FrankDrebin
Moderator
Strict enforcement of immigration law is fine, as long as I don't have to pay $10.00 for a head of lettuce...Because I don't like lettuce enough to pay ten bucks a head...
Illegals: Should Assets and Profits Be Seized?
- Thread starter Unique 5.7
- Start date
Lets just rip that damn border open.
That way people can freely stream into the country and pick lettuce so we can get it at a discount price.
LMAO - if you don't think your paying $10 for that head of lettuce in other ways your dreamin'...
I'm definitely envious, kjm, of the fact that laws allow you to carry in Texas.
Earlier you cited speeding as a breakable law. People disregard this law every day... there are cops who probably do not enforce this law as tightly as intended... is this another meaningless law - speed limits?
I wish I had your power - to pick and choose which laws I want to abide by... and to hell with the rest! Damn that must be fun. I'm beginning to understand the criminal mind. Thanks kjm
That way people can freely stream into the country and pick lettuce so we can get it at a discount price.
LMAO - if you don't think your paying $10 for that head of lettuce in other ways your dreamin'...
I knew my grade school was screwed up. I could have swore God's signature was not on the constitution... then again I was too busy worrying about the price of lettuce as a kid so who knows.kjm said:
I'm definitely envious, kjm, of the fact that laws allow you to carry in Texas.
There are cops that deal drugs, and who do not arrest people who deal drugs - as they're part of the money chain. These people do not abide by the law. Are drug laws meaningless in your opinion?kjm said:
Earlier you cited speeding as a breakable law. People disregard this law every day... there are cops who probably do not enforce this law as tightly as intended... is this another meaningless law - speed limits?
I wish I had your power - to pick and choose which laws I want to abide by... and to hell with the rest! Damn that must be fun. I'm beginning to understand the criminal mind. Thanks kjm
Actually, God did not sign the constitution. However, the general principle behind a right as was understood and stated eloquently in the Declaration of Independance is that we are endowed by our creator with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (generally believed to mean property).
Government doesn't give you a right to anything. Governments only recognize and protect rights that pre-exist government. The right to self defense is one of those rights and ranked pretty high in the minds of the fellas who later drafted the Constitution. They placed it just under the right to free speech and religion, so I'm guessing that all laws being subordinant to the Constitution, then laws that directly counter to what the founding document and source of all legal authority, are null and void- and I believe there was some SCOTUS case that backs that opinion too, though one of our legal scholars would be able to tell us which case it was.
So if the constitution is the supreme law of the land, and it gives me the right to both keep and bear arms and being that keep and bear are not redundant words but have distinctly different meanings AND being that I once took an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the US, and being that I didn't ever get released from that oath, I presume that my right supercedes the wishes of Chuck Schumer and some old dead fella who wanted to make lynching of freed and voting negros much easier! Whew- how bout that runon sentence?
Government doesn't give you a right to anything. Governments only recognize and protect rights that pre-exist government. The right to self defense is one of those rights and ranked pretty high in the minds of the fellas who later drafted the Constitution. They placed it just under the right to free speech and religion, so I'm guessing that all laws being subordinant to the Constitution, then laws that directly counter to what the founding document and source of all legal authority, are null and void- and I believe there was some SCOTUS case that backs that opinion too, though one of our legal scholars would be able to tell us which case it was.
So if the constitution is the supreme law of the land, and it gives me the right to both keep and bear arms and being that keep and bear are not redundant words but have distinctly different meanings AND being that I once took an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the US, and being that I didn't ever get released from that oath, I presume that my right supercedes the wishes of Chuck Schumer and some old dead fella who wanted to make lynching of freed and voting negros much easier! Whew- how bout that runon sentence?
Wow! Lots of debate since I was last able to read this thread. I apologize in advance for the length of my posts. 
KJM,
KJM,
I never claimed that the founders attitude towards immigration was bitter or anything remotely approaching that. I said, and provided brief supporting documentation, that border and immigration were an important concept to the founders, and that the control of them was vital to the effective functioning of the nation the sought to establish. In fact, the problems encountered under the Articles of Confederation, that allowed each state to set its own immigration standards while requiring all other states to admit as citizens the citizens of other states, was the primary reason for the constitutional enumeration giving the federal gov’t the power to regulate citizenship and naturalization. Jefferson and Company felt very strongly about the need for uniform and reasonable controls on immigration. Enough so, that when the Articles of Confederation showed a weakness in this area, they specifically delineated the power of the legislature to control it. The evolution of naturalization and citizenship requirements from the days of the Confederation to the establishment of the constitution are the strongest proof of the founders intent and view of this issue. It was vital to the long-term success of their experiment.
Virtually all estimates put the annual number of immigrants to the United States at approximately 1.1 million. In addition to that there are vast numbers of non-immigrants that enter the United States annually. Of those non-immigrants, many of them come as temporary workers (as an aside, I wouldn’t argue that the allowable numbers of temporary workers shouldn’t be increased). Additionally, the United States has no numerical limit on the number of immediate family members that are allowed to immigrate each year. The number of people allowed to enter the United States is higher now than at any time in its history. Implying that immigration is excessively difficult merely shows your ignorance….
I’ve personally known both kinds. So what? Please tell me what that has to do with anything. Naturalization laws are constitutional. The very founders believed in the concept of establishing what sort of person should be allowed into the country, either as a visitor or a new citizen. The very act of illegal immigration robs America of this critical ability to determine whether a given individual should be allowed to visit or immigrate. It is, by its very nature, a dishonorable, and indecent act. It is no different than somebody that insists on being allowed to walk into your house and sleep in your bed at his whim.
A society that strives to abide by the rule of law operates exactly opposite of this. Once moral and constitutional laws are being upheld, leniency can be implemented. Being lenient in the face of blatant disregard for the law does not create a moral and lawful society, but rather one in which citizens are tacitly taught that it is acceptable to ignore whatever just laws they choose as long as they personally don’t want to follow them.
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KJM con't,
Responding to your example of a speed limit:
I certainly have broken the speed limit in my life. There were times in my youth when I did so knowingly and blatantly. However, I always accepted the need for a society to have speed limits and to enforce them. Moreover, every time I got caught, I accepted my punishment. With maturity and hopefully a little character growth, I now make every effort to follow all the laws, including the speed limit. An illegal alien by his very existence on this side of the border is in effect saying, “I do not recognize the right of a sovereign nation to establish these laws. I do not agree to abide by them, and I have no intention of ever abiding by them. I only hope to better myself at the expense of anybody else or even everybody else.”
Immigration controls do not violate the laws of economics. Moreover, a representative democracy is well within its rights to in fact, violate the laws of economics. Take taxation as an example. Taxation is a pure disincentive to productivity, yet in order to establish a productive and functioning society, representative democracy’s can and should levy taxes.
Illegal immigration has created a false market for labor. America is an affluent nation. Throughout history, as nations have risen in affluence, the cost of labor has increased. Illegal immigrants have created a price ceiling to labor costs that has led to a shortage of labor here in America. Rather than allowing the free market here in America to function as it should, establishing an equilibrium price for American labor, illegal immigrants have artificially dictated a price for labor that is below that equilibrium price. As you well know, shortages are the result.
As a matter of fact, you argue for that very thing when you say, “I don't care if folks are hiring illegals.” Pick a side.
Force Mexico to pay? What rock are you hiding under? Mexico refused to “pay” one and a half million acre-feet of water it owed according to a 1944 treaty, causing an estimated one billion dollars (yes that’s with a “B”) in damages to the lower Rio Grande Valley economy from 1993 to 2003 (those are Texas A&M numbers). The only “forcing them to pay” we were able to get out of Mexico was 350,000 acre-feet of water. Short of going to war with Mexico, we will never get them to pay us money. Even if we were to eliminate 100% of all the monies we provide them, we would only be talking a tiny, tiny fraction of the costs the American taxpayer in the border states alone bear each year due to illegal immigration.
You mean the army that has allowed around 8,000 plus immigrants per month to cross their border with Guatemala on their way to the U.S.? Or perhaps you mean the Army that at its period of greatest enforcement allowed about 1000 per month to enter Mexico as long as they were going to Mexico (this is paraphrased information given by the Reverend Ademar Barilli, director of Casa Del Migrante a church run shelter in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, which is near the Mexican border).
Responding to your example of a speed limit:
I certainly have broken the speed limit in my life. There were times in my youth when I did so knowingly and blatantly. However, I always accepted the need for a society to have speed limits and to enforce them. Moreover, every time I got caught, I accepted my punishment. With maturity and hopefully a little character growth, I now make every effort to follow all the laws, including the speed limit. An illegal alien by his very existence on this side of the border is in effect saying, “I do not recognize the right of a sovereign nation to establish these laws. I do not agree to abide by them, and I have no intention of ever abiding by them. I only hope to better myself at the expense of anybody else or even everybody else.”
Unique 5.7
New member
"Taxation is a pure disincentive to productivity." - ahenry
That is just not true, it can just as easily be a stimulus to productivity.
That is just not true, it can just as easily be a stimulus to productivity.
Unique 5.7,
From a pure economic standpoint, taxation is a disincentive on a micro level. At the macro level and in simplistic terms, you could perhaps argue that a disincentive in one area leads to an incentive in another area, leading to a macro economic increase in productivity. Taxes are a portion of the total cost of a good. Increasing a given tax increases the overall cost of that good. For example, higher taxes on cotton would lead to lower cotton production (the disincentive). The resulting shift in resources possibly spur innovation in the textile industry as a whole leading to an increase in the production of cotton substitutes. In order to argue that increasing costs increase productivity, one must argue that an economies production possibilities curve is shifted outward by a decrease in the production of a specific good.
This isn’t really a discussion about economics, and it has been a long time since I last studied economics, but I’ll do my best here.
From a pure economic standpoint, taxation is a disincentive on a micro level. At the macro level and in simplistic terms, you could perhaps argue that a disincentive in one area leads to an incentive in another area, leading to a macro economic increase in productivity. Taxes are a portion of the total cost of a good. Increasing a given tax increases the overall cost of that good. For example, higher taxes on cotton would lead to lower cotton production (the disincentive). The resulting shift in resources possibly spur innovation in the textile industry as a whole leading to an increase in the production of cotton substitutes. In order to argue that increasing costs increase productivity, one must argue that an economies production possibilities curve is shifted outward by a decrease in the production of a specific good.
I disagree. It is a matter of degree. If there is labor there and lucrative work here, the market will work to achieve equilibrium. The best policy is to set immigration controls such that the market can achieve its equilibrium in the most beneficial way possible.
I'm not arguing about our right to set immigration policy. It is pretty clear in the Constitution in Art. 1, sect 9 IIRC. My beef is that present policy invites more problems than it solves.
I would argue that they create a price floor, not a ceiling. It is those getting paid the upper levels who set the ceiling. The reason they come here to begin with is that there are open and unfilled jobs. They take these jobs that are hard to fill otherwise. I will use the example of the man in Pleasonton who ended up getting busted for paying illegals to pick onions. He paid them $10.00 an hour and tried to find high-schoolers to do it, but with no takers even at nearly double the minimum wage, he resorted to paying illegals. If you can't fill a job with citizens and legal immigrants at nearly double the minimum wage, you can either raise rates to where your comodity doesn't sell on the open market- hence you go bankrupt, or you can not pick the onions and hence you go bankrupt. The dictates of a commodity that is produced world-wide and sold domestically means that you have to compete with onion farmers in Mexico, Guatamala, and elsewhere. That means you cannot pay wages that price yourself out of the market.
Some of these occupations are already bordering on losing in both comparative advantage and absolute advantage with other nations. The only alternative that I see is that either these jobs won't exist because they can't be done economically in the US or that we hire aliens (legal or illegal) who will do back-breaking, stoop labor for a price that allows us to still be somewhat competitive.
The market price for labor is what the worker and the employer accepts. Like Jammer said, when somebody agrees to do your $30 an hour job for $20. an hour, you no longer have a $30.00 an hour job because it just became a $20 an hour job. We might be using the same examples to push different directions here though.
If our economy only depended upon itself and we didn't trade on the world market, then your example would be correct. However, we compete in markets all over the world and so the labor price is influenced by world labor and not just US labor prices. If an employer has to compete against India or China in labor prices, he can't succeed. He has to compete in product quality or in productivity. Labor is an important part of the equation.
I thought I have, and hence all the frustration when you can't change my mind. I am for loosened immigration policies. If the problem is illegal aliens, then that is fixed very easily by filling the market with legal ones. That is accomplished by setting immigration controls in such a way that folks can immigrate here legally. Having discussed current policies with illegals and asking them why they broke the law, most refer to the fact that it takes up to ten years to get here legally and even then, it is rarely approved. If a 20 year old brick layer or ag worker waits until he's legal, he's 10 years older. Chances are though that he will never get approved and hence, why bother.
If you apply for a work visa from Mexico and don't get it, you will also NEVER get a tourist visa or any other visa. That is our policy. You may never get to visit your relatives here again, so they do what I'd do in their situation and they break the law. Their first priority is like myself, their family. Would I break Mexican law to feed my family? You bet!
Being that many who are caught by the INS are caught more than once in the same season, these statistics are redundant and I believe worthless. Another friend of mine who came here illegally back in the 60's, was arrested nine times and deported before he finally married a gringo and got his legal residency. My guess is that the INS in order to pursuade congress to increase the budget might count him all nine times rather than just once. Government agencies tend to use the statistics that makes them look underfunded rather than overfunded.
OK- so in the case of Prohibition which was both moral and constitutional, we should have waited until everybody quit drinking illicit booze before we scrapped the policy? That just doesn't make sense based on one important adjective you forgot: Prudent. Laws shouldn't only be first, Constitutional, and second, moral, but they have to be crafted in a prudent way so as to achieve the result you want. Prohibition was not prudent. It failed. The government hired all kinds of people to enforce the law and still people ignored it. It was constitutional. It was moral. It failed on prudence.
By taking your suggestion that we increase the temporary work visas, I think we would begin to see a move toward more prudence and perhaps a decrease in the problem.
I would add that we should try to persuade at least some of these immigrants to stay with their families and make the US their home. Folks who come and take their earnings to Mexico don't do as much for our economy or our culture as those who come, work, pay taxes, buy houses and participate fully in the economy.
Just my opinion.
Very true, but then there is labor cheap manual labor in China, Africa, etc. The reason there are so many central Americans trying to come here is because the cost of coming is low (aside from the moral cost of breaking the law). Immigration controls are not violating the laws of economics, they are merely establishing the market for American labor as an American market. As the market changes and as certain economies change, certain products stop being profitable in one economy and stary being profitable in another. That is the free market at work. Illegal immigration has created an artificial control on the price of labor here in America, hampering the ability of the free market to adjust as it should. The market price for labor in south Texas is inordinately low due to the high numbers of illegal aliens. Your Pleasanton example perfectly illustrates how illegal immigration has created a price ceiling on labor, leading to a shortage of employees (legal), and a black market (the farmers employment of illegal aliens).
That number is not the number of illegal immigrants, it is the number of legal immigrants. The U.S. issues approximately 900,000 LAPR cards each year. In addition to that number are approximately 800,000 adjustments of status (a fiancé of a US citizen adjusts status after marriage for example). There are also many hundreds of thousands of non-immigrant visas issued each year. In 2001 over one million non-immigrant visas were issued, a significant number of those allow some form of work, and are for an extended period of time. The 1.1 million immigrant number I posted is far, far lower than the actual number of foreign born personal that legally come to America each year, and well below the number of people that legally enter each year and are allowed to work and live here for an extended period of time.
It is entirely reasonable to debate whether outlawing the consumption of a good is moral or constitutional. Reasonable people will always disagree on that issue. That is why prohibition failed, and it is in part why the war on drugs is as unsuccessful as it is. Naturalization controls are nowhere near as ambiguous as prohibition or drug laws. Virtually everybody can agree that some form of immigration control is both moral and constitutional.
There are valid arguments to both sides, but I wouldn’t disagree with what you’re say all that much, except to say that legal temporary workers do “work, pay taxes, buy houses and participate fully in the economy”.
Fred Hansen
New member
None of which has anything to do with what we were talking about. You alluded to using economic sanctions (rather than military or police) against the invading hordes from Mexico until such time that Mexico would agree to pay the bills that you suggested we send them. NAFTA and any number of other trade agreements that we have signed with Mexico and other countries would preclude our ability to do so. Not to mention that even if we did bill Mexico for those lovely folks, the U.S. would just give the money right back in the form of economic aid or some other crap.
No Fred, It really doesn't have much to do with the topic posted. It was just an asinine comment about an asinine statement and I should be ashamed of myself. I'll try to stick to convincing folks about how laws should be prudent as well as moral in order to work and work cheaply to the taxpayer.
As an aside, since there are three threads going on basically the same thing, in the future we should only use one thread that way the posts can grow really, really, really long.
The fun about these illegal alien posts is that nobody ever convinces anybody else, though Ahenry did make some valid points to my statements and some of which I actually agree with.
As an aside, since there are three threads going on basically the same thing, in the future we should only use one thread that way the posts can grow really, really, really long.
The fun about these illegal alien posts is that nobody ever convinces anybody else, though Ahenry did make some valid points to my statements and some of which I actually agree with.
I appreciate the comments, and I appreciate the opportunity intelligent debate provides for thinking individuals to hash out issues. The only reason I bother saying anything on this issue is to try to intelligently and rationally explain why I believe illegal immigration is bad for this nation that we all love.
Many people are passionate about illegal immigration but not everybody has had the advantages I had, that allow me to draw the conclusions I have. I know full well that I am not likely to change the mind of the person I am debating with, but I also suspect that there are more than a few readers and lurkers that might not be all that informed on the issue. More than a few folks, in areas with virtually no interaction with illegals, have likely not even given the issue all that much thought. By our back and forth discussion we have presented (and perhaps countered) many aspects of illegal immigration, both for and against. Whether I convinced you of the rightness of my position, or me of yours is not very important in the grand scheme of things. Whether we have stimulated thought and analysis of the issue by others is what matters most. After all, once somebody really thinks about, they’ll have to agree that I’m right.
HAHAHA (just kidding)"And I don't see a big problem with illegals anyway. "
you dont? what, are you freaking blind? i never advocate abusing or shooting them,but i damn sure wouls support rounding them all up and sending thier mooching asses back from where they came. an estimated 13 billion a year is being sent back to mexico, American dollars. that money aint coming back!
sorry, but anyone who thinks these people are good for our country is just ignorant.
you dont? what, are you freaking blind? i never advocate abusing or shooting them,but i damn sure wouls support rounding them all up and sending thier mooching asses back from where they came. an estimated 13 billion a year is being sent back to mexico, American dollars. that money aint coming back!
sorry, but anyone who thinks these people are good for our country is just ignorant.
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shootinstudent
New member
9mmsnoopy,
The fact that you can't see how someone would have an opposite opinion on the issue belies to me that for you, it's not about dollars and cents. Which is fine, but you can't seriously claim that the economic impact is open to only one view.
I side with Alan Greenspan and Kjm on this one. Fill the markets with legal immigrants through a more liberal and efficient immigration process. The INS is notoriously inefficient and impossible to deal with as it is, and the laws themselves as kjm points out do not lend to satisfying America's demand for low-cost labor.
Kjm is exactly right on this point: if you require that employers pay the kinds of wages necessary to get native and legal immigrants to do the work that is now done by illegals, the products those employers make will be lost to foreign competition or not done at all.
The fact that you can't see how someone would have an opposite opinion on the issue belies to me that for you, it's not about dollars and cents. Which is fine, but you can't seriously claim that the economic impact is open to only one view.
I side with Alan Greenspan and Kjm on this one. Fill the markets with legal immigrants through a more liberal and efficient immigration process. The INS is notoriously inefficient and impossible to deal with as it is, and the laws themselves as kjm points out do not lend to satisfying America's demand for low-cost labor.
Kjm is exactly right on this point: if you require that employers pay the kinds of wages necessary to get native and legal immigrants to do the work that is now done by illegals, the products those employers make will be lost to foreign competition or not done at all.
novus collectus
Moderator
It is not just the wages not offered to the American citizens but also the cost of supplying the workers with workers comp. insurance, matching the workers taxes and the cost of not polluting the enviroment.
NAFTA was supposed require the countries who participated in our "free market" to follow the rules that were agreed to. Instead, the govenment lets them skirt the basic requirements and immorally treat their workers as slaves in the sweat shops and pay them subsistence wages, pollute the towns and land near the factories where the workers live, use the money as profit that would have been spent on a safer work enviroment, and not have to provide for the worker that was hurt by their negligence. If we made them participate only if they paid the required costs to keep to even a modicum of human respect, then the American wage would be compeitive on the world "free market". As it is, the only way some of the American buisinesses can compete is if they skirt some of the same ethical decencies by hiring less than minimum wage workers who they know will not raise their workers comp. rates by making a claim when they get hurt by the lack of safety practices while working for unpaid overtime.
If NAFTA was properly enforced, then Mexico would have a decent wage in their own country, the workers would have less of a reason to sneak over the border, and the higher wage earners there would start to buy some American products with their disposable income. As it is, NAFTA is a failure and has made the rich richer off of other peoples backs and miseries, and the poor and middle class that much further from ever achieving wealth.
In order for NAFTA to properly succeed, we would also have to enforce the fair treatment of workers of every country who wanted to trade with us because, when the wages rise in Mexico, some greedy companies would pull up shop and move to a country that was still a third world country that didn't give a damn about humanity and poisoning the enviroment.
Novus,
My general thoughts on those who pollute the environment to make a buck is that they will pay eventually. We may be less competitive over that, but we have been able to keep up in most areas, and like what happened in the Soviet Union, they will pay for many years to come. We pay in economic terms, but they pay with their health.
Russians still have a life expectancy of about 57 years old IIRC. It isn't genetics so much as the environment. I don't care if they pollute their rivers and land (well- I do sort of, but not enough to get worked up about it).
You made an outstanding point about the cost of hiring American employees.
My general thoughts on those who pollute the environment to make a buck is that they will pay eventually. We may be less competitive over that, but we have been able to keep up in most areas, and like what happened in the Soviet Union, they will pay for many years to come. We pay in economic terms, but they pay with their health.
Russians still have a life expectancy of about 57 years old IIRC. It isn't genetics so much as the environment. I don't care if they pollute their rivers and land (well- I do sort of, but not enough to get worked up about it).
You made an outstanding point about the cost of hiring American employees.
sorry, you cant convince me that the millions of illegals that are already here are good for our economy or good for anything for that matter. what about all of these jobs that Americans supposedly wont do, such as cleaning toilets,picking fruit and veggies,etc... well i had lettuce and tomato on my hamburger 35 years ago just like i do now. toilets somehow managed to get clean back in those days too,cars got washed,the dishes got done,etc... and there were NOT millions of mexicans running the streets back then either. so who was doing those jobs? Americans! how bout that.
i was born and raised and still reside in a small texas town of about 12,000 people, i am 39 years old. my class pictures from elementary school would show about 5-10% hispanic kids, very same school today? 75-80% hispanic, and the majority of them have parents who dont speak english.
crime rates have gone up, gangs? they were unheard of, now the police do gang raids.
yea yea yea i know, most are hard working people just looking for a better life, well alot of them arent too. you cannot tell me that if ALL of the illegals were to be deported(and kept out), that we wouldnt be better off. less crime,less pollution,less traffic and population overcrowding. and then theres the relief that our healthcare and school systems would get, it would be HUGE.
i am tired of footing the bill for the healthcare and educations of CRIMINALS.
i was born and raised and still reside in a small texas town of about 12,000 people, i am 39 years old. my class pictures from elementary school would show about 5-10% hispanic kids, very same school today? 75-80% hispanic, and the majority of them have parents who dont speak english.
crime rates have gone up, gangs? they were unheard of, now the police do gang raids.
yea yea yea i know, most are hard working people just looking for a better life, well alot of them arent too. you cannot tell me that if ALL of the illegals were to be deported(and kept out), that we wouldnt be better off. less crime,less pollution,less traffic and population overcrowding. and then theres the relief that our healthcare and school systems would get, it would be HUGE.
i am tired of footing the bill for the healthcare and educations of CRIMINALS.