden, out of a sense of shared guilt or shared responsibility.

Well, I agree and disagree at the same time.

Yes, we are responsible for much of the fustercluck that is South and Central America. We have supported reprehensible, genocidal dictators in Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile and a host of other places, all in support of our banks, agricultural companies, copper mines, and... I swear... just out of sheer general cussedness. We've thwarted the will of the people many times over. And in fact, we're continuing with our support of the recent coup in Honduras, and continuing our vendetta against Venezuela. ()

The coupe de grace was NAFTA: it allowed us to export (heavily subsidized, industrialized) grain to the Carribean and elsewhere, and put local Haitian, Mexican- and other- farmers out of business and into the realm of food dependency. That created a LOT of rootless, landless people who overflooded the macquilladoras and didn't stop at the border in their northward search of jobs.

BTW- there is a subtle vengeance in the righteousness of illegal immigrants, to the tune of You owe me/us/ la raza, similar to African-Americans today.

First of all, my entire family's history begins in this country in 1910. What responsibility do I have- if any- for actions that were taken long before my previous generations even resided here?? And even if my family came over with the Mayflower... damn, that was a long time ago! Where does my responsibility begin and end???

As far as I can tell, my responsibility is to right the current wrongs, not to make up for the sweep of history. So here is what I think we should do:

End all interference in politics and military affairs south of the border. That means ending our intrigues against Venezuela and Honduras, and our military involvement in Guatemala. Each nation has its own path- let them find it themselves.

Withdraw from NAFTA, and support- through individual trade agreements- the revitalization of agriculture in each nation.

End the "anchor-baby" amendment. Seen any freed slaves lately?? Yeah me neither. In return, give everyone who has been here 10 years or more residency papers.

Raise the minimum wage to at least $12/ hour and index it to inflation. Eliminate ALL of piecework/ agricultural/ busboy-waitress/management/whatever exceptions. You worked 10 hours? You get $120 dollars. The reason is that employers, if forced to pay a living wage, will look at their illiterate, Spanish-speaking employees and ask themselves What the heck am I paying you $12 an hour for?

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

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Wow, Sig, you're on a tear today, aren't you?

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I think what you're saying is that, since we created a lot of the problems south of the border (and, we did) that we should shoulder some of the burden, out of a sense of shared guilt or shared responsibility.

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Uh, no, not at all. I've never believed in "white man's guilt" or whatever you want to call it, and I don't feel we should shoulder any "burden" because we screwed up. My government screwed/screws up all over the globe; I don't feel personally responsible.

I'm afraid we'll end up agreeing to disagree. In California, I am all too well aware of the fact that there are TONS of jobs "Americans" wouldn't be caught dead doing, period. Yeah, raising the minimum wage would make a difference, but not enough of one.

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I'm sure we could fill the gap

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I disagree, I don't think we could.

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If a planet "can" only handle "so many", then surely any subunit of that planet... a nation, for example... also has it's limits. Those limits don't go away if you internationalize everything. Maybe I misunderstand, please explain. But so far, what you wrote makes no sense whatsoever.

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I disagree. It's my opinion, from what I saw in my travels, that we'd be better off if we spread those "so many" around more, rather than let thousands of them die every day because they're crowded into inhuman conditions--and of course best of all, if we could stop OVERpopulating, and there it gets tricky, if not impossible. I have no answers; I merely believe that saying "hey, I've got enough room, you guys go die" doesn't work in the long run.

This is still a gigantic country, and I believe there is lots of "room", economically as well, for lots of people. I believe a large part of that "American exceptionalism", and whatever else has made this country great, is because of what a homogenous mix we are. My mother, her mother and grandmother all immigrated here from France shortly after the turn of the century. I don't feel I have any right to tell anyone else they can't be here, if you want to understand where my attitude comes from, simple as that. I don't think immigration is going to kill this country; yes, the world is over-populated already, my point is we need to POPULATE LESS, not decide which country gets to have less population.

I guess if we're going to debate our different beliefs, I should address yours:

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you would screen incoming people for criminal past and contagious diseases. Then you would TEACH THEM THE FRIGGIN' LANGUAGE

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With those I agree 100%.

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what happens to their Social Security taxes. Does it go to them if they retire in their home country? Do they lose it to 'the system?'

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Lose it to the system. They worked for it here, they can either stick around and get it, or go home. Just my opinion.

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THEN you would follow up with them to make sure they understood our laws... why they can't beat their wives or sell their girl-children. Provide them with the right mix of old hometown support and assimilation challenge (There is a huge problem with Ethiopian immigrants, for example.) because immigration is very stressful.

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I agree, but don't think it's possible. Assimilation is hard partly BECAUSE immigrants don't get support from the existing population. Human nature.

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That kind of person is the LAST kind of person I would want here! Every other nation south of our border has immigration laws more stringent that ours. If you're a gringo, for example you can't own Mexican land. So why should we be the exception?

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There we part ways. What "kind of person"? Someone who's desperate enough to take their life in their hands and cross a border illegally? I don't see all immigrants a

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