Poll: Public Wants Illegals to Go Home

[Sofiyya 1,687]

LAWL, threads like these remind me of the poll I did where an overwhelming majority of VJers think they are "more intelligent than average." Hehehe no freakin' way.

Yea, the pro-illegal VJers dumb us all down.

[peejay 327]

LAWL, threads like these remind me of the poll I did where an overwhelming majority of VJers think they are "more intelligent than average." Hehehe no freakin' way.

They're all idiots except for you.

[Alex+R 0]

LAWL, threads like these remind me of the poll I did where an overwhelming majority of VJers think they are "more intelligent than average." Hehehe no freakin' way.

They're all idiots except for you.

;)

No seriously.

eta: I was just trying to be inflammatory. Don't sweat it.

Edited May 28, 2007 by Alex+R

[Skeeter211 2]

I think its a simple matter of fairness. My Fiance and I just had to jump through 10 million hoops to get a piece of paper that says she can legally enter the US. Why is it okay then that people who don't play by the rules and get a visa should be rewarded with amnesty or being allowed to stay and get a "path to citizenship". My understanding is immigration fraud results in a lifetime ban. Coming here illegally is fraud in my opinion. Send them back home and ban them for life. Just my opinion....if I have to do it the right way or face a lifetime ban....everyone should face that same fate.

Scott

P.S...I will pay more for my produce if they will agree to go home and file a petition.

[Alex+R 0]

I think its a simple matter of fairness. My Fiance and I just had to jump through 10 million hoops to get a piece of paper that says she can legally enter the US. Why is it okay then that people who don't play by the rules and get a visa should be rewarded with amnesty or being allowed to stay and get a "path to citizenship". My understanding is immigration fraud results in a lifetime ban. Coming here illegally is fraud in my opinion. Send them back home and ban them for life. Just my opinion....if I have to do it the right way or face a lifetime ban....everyone should face that same fate.

Scott

P.S...I will pay more for my produce if they will agree to go home and file a petition.

Mm, that argument makes me hungry for cookies... maybe even some nice stolen cookies...

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Steven, I think your point is misplaced. The huge influx of illegals is not because of NAFTA it is because of the 1986 amnesty bill. That stupid bill is what opened the flood gates. And now we want to do it again! Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!

Gary, go research the numbers in the years prior to NAFTA. I've never said it's the single cause - just a big factor, not just in terms of numbers, but in destabilizing Mexico's economy. Go look up information on NAFTA - there's a lot of analysis over its successes and failures.

Yeah, about those numbers: Mexico has seen a much stronger GDP growth post NAFTA than ever before.

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

Steven, I think your point is misplaced. The huge influx of illegals is not because of NAFTA it is because of the 1986 amnesty bill. That stupid bill is what opened the flood gates. And now we want to do it again! Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!

Gary, go research the numbers in the years prior to NAFTA. I've never said it's the single cause - just a big factor, not just in terms of numbers, but in destabilizing Mexico's economy. Go look up information on NAFTA - there's a lot of analysis over its successes and failures.

Yeah, about those numbers: Mexico has seen a much stronger GDP growth post NAFTA than ever before.

That doesn't tell the whole story, Reinhard, nor does it negate the facts about its negative impact on the family farms.

NAFTA was sold to the American public as the magic formula that would improve the American economy at the same time it would raise up the impoverished Mexican economy. The time has come to look at the failures of this type of trade agreement before we engage in more and lower the economic prospects of all workers affected.

While there has been some media coverage of NAFTA's ruinous impact on US industrial communities, there has been even less media attention paid to its catastrophic effects in Mexico:

* NAFTA, by permitting heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, has driven the Mexican farmer off the land due to low-priced imports of US corn and other agricultural products. Some 2 million Mexicans have been forced out of agriculture, and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty. These people are among those that cross the border to feed their families. (Meanwhile, corn-based tortilla prices climbed by 50%. No wonder many so Mexican peasants have called NAFTA their 'death warrant.'

* NAFTA's service-sector rules allowed big firms like Wal-Mart to enter the Mexican market and, selling low-priced goods made by ultra-cheap labor in China, to displace locally-based shoe, toy, and candy firms. An estimated 28,000 small and medium-sized Mexican businesses have been eliminated.

* Wages along the Mexican border have actually been driven down by about 25% since NAFTA, reported a Carnegie Endowment study. An over-supply of workers, combined with the crushing of union organizing drives as government policy, has resulted in sweatshop pay running sweatshops along the border where wages typically run 60 cents to $1 an hour.

So rather than improving living standards, Mexican wages have actually fallen since NAFTA. The initial growth in the number of jobs has leveled off, with China's even more repressive labor system luring US firms to locate there instead.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-30.htm

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

Steven, I think your point is misplaced. The huge influx of illegals is not because of NAFTA it is because of the 1986 amnesty bill. That stupid bill is what opened the flood gates. And now we want to do it again! Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!

Gary, go research the numbers in the years prior to NAFTA. I've never said it's the single cause - just a big factor, not just in terms of numbers, but in destabilizing Mexico's economy. Go look up information on NAFTA - there's a lot of analysis over its successes and failures.

Yeah, about those numbers: Mexico has seen a much stronger GDP growth post NAFTA than ever before.

This is the other part of that article...I was trying to keep it small but this is too important not to post the text here:

But Mexicans must still contend with the results of the American-owned 'maquiladora' sweatshops: subsistence-level wages, pollution, congestion, horrible living conditions (cardboard shacks and open sewers), and a lack of resources (for streetlights and police) to deal with a wave of violence against vulnerable young women working in the factories. The survival (or less) level wages coupled with harsh working conditions have not been the great answer to Mexican poverty, while they have temporarily been the answer to Corporate America's demand for low wages.

With US firms unwilling to pay even minimal taxes, NAFTA has hardly produced the promised uplift in the lives of Mexicans. Ciudad Juarez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo, whose city is crammed with US-owned low-wage plants, expressed it plainly: "We have no way to provide water, sewage, and sanitation workers. Every year, we get poorer and poorer even though we create more and more wealth."

Falling industrial wages, peasants forced off the land, small businesses liquidated, growing poverty: these are direct consequences of NAFTA. This harsh suffering explains why so many desperate Mexicans -- lured to the border area in the false hope that they could find dignity in the US-owned maquiladoras -- are willing to risk their lives to cross the border to provide for their families. There were 2.5 million Mexican illegals in 1995; 8 million have crossed the border since then. In 2005, some 400 desperate Mexicans died trying to enter the US.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-30.htm

[Addie_Goodvibes 0]

I think its a simple matter of fairness. My Fiance and I just had to jump through 10 million hoops to get a piece of paper that says she can legally enter the US. Why is it okay then that people who don't play by the rules and get a visa should be rewarded with amnesty or being allowed to stay and get a "path to citizenship". My understanding is immigration fraud results in a lifetime ban. Coming here illegally is fraud in my opinion. Send them back home and ban them for life. Just my opinion....if I have to do it the right way or face a lifetime ban....everyone should face that same fate.

Scott

P.S...I will pay more for my produce if they will agree to go home and file a petition.

Not only do they refuse to obey the law, and their first Act on USA soil was that of criminal defiance they break local and state laws on a daily basis ( Driving illegally, working illegally, ID Theft, drug trafficking) They are no more than Criminals "working hard" only to break the laws of a country they are invading like cockroaches and cancer, if left untreated spread and detsroy everything they come in contact with

The education system

The Health Care system

Real estate and Neigborhoods

The immigration system

The war is not in Iraq it is on the USA's Southern Border.

[Donna A 4]

i wish we could vote on this....send them back or keep them. i bet more people would show up to vote if they had a choice about it.

[pedroh 21]

I think its a simple matter of fairness. My Fiance and I just had to jump through 10 million hoops to get a piece of paper that says she can legally enter the US. Why is it okay then that people who don't play by the rules and get a visa should be rewarded with amnesty or being allowed to stay and get a "path to citizenship". My understanding is immigration fraud results in a lifetime ban. Coming here illegally is fraud in my opinion. Send them back home and ban them for life. Just my opinion....if I have to do it the right way or face a lifetime ban....everyone should face that same fate.

Scott

P.S...I will pay more for my produce if they will agree to go home and file a petition.

Not only do they refuse to obey the law, and their first Act on USA soil was that of criminal defiance they break local and state laws on a daily basis ( Driving illegally, working illegally, ID Theft, drug trafficking) They are no more than Criminals "working hard" only to break the laws of a country they are invading like cockroaches and cancer, if left untreated spread and detsroy everything they come in contact with

The education system

The Health Care system

Real estate and Neigborhoods

The immigration system

The war is not in Iraq it is on the USA's Southern Border.

how do they destroy real state and neighborhoods? too much spanish? or, are mexicans noisy? and they bring down the real state prices? or are they messy? u don't like them washing the car outside the house?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Steven, I think your point is misplaced. The huge influx of illegals is not because of NAFTA it is because of the 1986 amnesty bill. That stupid bill is what opened the flood gates. And now we want to do it again! Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!

Gary, go research the numbers in the years prior to NAFTA. I've never said it's the single cause - just a big factor, not just in terms of numbers, but in destabilizing Mexico's economy. Go look up information on NAFTA - there's a lot of analysis over its successes and failures.

Yeah, about those numbers: Mexico has seen a much stronger GDP growth post NAFTA than ever before.

That doesn't tell the whole story, Reinhard, nor does it negate the facts about its negative impact on the family farms.

If you look hard enough for excuses, you'll always find some. The bottom line remains that Mexico's economy has overall gained from NAFTA. Some sectors may not have but isn't that the same in every country around the world? It's the same here in the US with farm and manufacturing jobs of which there are far less today than there were in years past. Changing economies are something people need to adjust to rather than run away from. They are certainly not a valid excuse for the people of a country to pizz on the laws of another.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I want the illegals to go home because they are here illegally

And you are prepared to deal with the economically disruptive effects of doing so? You are prepared to uproot families that have been here for years, including the lives of young children?

Either you don't realize the impact of what you're suggesting, or....

Yes I am. It's not my problem that they have been here illegally so long that they have roots. Just because they have gotten away with it for years does not forgive the crime. They should go home. All of them. Then we can institute a guest worker program and they can come back.

I have two problems with that.

1. By letting them in (loose to non-existent border controls) and letting them stay (by not having stronger employer sanctions to begin with, by allowing Mexican consular cards, etc.), this country is complicit in their crime. That means you, I, Steven, all of us. We're complicit by the very fact that we enabled them. To punish them now is shameless political scapegoating.

2. To uproot families the way you are describing is immoral.

You complicity argument doesn't fly. These things are not within my control or yours. It's like claiming that I am somehow complicit in the Enron accounting scandal since I willingly consumed energy. Talking about Enron: Is it also immoral to cut these guys off their illegal profits seeing that they were pretty used to them?

If you insist that you are not complicit, then I hope you can agree that the Federal Government has been, and is. They enabled this mass illegal migration of people for so long, do you really think it is just for the same Federal Government to now send them packing? I don't think it is.

BTW - you are complicit. We all are. They cook in almost every restaurant, they clean in almost every office building, they pick the grapes you eat and build the homes you live in. You don't have to have played an active role in arranging all this to be complicit. You are, we all are.

1) Yes, I actually think it is just for the same federal gov't to send them packing. Do you think the government would be justified in ending a tax evasion scheme that has gone on for years or should the gov't just let the tax cheats keep their loot and let them continue to evade taxes seeing that they've been able to defraud the gov't for a long time?

2) Your complicity argument still doesn't fly. It did not the first time and all you did was repeat the same nonsense. Your argument doesn't gain strength just because you repeat it. Are you complicit in the Enron accounting scandal?

Come on we are a little complicit - I mean - we haven't elected public representatives who have taken any sort of strong position on this issue. I mean has a candidate's stance on illegal immigration been a deciding factor in any of the last presidential elections?

Unfortunately, I do not set the agenda for Presidential or Congressional campaigns. Nor do I have the kind of funds it takes these days to infuence candidates and representatives in any way. Now, the governmental system in the US was corrupted by money when I got here. Am I complicit in allowing the corrupt system of government to continue? To the extend that I am not organizing a revolution to throw out all the bought rubberstamps in Congress, yes, I am guilty as charged. Shame on me for not being the revolutionary that I need to be.

Does that mean that I need to support an amnesty that big money is looking to purchase from Congress? No, it absolutely does not. Does my failure to organize a revolution mean that those that broke our laws should not only get a "get out of jail free" card but also entitle them to a practically indefinite work visa that no law abiding alien will ever be eligible for? I most certainly don't think so.

Well I agree that we shouldn't support anything that supports the status quo - or that doesn't offer any less than a comprehensive solution to this problem. But its obvious that it didn't happen overnight - successive administrations chose either to turn a blind eye, or failed to come up with an adequate solution. Instead more prominence is given to social issues like abortion, stem cell research and the like. Important issues - sure, but hardly in the economic self-interest of the average American. Same with terrorism - important issue, but largely irrelevant to the vast majority of people going about their daily lives.

Hopefully USCs are well and truly tired of feel-good rhetoric and will start to elect people who actually have ideas and solutions.