Atomikat wrote:But...
AMERICANS are immigrants ,too...or where did they come from?
EUROPE !!!
The only people from America were the native americans and they were killed or sent to reservations long ago.
Somebody has to do the dirty job that Americans don't do (lazy?
) and that's exactly what
immigrants do in this country.
unfortunately that's not entirely true - as far as the very menial jobs like fruit picking go, foreign workers are allowed to come in and work on an H-2 visa. but illegal immigrants have made very significant inroads in areas like construction and have driven down the wages of skilled trades. that is fact.
lots of Americans work at dirty and difficult jobs, but the key is *how much will an employer pay* to have that job done? it's a corporate wild wet dream to have an army of low paid unskilled/semi-skilled foreign workers who will tolerate living in abysmal conditions and are easily controlled by institutional intimidation ("don't organize the rest of the workers, Jorge, or we will call the INS on you"). as long as corporate influence runs the government, don't expect a resolution on illegal immigration (or corporate tax reform), or adequate border enforcement. illegal immigration been a massive problem in border states for a long time, and there's a reason nothing's been done about it.
like the vast majority of everyday Americans, i pay taxes and what i pay for keeps up infrastructure (and pays for insane neocon-conceived wars, but that's another gripe for another time). i live in a dwelling and have to abide by the local laws and ordinances. undocumented aliens don't pay anything other than sales taxes but they use the same resources that i have to pay for, and part of my taxes subsidizes thier health care, school for thier children, and other social services they need. most of these resources are stretched to the breaking point - particularly schools. many illegal immigrants live in apartments and houses with far too many occupants, taking up far too many parking spaces with cars that are very often not legally registered or insured. this is a phenomenon you can see in many areas of the country now, not just in border states but in any sizeable metro area or any place where there's a demand for under-the-table work.
having said all that, the idea of sending all illegal aliens to jail (whether they are Central American,Chinese,Carribean, etc.) is utterly insane, just as insane as building The Great Wall Of Mexico. everyone's full of ideas, but no one seems to take the next step and ask "Jesus Christ, how for fuck's sake do we pay for that?" this country is already merrily skipping along in a handbasket to hell, half a trillion bucks into a war that won't be over for 3-5 years. the Chinese are buying Treasury bills to the tune of a billion dollars a day which keeps the US economic house of cards prropped up for the time being. what would a wall a couple thousand miles long cost to build? i'll bet you'd need illegal aliens to build it.... the irony would be too much. the U.S. also bears the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized nation, currently around 2 million people and going up. it's a gigantic industry subsidized by little ol' taxpayers like me, and the privatization of the penal system is quietly making more corporations rich - no fucking way do i want to pay for internment of a million more, let alone 12-15-20-whatever million.
the idea of an open border is equally ridiculous - Mexico doesn't have a handle on it's own internal problems, especially in the north. having a *more* porous border would be opening a Pandora's box. great for poor people in Central America and Norteno drug syndicates, disastrous for the U.S., which would slide further down the path of a quasi-Third World country. it would be sweet for corporations though.
there are already laws in place that require employers to check any potential hire's legal working status, and that law has been in place for 20 years. but like many laws in this country, it isn't enforced. if companies that hire illegal workers are held accountable the problem would eventually shrink down to something manageable. workers who are currently illegal need to be documented, pay some sort of income/FICA tax, and be retroactively work visa'd with the provision that they need to return to thier native country and reapply for a visa when the retroactive one expires. now, i don't know how that would be practically implemented but it would have to be cheaper than these other crazy half-baked ideas that come from an emotional xenophobic knee-jerk response.
and as much as i bitterly resent the fact that resident U.S. children get the short end of the stick, the kids of illegal aliens *have* to get some degree of education because it's not thier fault they are in the situation they're in. and an uneducated kid more often than not turns into a problem adult.
there has to be some sort of assimilation to get these people documented and in the loop and paying thier fair share, but not reward them with permanent residency - otherwise, why would *anyone* bother immigrating legally? it's not easy to do, and as a legal immigrant to the U.S., it pisses me off to no end to see the sense of entitlement some of the illegal immigrants and thier organizers feel they deserve. it's absolutely asinine, and as always there are people with thier own agendas behind the curtain, stirring up the mix. regardless of how you feel, if you don't go through legitimate channels to get in the country you are by definition an illegal alien *because you haven't entered the country through legal means, or you have chosen to stay longer than your visa allowed for*.
if you take a look at the laws of Mexico, for example, you'll see that even legitimate legal foreign nationals don't have voting or property rights that citizens have. there are restrictive employment and income requirements that are designed to protect the interests of Mexican citizens from foreigners coming to work, and rightly so. so why is it such a bad thing for the U.S.? many industrialized European countries, the same problems exist as in the U.S., although i would say probably not quite on the same scale - France, Germany, UK, etc, all have significant populations of immigrants who have not bothered to assimilate, i believe France found out last year how that can turn out. i am not saying i'm entirely unsympathetic to the plight of any immigrant that feels that they have to leave thier country of origin, but like the old saying goes, "get in where you fit in".
sorry for the rambling, but as a long time U.S. legal resident and having lived in a couple of other countries, developed and not-so-developed, i thought i would toss in my three cents.
) and that's exactly what immigrants do in this country.