Social Security benefits for illegal aliens?

[Ban Hammer 13,133]

So when it comes to finding solutions and addressing the problems, why is there such a negative focus on the illegal immigrants themselves?

there, much better. i do hate to see the ones following the law lumped into your statement.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

So when it comes to finding solutions and addressing the problems, why is there such a negative focus on the illegal immigrants themselves?

there, much better. i do hate to see the ones following the law lumped into your statement.

If following the letter of the law were the prerequisite for whether we attach the word 'illegal' to categories of people here in America, I seriously doubt you'd be able to come up with a group that hasn't done something illegal at least once in their lives. I personally like the label, 'liar' because that one can be fairly applied to every human being.

[Mirorgate 0]

That's if you look at illegal immigration as a punitive crime which I do not. I can see problems with illegal immigration, but I don't look at it as criminal behavior, but more of a socio-economic problem. I'm not worried that by allowing that mother to stay here and be with her family is going to jeopardize the safety of myself or my fellow countrymen. I also don't believe that she will become a burden to society as the facts show otherwise.

Separate a mother from her child would be a heartless thing to do and I don't see how society would benefit from taking such a harsh stance on her illegal immigration.

giggle point for the bold Steven.

I also do not see why we as a nation have to pay for some one elses decisions in life to cheat a system (cracked and bent as it is). If it's a harsh socio-economic problem, then they should elect officals that would help them out, enact laws them help them out ... get this... IN THEIR COUNTRY. I know.. shocking concept.

[Boiler 44,931]

So when it comes to finding solutions and addressing the problems, why is there such a negative focus on the illegal immigrants themselves?

there, much better. i do hate to see the ones following the law lumped into your statement.

If following the letter of the law were the prerequisite for whether we attach the word 'illegal' to categories of people here in America, I seriously doubt you'd be able to come up with a group that hasn't done something illegal at least once in their lives. I personally like the label, 'liar' because that one can be fairly applied to every human being.

Your misconstruing its origin.

Most people on here are or are looking to be Legal Permanent Residents.

Illegal is the opposite of the Legal bit.

I personally dislike Undocumented, a person is not "Documented". Cargo maybe. Plus most seem to have quite a few documents.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

That's if you look at illegal immigration as a punitive crime which I do not. I can see problems with illegal immigration, but I don't look at it as criminal behavior, but more of a socio-economic problem. I'm not worried that by allowing that mother to stay here and be with her family is going to jeopardize the safety of myself or my fellow countrymen. I also don't believe that she will become a burden to society as the facts show otherwise.

Separate a mother from her child would be a heartless thing to do and I don't see how society would benefit from taking such a harsh stance on her illegal immigration.

giggle point for the bold Steven.

I also do not see why we as a nation have to pay for some one elses decisions in life to cheat a system (cracked and bent as it is). If it's a harsh socio-economic problem, then they should elect officals that would help them out, enact laws them help them out ... get this... IN THEIR COUNTRY. I know.. shocking concept.

In a perfect world, I'd agree with you, however, we as a nation have a nasty habit of dipping our hands into other nation's 'stuff' often through policy driven by corporate interests. The US has had a very close, interdependent relationship with Mexico for a very long time. If the byproduct of our hand dipping is an influx of illegal immigration, then we're mostly to blame, yet nobody wants to talk about viable options (revamping NAFTA to name one).

To say that the people of Mexico should be rising up against such economic injustice is not being aware of the magnitude of the situation. Big money talks and the poor have no voice in politics. In other words, if you're not comparibly outraged about corporations that have manipulated trade policy in their favor as you are about the growing number of illegals in this country then you're just blowing smoke.

[Aymerlu 3]

Anyone living and / or working in the US illegally should not ever be entitled to any benefit whatsoever. Period. Legal immigrants and legally employed and contributing non-immigrants ought to have their entitlements based on their contributions just like any US citizen. Anything else is #######.

What about their children? Should people working in the US illegally be eligible for neonatal care, for example?

So...doesn't that punish babies for their parents immigration? In your scenario, it is better for a mom to let her baby die than bring it to the doctor in the U.S.? This is also taking into account it's not easy to travel with a sick baby, if you're going to say she should take it back to El Salvador or the Dominican Republic.

They can do what many women do and pay for their medical needs. I am so damn sick of people that get the medical services among other freebies and are not legal citizens and then having to see hard working citizens not be able to qualify for anything. Not right and so very unfair.

[eric&gen 0]

In other news??!!! NASA is planning to hire illegal aliens for there next planned space walk on the national space station.lol

[Caladan 19]

It doesn't really bother me that some people are sneaking in illegally, at least not from a 'but I'm doing it legally!!!!' perspective. I'm also not paying a smuggler a few thousand dollars, living in fear of the INS, working a crappy job, and living in limbo with no rights, either.

Illegal immigration bothers me for other reasons. Ideally, in magical fairy world where I get what I want, it would be a multi-pronged solution:

On the immigrant end:

Got a CiMT? Out you go.

Got a communicable disease on the list? Out you go.

Otherwise admissible? You can stay, but some sort of fine to cover the additional processing costs, plus the usual hoops.

I can't see deporting 11 million people as a workable solution.

On the business end:

Start knocking heads and enforcing compliance with immigration laws. Make an example out of a few peeps.

Re-negotiate parts of NAFTA so Mexico's economy at least has a chance, because look, the reason we don't need a fence up along Canada's border is that there's no incentive to immigrate (even with birthright citizenship!!!1!!). As more Mexican workers decide to stay in Mexico, more Americans get those jobs. Should be okay all around. Might pay a bit more for produce.

On the government end:

I could go either way on a guest worker program except that it doesn't seem to have been very popular in Europe where it was tried.

I'd like this to be the last amnesty. We need to stay on top of this issue every two years with some sort of review, because it's one thing to deport people after two years, but quite a different one after 20.

This is all magical fairy territory. But I think it's more workable than mass deportation, eliminating birthright citizenship, and papering over it for another 20 years.

[eric&gen 0]

Anyone living and / or working in the US illegally should not ever be entitled to any benefit whatsoever. Period. Legal immigrants and legally employed and contributing non-immigrants ought to have their entitlements based on their contributions just like any US citizen. Anything else is #######.

What about their children? Should people working in the US illegally be eligible for neonatal care, for example?

So...doesn't that punish babies for their parents immigration? In your scenario, it is better for a mom to let her baby die than bring it to the doctor in the U.S.? This is also taking into account it's not easy to travel with a sick baby, if you're going to say she should take it back to El Salvador or the Dominican Republic.

They can do what many women do and pay for their medical needs. I am so damn sick of people that get the medical services among other freebies and are not legal citizens and then having to see hard working citizens not be able to qualify for anything. Not right and so very unfair.

Well said.

Doesn't it piss off anyone here that you are having to wait (in my case 20 months) to do the LEGAL process and someone can walk over the border in a matter of minutes and be with their loved ones, get free health care and free education, etc etc? Why even bother doing it right? I guess I should have picked up my wife in a boat and sped to Florida.....

Yea it does makes me sick. What gives them the right to complain and wave there stupid flag in our country lol.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

It doesn't really bother me that some people are sneaking in illegally, at least not from a 'but I'm doing it legally!!!!' perspective. I'm also not paying a smuggler a few thousand dollars, living in fear of the INS, working a crappy job, and living in limbo with no rights, either.

Illegal immigration bothers me for other reasons. Ideally, in magical fairy world where I get what I want, it would be a multi-pronged solution:

On the immigrant end:

Got a CiMT? Out you go.

Got a communicable disease on the list? Out you go.

Otherwise admissible? You can stay, but some sort of fine to cover the additional processing costs, plus the usual hoops.

I can't see deporting 11 million people as a workable solution.

On the business end:

Start knocking heads and enforcing compliance with immigration laws. Make an example out of a few peeps.

Re-negotiate parts of NAFTA so Mexico's economy at least has a chance, because look, the reason we don't need a fence up along Canada's border is that there's no incentive to immigrate (even with birthright citizenship!!!1!!). As more Mexican workers decide to stay in Mexico, more Americans get those jobs. Should be okay all around. Might pay a bit more for produce.

On the government end:

I could go either way on a guest worker program except that it doesn't seem to have been very popular in Europe where it was tried.

I'd like this to be the last amnesty. We need to stay on top of this issue every two years with some sort of review, because it's one thing to deport people after two years, but quite a different one after 20.

This is all magical fairy territory. But I think it's more workable than mass deportation, eliminating birthright citizenship, and papering over it for another 20 years.

Common sense backed viable solutions!

(although I part with you on the communicable disease part)

[Ban Hammer 13,133]

In other news??!!! NASA is planning to hire illegal aliens for there next planned space walk on the national space station.lol

i saw that, but i thought it was the new deportation procedure

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

And your figure seems very high for a non-problematic birth. Do you have a cite for it? (A non-complicated birth at my hospital costs $900. A complicated one costs $14,000 (I only know this due to a friend's insurance drama with his two kids.)

$900.00? Where do you live? The hospital bills for the birth of my daughter (a scheduled and quite non-complicated c-section) along with the immediate pre-natal care (months 6-9) and the immediate post natal care added up to almost 30K. I reckon that throwing a complication or two into the mix would up that bill some?

The baby now has dual citizenship, and the parents, highly educated people, have an incentive to stay in the United States and put that Ph.D. to good use here (by transitioning from a student visa to a work visa.) Seems to me this is a win-win situation.

That dog don't hunt. The parents have just as much an incentive to stay here if the child was not a US citizen. Any employment based immigration benefit the parents you put forth here would acquire in order to stay here will afford the child legal status as well. If the parents (one of them, really) pursue employment based residency down the line, the same benefit is bestowed upon the child. And once the parent(s) naturalize, so does the child. The US citizenship of the child, on the other hand, doesn't earn the parents anything in terms of a right to stay and work here. All it does is feeding an aura of entitlement to stay here with the child in what is now the child's "native" country.

I was thinking prety much the same. I can only imagine that the $900 was the co-pay?

Nope, it wasn't the co-pay. It was just the birth, though, not care beofre and after. Beyond that, it wasn't my finances, so I'm somewhat at sea. I'd still like to see the cite, though.

On your other point, I guess my point is that the aura of entitlement isn't always a bad thing. "My kid is American and should grow up American because look at all the opportunities he'll have" has probably kept us more than a few research chemists. They're not slumming it on welfare.

...

I guess what I'm not seeing is that having citizenship for the baby is an overwhelming reason to come here (one that isn't trumped, say, by the economic incentives.) And I'd rather go after the economic incentives before we trot out the blut in the boden stuff.

My "cite" for the figure I quoted is the series of hospital bills related to the non-complicated birth of my child which, as you may understand, I won't publish. Those numbers are real. You'll just have to take my word on it.

You may also want to take note that for every research chemist that decides to stay here because (s)he has a USC child - most would stay either way - there are scores of unskilled aliens doing just the same. How do I know that most would stay either way? I happen to work with scores of (mostly South American) work visa holders that are, without exception, pursuing legal residency based on their employment the first chance they get. And they do so even though they commonly don't have US born children. Your argument that birthright citizenship helps us retain scientific and economic talent just doesn't fly. Economic and research opportunities do that - you actually say so yourself sort of negating your own argument.

Now: How would a POE go about controlling brith tourism? These folks get here at 2, 3, 4 months of their pregnancy. Not like anyone really could tell. Unless we are going to have pregnancy tests at the POE...

Addressing the issue at the POE is not practical. Limiting citizenship to children born to US citizens and legal immigrants, on the other hand, is and would stop birth tourism outright. Since you seem to think that US citizenship birthright isn't a big magnet as it is, then why not put away with it? I mean, you seem to think that nobody gains anything from it anyways. So then why defend it so much?

[Heracles 417]

Anyone living and / or working in the US illegally should not ever be entitled to any benefit whatsoever. Period. Legal immigrants and legally employed and contributing non-immigrants ought to have their entitlements based on their contributions just like any US citizen. Anything else is #######.

What about their children? Should people working in the US illegally be eligible for neonatal care, for example?

Free? (Actually free = paid for by others, like you and me)

Obviously not.

If they pay for it, I have no real problem.

Yep Exactly. This is becoming a real joke. The US has enough of it's own social problems and does not need this massive extra burden from Mexico..

I just had a few friends come from Sydney and Melbourne and they where shocked to see almost everything with Spanish below it.

[peezey 0]

Yep, wouldn't want to actually get any kind of revenue from Spanish speakers, now would we? That would be horrible! Along with the SS taxes and federal taxes that are paid but benefits never claimed, it's a horrible thing they are adding a slush to these things!

Edited January 11, 2007 by peezey

[Heracles 417]

This is all magical fairy territory. But I think it's more workable than mass deportation, eliminating birthright citizenship, and papering over it for another 20 years.

Is there a new trend in America I am not aware of. There seems to be a growing number of people who do not have the stomach to see anything through. Much like bratty ###### kids. IE EG The war on drugs is tough so lets just legalize them all.

How about properly securing the border?

How about fining the ###### out of employers who hire illegal immigrants?

How about absolutely no rights for illegal immigrants let alone free tax payer funded services?

How about deporting people and telling them in their language that next time they are caught they will be jailed for a minimum of 10 years?

The country has so many families and children living in poverty yet certain people here, the usual bunch, are still advocating we take care of these poor poor Mexicans..