Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

To add some layers to this debate...

Cheap labor is not good for workers, but it is for consumers, and were America an internalized nation the average American would have no where near the amount of material wealth that he currently has.

Also, in the immigration debate there are humanitarian questions. Billions of People are starving to death, and living in inescapable poverty. Coming to America allows many such people to ability to build and live decent lives. Would it not serve the greater good to give up a few dollars of hourly salary for the sake of ending the suffering of millions?

Against the humanitarian arguement, many say that we should only focus on the good of our own people, and that its not our nations responsibility to ease the lives of foreigners. I disdain that arguement, as I believe it is nothing more then nationalistically masked greed.

If immigrants assimlilate into our society, will they in time acquire our lazyness, and thereby contribute to the unemployment rate?

Maybe, though some of their work ethic is culturally based, and many of them are just making money here to take home, and therefore won't be here permenently.

Pragmatistically speaking, theres a limit to how many of them we can facilitate, and perhaps simply increasing immigration quotas will allow us to fill our market with all that it needs without endangering us to an over flow. Building a wall may keep the majority of illegals out (assuming we can get rid of those 12 million that already in).

Action here however is not politically viable, and the Republicans are in a darned if they do darned if they don't situation, where they can eithier alienate there base, or lose Hispanic gains they have been working on for years.

If there's so much to be gained by coming here, why can't they be bothered with coming here legally?
That's the issue of the debate. Granted, there are those who want no immigrants at all, BUT, in general, I have no problem with any immigrants, so long as they follow the law.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

I agree. They are not called "It's OK because the just want to make a living" immagrants, they're called illegal immagrants. If they want to be here, they need to be fill out all the forms to be legal, just like my ancestors had to.

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Dag, yo.

One of my friends is from the Dominican Republic. He lives just outside of Santo Domingo, and when I met him, he had been trying to immigrate here for 7 years. His mother lives in Boston, and she is helping him to immigrate. He has a wife and 3 kids, 2 jobs, is educated, and is a hard worker. He was learning english, but he still wasn't great at it yet. When he filed out the paperwork, he was single, and he and his wife never got officially married because they didn't want to have to restart the application process. He had already been waiting 7 years when I met him. He and his mother were both paying lawyers and going through the process to immigrate. A little while after we because friends, he and his family wanted to join the church, though a requirement to baptism was that they be married officially. This was a very difficult decision for them, because that would mean he would have to start over from scratch on the application process. In the end, they chose to get married and then restarted the application process for them. Last I heard, they are still living there, waiting their time before they can immigrate, and that was in 1999. He told me that on average, most of his friends who have immigrated usually wait around 13 years.

The reason their are so many illegal immigrants is because if your family is hungry, and you need work, sometimes 13 years is just too long to wait.

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Sometimes, it DOES take time to immigrate legally, and that IS a pain, but it's still no excuse for illegal immigration. It'd be like running a red light and saying "It takes too long for it to turn green".

I have no sympathy for illegal immigrants. Let them be arrested and detained for an undertermined amount, losing everything they have and putting their families through hell, then I might.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

But it's not just running an arbitrary red light. It's more akin to running a red light to try to get your dying wife who's also giving birth to the hospital on time so she can get proper care. I think almost any of us, in such a stressed situation, would probably run the red light then.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

The problem with this bill is that it treats the symptoms but does nothing for the cause. There is no reason it should take 13 years to immigrate here. According to the government, INS is severely undermanned and underfunded. Before they go making illegal immigration such a painful thing to get caught for, they need to make it a faster thing to go through.

If people have clean records, have some education, and put up the money to have lawyers do the necessary work, there is no reason it should take longer than a year. It's not like we can't absorb the additional immigrants, obviously we are absorbing them now, just illegally rather than legally.

And SR, I bet you'd probably run a red light yourself if it took 13 years to change to green.

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They are being lazy by not going through with the legal process. We should build a wall. Not a wall with machine guns and all that. That would be an Iron Curtain. We nee one to stop most of the people. It's impossible to stop all illigal immigration but we need to decrease it. Immigration is needed in this country. It's what makes America be America. Good things in large amounts suck. The thing is that many of these people like communism. They were funded by communists. That's why that big protest was on May Day; a communist holiday. I wouldn't like it if people supporting communists got to vote.

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http://s3.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=34919

If they were Communist, why would they come to America?

Besides, the only Latin American country with a Communist government is Cuba; immigrants from there can just put their feet on U.S. soil, & they're home.

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Yes Cuba is the only officially communist country there. Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, is a socialist. Not the same thing but close. Why would they want to come here? Communists want to spread communism. Many of them were holding up signs with the picture of Che Guevara with the writing "HERO". Che Guevara is a much more radical communist than Fidel Castro.

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http://s3.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=34919

The leaders of these countries are Socialist, not their people. Living under a Communist government isn't pretty, so these people want to come to America where they can work for their families instead of the state.

May Day's relation to anarchism, socialism, & communism is in commemoration of the Haymarket riots; May 1 was chosen for the Great American Boycott because it coincides with the international labor movemennt. These illegal immigrants aren't communists or socialists; they just want to live & work freely in America.

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Did I mention that they are funded by communists? Or that they were holding up signs with Che Guevara? For those of you who don't know Che Guevara was a communist extremist. Yes I mentioned all this. You say that the people aren't socialist despite the fact that their leaders are. Yet Hugo Chavez was elected. And I'm not sure they want to live and work freely. At least not all of them. 25% of prisoners in jails are illigal immigrants. And our taxes pay for them too.

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http://s3.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=34919

And do you have any proof that they're funded by communists? Besides, Chávez was democratically elected, but he's been accused of electoral fraud, human rights violations, & politcal repression. Immigrants do want to live & work freely, but they break the law to try to live a "good" life; that's why they're in jail.

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Can you show me any links for proof? I hadn't even heard Communism mentioned in the whole immigration thing until you came around.

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Chavez may have been democratically elected. Then again so was Hitler. The immigrants are not in jail for coming here. Illigal immigration is currently not a felony. They are in there for murder, theft, drug smuggling etc... And how do I know that they are funded by communists. They admit to it.

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http://s3.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=34919

As I said before you deleted your previous post, where is your proof for that? Show me some links. Just because some of the protesters carred Che signs doesn't mean that they're all Communist, or Marxist, or socialist.

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Allow me to make a correction to what I said. Some of them are marxist. Not all of them, but a good number of them support Che. Che was a very voilent. The irony in it was that Che was racist against Mexicans. Che was a verr voilent man. Check this out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Criticism. He did some nasty stuff. As for them being funded by communists? Proof is on this sight: http://wizbangblog.com/2006/05/01/illegal-immigration-protests-bolshevik-revolution-redux.php

Those that don't believe in communism are being used.

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http://s3.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=34919

They're not being funded; they're being endorsed by the RCP. Difference.

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Just a question. Why do you change ur avvie like every 5 minutes?

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http://s3.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=34919

He has a rotating avatar.

Toastpaint

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Thank you.

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http://s3.bitefight.org/c.php?uid=34919

See, whenever this topic comes up in school I say "They're Illegal Immigrants, Keep them out" and everyone in the class does an incresingly loud "oooooOOOOOOOO" noise and start calling me raceist.

...I don't get it. Apprently they don't comprehend the ILLEGAL in Illegal immigrants. THEY'RE ILLEGAL. AGAINST THE LAW.

...I don't understand, someone give me the views of why someone would possibly want Illegal immigration.

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So large companies can get more only-slightly-more-costly-than-slave labor.

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any thoughts on Bush's border plan? is it a good idea? is it a bad solution but well intentioned?

Personally, I feel that Bush's National Guard border plan is terrible, but no surprise there. Not because I dislike everything the man does with prejudice, but because when a nation already has misused its National Guard by deploying them to foreign countries for war (which is not what the nat'l guard is meant for--it is supposed to be like a domestic police unit or also help out people during disasters) it is not a good idea to ask for 6000 more from an already depleted pool of service people. We are spread so thin in Iraq and Afghanistan that people are being called up for duty in essentially criminal manners (people who have been out of the military for a long time, grandmothers/fathers who are quite old for fighting) so I dont think it's a good idea to ask for more. Plus, will militarizing a border help that much. I thought the problem was that illegals SNEAK PAST border patrol and fences and checkpoints.

Responses?

More people on the border will make it harder to sneak past patrols. If there are more patrols, there will, presumably, be less distance between them.
As for the national guard, I'm under the impression that some of the people used for this will be units that are being pulled out of Iraq and/or units that are now not going to Iraq. Given the choice between Bagdad and New Mexico, I'm guessing the soldiers would pick New Mexico. Besides, this it the kind of thing the guard is better suited for.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

6,000 really isn't a big number, either. At the height of the National Guard's involvement in Iraq, there were 60,000 of them there. Now there are 20,000 in Iraq. So you can see that 6,000 isn't going to stretch their numbers too much.

Also, illegally immigrating mexicans aren't out to kill, so I'm sure this is a much preferable assignment.

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i guess i misstated my point in all of my sarcastic huffin' and puffin'. my point is this is the type of thing the guard is for much more so than is Iraq. also, what i was saying is that when katrina hit, there weren't many national guard to help out with that, because that is a primary function of the national guard so between iraq, afghanistan, and now the border there won't be many for emergencies.

plus i also wanted to mock the idea of putting military units on the border while insisting that it is not becoming a militarized border.

point well taken about the relative safety of border patrol. im sure those guys+gals are happy to be pulling that duty.

I doubt they are happy to be pulling that duty, I hear that Border Patrol is about the most mind-numbing and boring job on the planet. Long stretches of boredom followed by brief flashes of seeing motion in the distance. It is the best option out of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., but I guess happy is probably an exaggeration. But I digress from what I actually came here to post.

I learned today that in order for a Mexican to legally immigrate, he must be a landowner in Mexico. So if a person isn't rich enough to buy property in Mexico, say someone who is starving and needs food and a job, they cannot immigrate here legally period. It's not like these people illegally coming here are doing it this way because they can immigrate legally. They aren't doing it for the excitement or to save a buck or two. It's because life has become impossible in Mexico, and this is their only opportunity for progression. For these people who are too poor to own property, they can die in Mexico, they can die sneaking across the border, or they can get lucky and sneak across, albeit illegally, and have a chance at providing for their families.

The immigration rules as they stand make it extremely difficult for those who would be most blessed by immigrating to do it legally.

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I agree; we need to change our immigration laws to make it easier to get in, not suddenly let a whole bunch of illegals get amnesty.

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I think that's the point of the guest worker program. It's not because amnesty is the answer, it's because this creates an easier way for immigrants to get in legally, which should help a lot.

An oblique way to look at the program pushed by the President: This proposal is making everyone angry, which might mean that it's probably pretty close to middle ground.

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