This at least helps show how much illegal immigrants contribute to our society. It appears they aren’t all just lining up to see how much they can sponge off of us.
Trailer parks lie abandoned. The poultry plant is scrambling to replace more than half its workforce. Business has dried up at stores where Mexican laborers once lined up to buy food, beer and cigarettes just weeks ago.
This Georgia community of about 1,000 people has become little more than a ghost town since Sept. 1, when federal agents began rounding up illegal immigrants.
The sweep has had the unintended effect of underscoring just how vital the illegal immigrants were to the local economy.
More than 120 illegal immigrants have been loaded onto buses bound for immigration courts in Atlanta, 189 miles away. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County. Residents say many scattered into the woods, camping out for days. They worry some are still hiding without food.
At least one child, born a U.S. citizen, was left behind by his Mexican parents: 2-year-old Victor Perez-Lopez. The toddler’s mother, Rosa Lopez, left her son with Julie Rodas when the raids began and fled the state. The boy’s father was deported to Mexico.
This is admittedly a hot topic, but the individuals involved are just people trying to get ahead.
OOOOPS….sorry….my post #30…..the 100,000 ESL teachers was for 5 states, not just L.A. County…..California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado.
#22 – Round them up and get them to pay back taxes.
Comment by Robin — 9/17/2006 @ 6:24 pm
Yes. Do that. Because once you apply the Earned Income Tax Credit we’ll end up paying them. Do you people have any idea what they make?
An illegal immigrant in a Central California strawberry field works 10 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, lives in a shantytown in woods, and might make $2000 annually. But by all means, lets round them up and ship them back and force the strawberry farmer to hire legal immigrants and citizens at living wagings plus benefits. After all, you won’t mind paying $20 a pint for strawberries will you?
You people want to bitch that these people are “illegal” and they “broke the law” and bla bla bla. What is a crime is how we encourage them to come here, exploit them, and when growing season is over we can convieniently ship them home until next season when we start the cycle over again. We are accomplices in their crime.
For all the broken records repeating their mantra of “it’s the liberals, it’s the liberals” it is in all truth, bullshit. Liberals aren’t the ones who want them to stay. It’s farmers who want them to stay. It’s businesspeople and conservatives who need them. It’s snooty upper middle class housewives in their cookie cutter gated community homes who so desperately need personal laundry, cooking, and gardening services despite the fact that they themselves don’t actually have anything they need to be doing themselves.
You can boil this issue down to stupid platitudes and bluster about law and order and even throw in the occassional total bullshit rant about terrorism, but no one in the public debate is really speaking intelligently and rationally about the complexity of this issue, including me.
First and foremost, let’s leave the children out of the argument. They are the innocent bystanders in this situation. If there is a child in America, I don’t care what he looks like, what his nationality is, what language he speaks or what his parent’s legal status is. That child MUST have enough food to eat, medical care and basic education. Denying those basic human rights to a child is so low down and morally corrupt that I don’t have words for it. Or would you deny a child food, clothing or medical care just because of his ‘legal status’. If you would, you are truly a despicable person, and I don’t want you in MY America.
I fear greatly for the moral integrity of our country. How quickly we forget that it was this same ‘scapegoat’ mentality that led to the Jewish Holocaust: “The Jews are the cause of all of our problems… let’s get rid of them and everything with be wonderful.” Replace that with “The Mexicans are all taking our jobs, let’s get rid of them and we will all be rich!” Same dangerous mentality.
“Hundreds of illegals waiting in ER’s?” Go by your local ER one of
these days, instead of repeating baseless hearsay nonsense from the right-wing morons… what you will find is basically old-folks that have no insurance aside from Medicare. That and homeless bums. Try it, take a look for yourself.
#34
“Hundreds of illegals waiting in ER’s?” Go by your local ER one of
these days, instead of repeating baseless hearsay nonsense from the right-wing morons…what you will find is basically old-folks that have no insurance aside from Medicare. That and homeless bums.”
Perhap where you live… Try living in Los Angeles!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,150750,00.html
Steve
People should stop drawing comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany. These comparisons are becoming pretty ubiquitous. Nobody really takes such comparisons seriously and it really cheapens the gravity of the entire Nazi episode. Of course, my favorite is when people who deny the holocaust turn around and compare something to the Nazis. In any case, Nazi comparisons are a sofamoric debate tactic and should be avoided.
Godwin’s Law.
One of the biggest problems facing America today is the healthcare system crisis. Someone said here they are not a burden on our infrastructure, but they must be!
Look at this article about this new American child left by his Mexican parents. Did they have the baby at home? I think not. I think they went to the hospital and had no health insurance. So who paid the bill? This is part of the reason it costs so much to go to the hospital these days. It is also the reason that the US infant mortality rate is one of the worst of industrialized nations.
Well crap, now you’ve made me upset enough to post for the first time.
“..This is admittedly a hot topic, but the individuals involved are just people trying to get ahead.”
So if someone breaks into your house and steals something you’re just gonna tell the police it’s ok since “…individuals involved are just people trying to get ahead”?
ME THINKS NOT!
Don’t like the “LAWS”? Then change them, DONT break them!
I sometimes need to get to work faster, so I guess I can drive 100mph when I need to since I’m just trying to get ahead I don’t like the 55mph law anyway. See how stupid that sounds?
And for those that say the lettuce will die I don’t think so. They will finally have to pay a real wage for the job. And then those US people that don’t want the job for $2/hr will finally have a place to work for 12/hr. Will the price of food go up? Sure! But that’s no different from anything else. Supply/Demand. Will the price of health care probably go down? Sure! No longer having to pay for free medical care for those that came here illegally.
Use your head people!
Shawn
Married to a LEGAL immigrant.
Spent 10 months living with my wife in China until the US govt granted her LEGAL visa to come to the US to get married to me.
10 MONTHS. Yes!
>>They committed a crime by illegally crossing the border.
>>That makes them felons.
Kinda like Hariett Tubman and her damned Underground Railroad, huh? Why can’t these people just stay where they belong??
Finally, an almost proper use of the word decimated.
No matter how harmless they might seem, illegal aliens are… illegal. Yes, they might just be people trying to get ahead, but for some reason they are illegal. For one, they drag our workforce’s salaries down. Here in Portugal there is such an irony with those people. It is the far left that defends them, yet the ones who benefit the most are precisely the capitalists the far left ideologically fights, as they get easy access to extremely cheap workforce. The ones most harmed by illegal immigration are the workers, precisely the people the left pretends to defend. How about that??? The other reason is that not always illegal alliens are only just trying to get ahead. With them come lots of problems, like social disintegration (it is their problem to become integrated, not ours!!), poverty and in many cases, highly increased crime rates. Since Portugal has become a country where immigrants are coming to, our crime rates have soared.
Not that I am against immigration. The Portuguese have a long tradition as immigrants. One thing is to do it legally, however, and the other, completely different is trying to do it illegally.
So, please, for pete’s sake, don’t try to legitimize something that is, after all… illegal!!!!
I do respect most of your posts, but this one, I found rather overboard and intellectually dishonest as after all, you are coming in defense of illegallity.
Ok, I figure it’s time for me to comment about this to someone – it might as well be here. But to put things in perspective, a little historical information is valuable.
My wife immigrated here from another country – legally, of course. I met her while abroad, and a year plus later, we decided to get married. We were told straight out, if we got married in her country it would be three plus years to have her return. If we got a K-visa (fiancee) once it was cleared she could come and get married. We went with the latter, of course. It took some time, probably about a year total, with badgering by me and others to Senators and such (they’re there to help anyways, right?) and in the end, she ended up arriving 4 days before our scheduled wedding. Yes, I did travel to her home country for the visa interview and such, as this was not the stereotypical “mail-order bride” scenario.
My point is this… there is a legal way to come to this country. Yes, you might not get here really fast, but THERE IS A WAY! This whole arguement about illegals “working the jobs no ‘American’s’ want” is ludicrous. Until we have 100% employment in the country, if we are not advocating “something’s better than nothing” than what the Hell? And if the wages at $.04 an hour is the issue, than shame on us for allowing that to happen. I’d be willing to pay another $.50 – $1.00 for a head of cabbage if I thought people (not the industry) was benefitting from it. If their standard of living goes up, all of ours do!
We need to enforce the rules we have – otherwise what kind of government do we have (rhetorical question). Amnesty only says to everyone that tries to come here legally and has to wait 4 years, that just come across the border and work in a field and you’ll be taken care of.
And what’s this garbage about giving amnesty and making them pay a fine to stay here. The reason most illegals are here is to work, get paid whatever, and send their money home. Fining them is only going to drive them underground more.
If we don’t regulate our borders, then nothing will stop the terrorists from coming in the same way everyone else does.
I am all for LEGAL immigration for EVERYBODY. Make it easier to come here if needed – but DO NOT give amnesty and preference that broke the laws in the first place.
One more quick comment, while I am thinking about it.
Part of my “enforcing the laws we already have” include getting at the employers who knowingly hire illegals. Fine them, shut them down, whatever.
I have nothing against the people who come here from Mexico either; I make great pains to say illegal is illegal, regardless if you are from Mexico, Poland, Russia or wherever.
Let’s just deport everyone who commits any kind of crime. Why can’t we just find some far away island somewhere and anyone who breaks the law gets a one way ticket:
Illegal aliens – outta here!
The people who employ them, from factory owners to suburban housewives – outta here!
The people who benefit indirectly from low wage workers – outta here!
Corporate tax cheats – outta here, oh wait scratch that last one!
Always a different standard of law enforcement for the poor and the other 10% of society.
This is an universal reply to every news coverage about illegal immigration and what the US Goverment does or does not about it:
Blablablablablablablablablablablablablabla…
Well!!!!!!! More jobs for the real americans. Where’s the help wanted ads???
#34 – First and foremost, let’s leave the children out of the argument. They are the innocent bystanders in this situation. If there is a child in America, I don’t care what he looks like, what his nationality is, what language he speaks or what his parent’s legal status is. That child MUST have enough food to eat, medical care and basic education. Denying those basic human rights to a child is so low down and morally corrupt that I don’t have words for it.
Comment by Awake — 9/17/2006 @ 10:45 pm
Let me second that notion.
I get fed up quickly with the moaning and whining from conservatives about the cost of social services to immigrants. The personal cost is negligable to them, but they act like they are paying the equivalent of a new Lexus in social servicess, when in reality they’ll have to skip a couple Big Macs each year to break even on the cost.
But, whatever… Ship them all back. It isn’t the aliens that are getting punished. It will be your wallet. You need them and kicking them all out will not only be the meanest thing you can do, it will be the stupidest. You need serfs to exploit. They are essential to your cushy way of life.
Once you realize that, you’ll relax and let it slide. But keep your eye on me, because once I get the chance I’m gonna get these people their human rights, health care, and living wages… Then you are really screwed and I don’t care because your money isn’t on my list of things to worry about.
meh
Does anyone even KNOW what decimate means?
One in every ten… DECimate.
Quit diluting the language.
#52 –
Decimation was a form of extreme military discipline imposed by officers in the Roman Army. Literally meaning “removal of a tenth,” this punishment was assigned to mutinous or cowardly soldiers. Those selected for punishment were divided into groups of ten; each group cast lots, and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning or clubbing. …
Google is your friend. Your Grammar Nazi credentials are hearby reduced by one grade.
yeah im gonna agree w/ #51 – meh… this dun mean anything
decimate
One entry found for decimate.
Main Entry: dec·i·mate
Pronunciation: ‘de-s&-“mAt
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -mat·ed; -mat·ing
Etymology: Latin decimatus, past participle of decimare, from decimus tenth, from decem ten
1 : to select by lot and kill every tenth man of
2 : to exact a tax of 10 percent from
3 a : to reduce drastically especially in number b : to cause great destruction or harm to
– dec·i·ma·tion /”de-s&-‘mA-sh&n/ noun
Now may we get back on topic?
#50, #34 – First and foremost, let’s leave the children out of the argument. They are the innocent bystanders in this situation.
ya, right. Let’s make them all ward of the state then and put them up for adoption. Or allow them to follow their parents back home.
OFTLO, this isn’t a case of they only cost society a couple of Big Macs and fries to go. There is a principle here. If they entered the country without going through a border entry point, then they are here illegally. If they are working without a legitimate work permit or green card then they are working illegally. If they are driving on our roads without a proper license or insurance, they are driving illegally. And, if they are using fraudulent or stolen documents to work and drive then they are committing another offense.
We do not reward people that break the law. Their circumstances may be a mitigating factor, but can not negate the wrong.
And before it doesn’t hurt you? That raise you, your wife, or kid didn’t get is because they found an illegal that would do it cheaper. The nephew having a hard time getting a job because of all the illegals doing it for less then minimum wage and no benefits. That extra wait for a cop to get to an accident scene because he was processing some illegals for no insurance. The old equipment at your kid’s school because they had to hire several more English as a Second Language teachers and hire another bus driver for already overcrowded classes.
But at least your Big Mac is cheap. You can also afford a milkshake made with organic milk from Wal-Mart.
The argument that “My relatives came over in 1907, LEGALLY” means nothing because immigration law today is not apples to apples to that era in our history. The modern examples and personal experiences that people in this post are kind enough to share are also meaningless because the people that we are talking about do not have the knowledge, education, and money that is need to get the legal process moving even at a slow clip, as the stories here have stated. “Change the law, don’t break the law!” seems to be the rallying cry of the apologists, but since non-citizens have very little political clout, this is a hollow suggestion. Attempts by citizens here to change the law are beaten down by those same people that tell us to change the law, a hopeless cycle between isolationists and border liberalizers.
Plus the argument that “The law is the law.” is silly beyond words; every person in this discussion and I am willing to bet most of the country violate the law every day. To borrow another poster’s turn of phrase, if we were to “wave a magic wand” and make every crime ever commited in the United States immedietly punished, there would be no one left in the country who was not a guest of one of our many fine correctional facillities.
And let us not forget that this country was founded by men and women who all commmited CAPITAL offenses against King George. But wait, I thought “THE LAW IS THE LAW!” Maybe, the anti-immigrant crowd are really British loyalists. (And yes, anti-immigrant not anti-illegal Immigrant, because the way the law is currently set up, immigration from Central and South America is almost impossible, hence anti-illegal immigrant=anti-immigrant).
#57, It is not a matter of morality. On the contrary, it is a very practical matter. Being illegal means everything about them is illegal. They don’t become tax payers. They don’t have drivers licenses. They don’t unionize. Their negotiation power is extremely low, translating to extremely low wages, failed expectations and frustration. With all those comes crime. Second generations are even worse as many times they have a sense of misadjustment and they feel marginalized. This leads to crime. That is what is happening here in Europe.
I just hope you’ll never loose your job for an illegal allien who is asking for a fraction of your salary. Then you’ll really be anti-immigrant, not only conceptually anti-immigrant, but you’ll have resentment. It is an unfair situation for both you and the immigrant who starts facing hatred.
Now, honestly, being anti-immigrant is allowing them to come in and exploiting their asses off. That is really being anti-immigrant.
#57, For the sake of argument, I’ll go along with your “Everyone Broke the Law Today” argument. Could you tell me which law I broke today? Was it a felony? Was anyone hurt or injured in any way? Did it make a difference at all? What did it cost society?
Well I know the illegal families in our county have caused the school to hire another teacher and add one more bus route. Our classes were already large. An application has been passed on to the state for more funding to hire another ESL teacher too. Our local hospital is considering closing its ER because of the number of non paying users. Employers are starting to ask for bilingual supervisors.
“Change the law, don’t break the law!” seems to be the rallying cry of the apologists, but since non-citizens have very little political clout, this is a hollow suggestion.
A very disingenuous statement. There are many laws I would like to see changed. A lot of people even agree with me on many of them. Even some were recently passed I disagree with. Yet they haven’t been changed because our DEMOCATRIC PROCESS has decided that the law will remain as it is. So this sounds like you want us Americans to forgo our political process in favor of the very political process so many of the illegal immigrants are fleeing?
#60 – Oh well, I cannot love the US more than you guys. If you want your country to dissapear, that’s all up to you. Worse than being deaf is not being willing to hear.
Comment by pedro — 9/19/2006 @ 8:24 am
I surely don’t love my current government. And I suppose there really isn’t any requirement for me to do so. I really don’t guess that I “love” the country. In fact, we could do just fine without Indiana.*
But I love the Constitution and the spirit upon which this nation is built. I love the ingenuity of the people, and I especially love this nation when its people shine… that is, demonstrate our best side to the world (hasn’t happened too much lately).
But as a nation, we are a petulant teen, pushing boundries and rebelling against our older and wiser European parents. If we could just be a bit more like Aunt Holland or crazy Uncle Italy. If we’d only listen to the advice of Mother England.
Sure, we got our shit together more than our crazy brother Mexico who always seems to need extra cash and can’t hold a job. We should strive to be a bit more like our sister Canada who never embarrasses the family when you are dining out.
We’ve got a great deal to be proud of, but a lot of work to do to truly be great. I suppose patriotism is the ability to recognize the whole of our nature and the willingness to strive for the better.
All this really isn’t about immigration, but rather to say… we aren’t the greatest country on earth. We are a one of the great nations, but no better than those who laid the road before us.
*Okay, I would never really support the removal of Indiana. Unless it made Chicago be closer to Ohio.
To #58, the issue of a drivers license is entirely dependent on state law and is not the fault of the immigrant. The issue of taxes is also silly because any citizen can not pay taxes, plus I know a couple of illegal immigrant families who DO pay taxes while another friends family who have been here since the revolutionary war who DON”T pay taxes. So your argument is not unique to immigrants, rather it is a consequence of how are tax system is set up.
To #59, Anyone who speeds more than 5 times in most states looses their license, how many times have you gone over the speed limit just today or yesterday. I’m also sure you don’t have the DMCA memorized, I doubt anyone really fully understands it, and violateing any one of those laws is jail time. The point I was making was that most peopl don’t really want the law enforced all or even most of the time. They only want it working when it involves a group or person who acts in a way they don’t like or don’t agree with. Cases in point, We as a country actively respress a group who still lack the same rights the rest of us enjoy. Laws are continually and DEMOCRATICALLY voted on and passed despit the respression it causes. Do you think this is right? I am of course talking about Homosexuals and their lack of fair treatment by State and Federal government. Just because a law or policy is democratically voted on, does not make it right or justified. Jim Crow was democratic, Slavery was democratic, the oppression of women and children was democratic and yet groups rose up and broke the law because the law and the majority of Americans were wrong.
Also to 58, the ad hoc argument that I loose my job to an Illegal Immigrant so that I can be resentfully is a horrible outlook on life and exactly the kind of attitude that adults need t grow out of. It is far to easy and juvenile to emotionally react and lash out at another group for something they had nothing to do with; if anyone is to blame its the employer, not the immigrant.
Also to 58, the ad hoc argument that I loose my job to an Illegal Immigrant so that I can be resentful is a horrible outlook on life and exactly the kind of attitude that adults need to grow out of. It is far to easy and juvenile to emotionally react and lash out at another group for something they had nothing to do with; if anyone is to blame its the employer, not the immigrant.