Illegal Immigration - Big Issue for 2008 Elections?

So do we count criminals in the State Pen for congressional seats? Illegal immigration is the single most force that is destroying our country. One only needs to look at California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona as evidence.
 
simple solution

I only scanned some of the previous post, so if this has been covered I apologise.

The solution to the illigal alien problem is simple. The only reason they sneek here is because they can get higher paying jobs (low to us but high to them).. When a person is caught with illigal aliens in their employ they, THE EMPLOYER, needs to be put in jail... it seems to me if you stop the employment then that will solve the problem..
 
JOBS is NOT the only reason. If it was, do you think there would be %30 percent of them in our prisons? The fact is many come here to sell drugs and make trouble.

And last time I checked, breaking a law to work was wrong.

"Hi, I just shot the boss so that I could become the boss here at the Deli. What I just wanted to work."

They are killing us. Plain and simple. One peso at a time.
 
The solution to the illigal alien problem is simple. The only reason they sneek here is because they can get higher paying jobs (low to us but high to them).. When a person is caught with illigal aliens in their employ they, THE EMPLOYER, needs to be put in jail... it seems to me if you stop the employment then that will solve the problem..
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It is not only irresponsbile for LE to try and shift the burden of immigration enforcement onto business owners, it just plain doesn't work.

There is a vast supply of forged documents that are so good that only a laboratory could possibly tell them from the real thing, if even they can. All a business owner can do is ask for the documents that the law requires he asks for, he can not judge their validity.
 
Empty talk is all we'll hear on this subject unless big money backs a shift in the status quo, which I doubt will happen. Too much cheap labor, too many democratic voters to sign up, too much welfare/entitlements to hand out. Money to be made and grabbed on it's way by, by those who have the politicians ears & purse-strings.

Big issues will be Iraq. Oil. Economy. A Safer America. More laws restricting more rights and freedoms in the name of safety.

Better learn to hable Espanol pronto, amigos.
 
1,000 deaths? In what time frame?
Fox Says U.S. Shares Blame for Problems Along Border

By GINGER THOMPSON
Published: September 5, 2005
MEXICO CITY, Sept. 4 - President Vicente Fox responded over the weekend to criticism from American authorities about a recent surge in violence and illegal immigration along the border, saying that the United States shares responsibility for the problems and should work harder with Mexico to fix them.

Mr. Fox said he rejected "forcefully" the statements by the Bush administration and governors of border states, contending that they had unfairly depicted Mexico as a safe haven for organized crime, though his government has arrested more leading drug traffickers and dismantled more cartels than any of its predecessors. He also said Mexican immigrants had been portrayed unfairly as potential terrorists when they had in fact become a pillar of the American economy.

In an interview aboard the presidential airplane on Saturday, Mr. Fox acknowledged that his government had a long way to go to make the border secure. But he said the United States should stop casting blame for problems created by both countries.

He also said the United States should not allow concerns about border security to derail efforts to adopt new measures to allow millions of additional Mexicans to become guest workers in the United States.

"Security is a shared responsibility," President Fox said. Then, referring to the United States, he said, "I don't understand that now they only cast blame and accusations, and they do not collaborate or cooperate so that together we can resolve this problem."

On the changes in immigration policy, he said: "There is will on the part of President Bush, according to what he has expressed publicly, and what he has expressed in conversations with us. So, I trust that in the coming weeks and months, we will succeed finally in arriving at a positive resolution for the benefit of both countries."

More pressing realities, however, may once again stand in the way. Work on immigration policy was first postponed four years ago, after the Sept. 11 attacks. Then it was put off for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign. Now, it may be set aside again as the United States struggles to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

But Mr. Fox has little time left; he is entering his last year in office.

His comments were aimed at what many here perceive as a troubling shift in United States attitudes and diplomatic policy toward Mexico.

In recent weeks, the United States has openly berated Mexico for failing to stop a wave of drug-related violence that has taken close to 1,000 lives along the 2,000-mile border. The Bush administration has issued numerous travel advisories and temporarily closed its consulate in the city of Nuevo Laredo, which has turned into a murder capital as drug traffickers fight for control of lucrative routes into Texas.

Last month, the governors of New Mexico and Arizona declared states of emergency, saying they needed federal help to fend off a flood of undocumented migrants.

Neither Mr. Fox nor his aides denied the problems. But the authorities here said that the responses from the United States did not reflect the complexities of the problems, nor did they acknowledge that Mexico had undertaken significant efforts to address them.

"This self-sustained blaming someone else, is it going to help anything?" said a high-level intelligence official who asked not to be named because of the diplomatic sensitivities involved. "If everyone in the United States keeps profiting politically from this very difficult situation, then we are not going to be able to make things better." He added, "We are trying to do our job, even with our limited resources."

Mr. Fox said trade and other day-to-day interactions between the countries had not been affected by the political tensions, and he said he trusted that President Bush would not allow concerns over security to stall efforts to pass changes in immigration requirements.

"Let there be no doubt, that we are going to win this battle," he said, referring to his government's efforts in Nuevo Laredo. "So it cannot be used as a pretext to provoke a distancing in relations between the United States and Mexico."

He said his country shared the pain of the hurricane. An estimated 140,000 Mexicans were affected, he said, and 70,000 are unaccounted for. But now, he said, the contributions of Mexican workers could be more important than ever.

"The reconstruction of that city and of that region is going to require a lot of labor," Mr. Fox said of New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama. "And if there is anything Mexicans are good at, it is construction."
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I did not intend to post on this thread because you'all seem much more informed than i.
The only reason i will is that the one thing i have not seen mentioned is this.
Construction companys and others jobs that require manual labor are getting harder to fill every day.
Even though the starting pay is decent and chances for advancement very good.
This might be because many of our young folks who dont pursue a formal education or trade school.
prefer to get welfare foodstamps and other programs to actually supporting themselves.
I betcha that if we cut off the free grubstake and required the freeloaders to work for a liveing.
There would not be nearly so many jobs to be filled by illegals.
An example-- As a construction foreman i once built a small bridge in an area with a very high unemployment and welfare rate. After the main excavation is complete we usually try to hire local labor.
On this day we had a large crowd of onlookers watching from a nearby roadway. As the operators finished up i walked up on the roadway and mentioned that we were looking for help and would train anyone interested in a job.
A live hand grenade would not have cleared the area any faster. One of the lead carpenters walked up laughing and accused me of running everyone off. As i tried to explain he waived me off saying yeah i know you offered them a job did'nt you.
That was one of my first jobs as a foreman i've seen the same thing many times since.
 
1. What do you consider a "good" starting wage?
2. What level of education do you consider "good"?
3. Do you believe in unionizing?
4. If you can't find the work locally, do you believe in hiring illegals?

Just some questions. Thanks for posting.
 
Ptown
I am not disagreeing with anything posted on this thread. Just mentioning another aspect of what i consider part of the problem.
No we have never worked illegals
A fair starting wage is very different in different areas of the US. but for untrained workers we can usually start about 12bucks an hour. Insurance in available after a couple of months.
Unions are a must in some situations in others they do more harm than good.
I work for a smaller company where the owner is helpful and does'nt mind getting his hands dirty if need be.
I started as a labor in construction many years ago. Over the course of several years i bought land built my home and raised my family.

Missed a question' anyone who reads and can understand what they read is a possibility.
One think i have learned over the years is that education and intelligence are completly different things.
 
A personal anecdote to respond:

In the late 70's in a small town in East Texas I worked as a carpenter. Carpenters made $12.50 per hour then. It was a middle income way of life. A carpenter could buy a house, have two cars and send his kids to college. Then I met Juan Z. . Juan Z. was the very first illegal immigrant I had ever met. He had been hired as a laborer - and man did he work hard! He worked twice as hard as the other laborers. Laborers were making about $7 per hour, at that time.

Juan was the first, but he was quickly followed by many many more, and guess what? They would work for less than $7 an hour. Pretty soon the market was flooded with $5 an hour laborers - and once one contractor took that into account to deliver a lower bid than the rest, well the rest of the contractors had to follow suit to stay competitive. Laborers were where the carpenters came from. Pretty soon there were thousands of carpenters willing to work for $10 per hours. All of the wages went down and down and down. To the point that the only people willing to work for those wages were people who had a different standard of living, people who didn't mind living 12 to an apartment and sending most of their money to their families in Mexico. People who weren't here trying to build a middle income life style.

This all took place in a matter of 3 years or less. Now when you go onto a construction site in the South, you will see that the workforce is 99% hispanic, and in that same East Texas town a carpenter makes on average $8 per hour, in 2005 wages. $12.50 in 1977 was a living wage. $8 in 2005 is not remotely comparable.

If jobs become hard to fill, the wages will go up to the point where it becomes attactive to do the work. It is simply supply economics - too many workers willing to work for low wages equals low wages, too few workers means that the wages go up and up and up until they reach a point where the wages are attractive enough that the jobs fill up.

This is true for all work.
 
Butch has brought up some excellent points, which all of us would do well to remember. Illegals have a very decided influence on forcing wages down. It is NOT a matter of their taking jobs that no one else would want. How many people would like to have a decent job working as a framer, painter, roofer, etc., but can't get the economics to work because of people here illegally who are working for much less than they will and who receive various taxpayer paid benefits on top of all of this, while not paying taxes, buying insurance, etc.?

A columnist was recently discussing the workplace economics that Japan is now facing. They are encountering labor issues similar to ours. However, they are not resorting to open immigration in order to do so. First, they are encouraging seniors to continue in the workforce by offering decent wages. Secondly, and more importantly, they are resorting to extensive workplace automation. The columnist summed it up rather neatly, when he stated that the Japanese are resorting to MECHANIZATION to assist their economy, while we are using MEXICANIZATION. Clearly, the Japanese are a little more farsighted in their understanding of the economic effects than we appear to be. Food for thought, IMHO.

FWIW,

emc
 
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