Why we should protect our borders, etc.

[novus collectus]

Oh come-on TjHands give the guy a break. He will be just like us when his competition comes up with a cheap labor saving device and underbids him on every job. He will start to say the same thing we do and he just feels the way he does now because he thinks he is immune.
He strikes me as the type of guy who would love to get rid of OSHA so he can get more work out of his "employees". He probably thinks that the child labor laws should be repealed so that he can find someone else that he can pay even less.
I have worked for people just like him and when their buisinesses went under and they had to pick up their tools again, they said the same words we do now.

Jammer,
You can reap all of the profits you want to in this free market capitalist society as is your right. BUT you have to reach a balance sometime because the free market system will fail to work for you when there is no one in this country who has enough money to hire you out. The workers spending their earnings is what eventually keeps you in buisness just as much as buisinesses making profit is what keeps the worker well paid by the companies. When we mess up this balance with the dirt cheap labor you so love, who is left to contribute to the system and keep the money flowing up and down from the buisiness to the worker and from the consumer to the buisiness?

 

[kjm]

Jammer: I'm with you all the way on this one. I don't fear competition from illegals. I guess if after 12 years of primary school and four at a University, if I am still trying to score a job as a brick layer in the hot Texas sun, I likely didn't use the talents God gave me nor the education that the good taxpayers of this country provided me. In fact, I'll go one step more and say that after they spent at least $60K to give me an education from K-12, if all I could do is dig fencepost holes, I should be positively ashamed of myself.

The Mexican's I've known have been absolutely the most decent group of people I've met yet. I may not like their cultural aversion to education so much, but as human beings, they've been great.

Since I've been a kid, the doomsayers have said that the waves of illegal immigration would destroy our economy. I have seen this economy explode! The stock market is now more than doubled if not quadupled since I entered this country (through Vaginal migration in Alice Texas- not accross a political boundary), and I expect that in spite of everybody's paranoia about outsourcing, immigration and other stuff that O'Riley and Lou Dobbs makes a fortune from, we will continue to get stronger.

The problem isn't jobs going overseas so much as Bill Clinton selling the Chinese our highest technical secrets for campaign cash. The Mexicans who do my yard work won't hurt as much as the Mushroom cloud over the Port of Houston or Los Angeles.

 

[Jammer Six]

Thanks, KJM.

The other thing I've seen is that American workers like to talk about "high paying" jobs going overseas.

Speaking as a capitalist, the moment someone agrees to do your thirty dollar an hour job for twenty dollars, it's no longer a thirty dollar an hour job.

Speaking as an employer, if you want to do it for the same price, it's a lot easier to keep the job here, and that's the choice I'd make.

So be clear: it's about profit, which is what our shareholders demand.

And it's not a high paying job going overseas, the job pays whatever the market says it pays, and if that market says it needs to move to get a lower cost, that's what's going to happen.

 

[novus collectus]

That's right and we should let the Chinese contractors come over here with their practical slaves and practically no overhead and run American contractors out of buisiness too. That way you will start to realise that it is not just us workers who are getting hurt by this "free market". If you agree with the $30 dollar an hour job now beiong worth $20, then how will your shareholders feel when your $10,000,000 contract is now worth $1,000,000? The "world" market only works when everyone plays fair. NAFTA might have worked if they ever enforced the enviromental, fair wage, and proper health care parts of the NAFTA agreement. As it is, people like you rape the countries and the people in other countries in the name of profit. And now you want this to continue in America!!

Even most unions know that there has to be a balance between workers, management, and owners in order for everyone to prosper. When people start to make shortcuts and excuses (like "competitive market") in the name of greed, our country will be worth less and our system is doomed to fail. Maybe you want to bring back serfdome?

Kjm,
You elitest, aristocratic, bigoted ass. If you believe in the freedoms this country offers and how people can choose to live their lives how they want, you would not believe what you said that there should be an educated class that is better than the people who either chose to work hard because that is what they value, or that they are proud to have their kids follow their steps and join their proffession. I actually agree with some of the things you usually post, but this last one really made me mad. Many of us in this country were proud to work hard for a living and for generations that is what they did, it has only been in the last few years where the education is almost a neccessity and many of those people had already chosen the way of life for themselves and their kids before this imperative need for educ.. Are you really suggesting that we throw the hard working Americans (be they legal immigrant or born here they are Americans) that built this country to the wolves??? I hope the Indian and Chinese technological, administrative, engineering, and computer companies come over here and take your welll educated job and your kids and kids' kids jobs in the next 15 years too.

 

[tjhands]

Jammer, KJM, and people like you:

I hope, for this nation's sake, that you are kids who sneaked onto their parent's computer. The ideas you have are just so bizarre, infantile, and disturbing that I can't believe you are adult Americans.
This pervasive, overriding attitude of "if it doesn't affect MY greedy ass and MY bottom line, then it doesn't concern me whatsoever" is so misguided and inaccurate. Have you no concern for anyone or anything other than yourselves? Have you no sense of loyality or gratefulness to your nation?
Are you people truly this selfish? I would hate to be a man in need of assistance if you guys were the only people around to help. Your first thought would probably be, "I may get hurt saving this fellow. My cash-flow would be disturbed if I get injured. Someone else will help him.....I'll just pretend I didn't see him."

You sad, sorry bastards. Your parents really did a number on you. I hope you didn't have any relatives who gave their lives for this country. You'll have a lot of explaining to do.

 

[kjm]

Yup. If they come and take my job away from me, I guess I need to get retrained into another field. I don't make up the laws of economics, I just recognize that I have to live by their dictates. That leaves me one of two choices.

1. I can gripe incessantly about foriegners taking work away from me or

2. I can recogize the properties of a free market include ever expanding wealth base, but that it also comes with a price and that price is that I may not be stuck in the same job at retirement that I started out of high-school.

Another thing. Corporations have never been in business for baseball, mom and apple pie. They have always been in business to do one thing: Maximize shareholder profit. The only reasons they do anything resembling "corporate citizenship" is for PR to make more money or to limit the PR damage that occurs when they do something stupid like the Exxon Valdez.

Lots of people want to complain about their jobs going overseas to China and India, but recent statistics (at least as reported by CNN), shows that the jobs are actually going to Western Europeans i.e.: Britain, Germany, France, and the Scandanavian countries. They don't work any cheaper than we do- but then again, they also don't sue employers when they get their feelings hurt by their boss.

And if you think that I am not empathetic because everything in my life has gone swell- then maybe I should explain that I have been unemployed now for about four years. I ended up being downsized from my job and I had to get an education. Now I am about to graduate from college. I didn't start college at 25, but 30. If you think it is easy to be "outsourced" or downsized at 30 with a wife and a kid, then keep dreaming. I was slightly bitter too until I realized that this could be an opportunity for me.

Because my primary job after being "retired" nine years as a soldier was to mow grass, spray for bugs and do the odd security jobs, I don't think my background shows as much contempt for the hard laborers as my posts might insinuate. In fact, when a skilled mason does his job, it is truly an art. However, I haven't seen much market for skilled masons lately. Nor have I seen much market for fencepost diggers. If I can leave an unskilled job, get an education and suffer living far below the poverty level for several years to make sacrifices that will help my family live better, then I believe most anybody can.

The real question is whether you sit around and cuss foreigners and things out of your control, or if you accept the facts of your situation and fix those things you CAN control. I choose the latter, and I think I am better off for it. Who knows, after four years, I might find my current skill-set inadequate for whatever job I have and will need further retraining- that's just the wonder of the free market.

If you want a good, stable government job for life, then life has certainly passed you by because the Soviet Union collapsed over a decade ago, and not even China gives out jobs like that anymore.

KJM: You elitest, aristocratic, bigoted ass.

OK- One of the reasons being at TFL was once great, is that no matter how much you disagreed with a person, you didn't resort to ad-hominim attacks such as this. You folks need to get a grip. My opinion differs. Not because I don't like the U.S. In fact, it is my love for this nation that makes me keep spouting the elitist, bigoted stuff that nobody wants to hear but everybody needs to hear. The free market wont stop just because you don't like it. Accept the rules of the game as discovered by Adam Smith in 1775, and learn to play by those rules. Don't shoot the messenger and certainly don't resort to name-calling when you can't develop a cogent arguement to support your points. I try to avoid emotion based arguements.

You sad, sorry bastards. Your parents really did a number on you. I hope you didn't have any relatives who gave their lives for this country.

In fact, I have lost relatives in most of this country's wars. Every male in my family including myself has served, and most have served in combat- to include myself. IMO that is completely irrelevant to the arguement above however and so I don't preface an arguement with "I served in combat so my opinion is correct!" That in itself is a weak arguement.

I also have relatives who immigrated here from the Hell-holes they left to take jobs away from Americans then. I am sure folks were bitching when the wagon-wheel manufacturers were laying off people in the 1900's. If you want to keep your outdated, and outsourced jobs, I hear that there are places in Kabul and Calcutta where you can still make wagon wheels and buggy whips.

I believe my former service in combat for this country has given myself and everybody else here the right to have their opinions. Do not question my love of this country and I won't question yours.

 

[novus collectus]

OK- One of the reasons being at TFL was once great, is that no matter how much you disagreed with a person, you didn't resort to ad-hominim attacks such as this. You folks need to get a grip. My opinion differs. Not because I don't like the U.S. In fact, it is my love for this nation that makes me keep spouting the elitist, bigoted stuff that nobody wants to hear but everybody needs to hear. The free market wont stop just because you don't like it. Accept the rules of the game as discovered by Adam Smith in 1775, and learn to play by those rules. Don't shoot the messenger and certainly don't resort to name-calling when you can't develop a cogent arguement to support your points. I try to avoid emotion based arguements.

Kjm,
I apologize and I was speaking out of emotion and at the very least I should have said thet you "sound like" an el.... But even that would have been innappropiate. I was under the impression that you had a prejudice against the American laborer and semi-skilled workers. However, it seems that although you are doing what I am doing (college in the 30's) and you have a somewhat similar work experience as I, I did not have a wife and kids to worry about and I never served our country as you. You are right that the name calling spoils TFL and I also apologise to the others who have read it.

 

[kjm]

Novus: No problem. I want this board to police itself. It is easy to get emotional, but rarely do solutions come from emotion-filled people. TFL hopefully won't ever devolve into what drove me here back in '99 from AR-15.com.

Charley,

I didn't do anything wrong. It's all about profit; they told me so." And, yes, in the strictest sense of Capitalism, no holds barred, they will be correct.

If you remember, a company called Enron here in Houston had a different experience. The government didn't shut Enron down. The market did. The government only moved in after the collapse to prosecute the wrongdoers. The free market punishes wrongdoers more harshly and more swiftly than does government.

You might also recall that in the 1920's Henry Ford, the nation's leading industrialist at that time decided that when workers were being paid $5.00 a day at other firms, Ford paid them $10.00 per day. A basic economic fact is that companies who pay more get more. The ones who get more make more, and those that make more bury those who can't.

The Ford example proves what economists have long known. A minimum wage is a terrible idea because a few get to coast on the efforts of the many. Collective bargaining is likewise an admission of inferior work. You have two things that can get you ahead in life. The first is work ethic and the second is education. If you have one or the other, you can succeed. If you have neither, you will fail. If you have more education than work ethic, you will likely fail too. Just because you lack an education doesn't mean that you can't succeed on work-ethic alone, but it will only take you so far.

However- I must wonder about somebody who spent 12 years in school and can't read, write or compute on an eigth-grade level. It is a shame really.

Ahenry or Rich has a good grip on the term given when workers are paid higher and firms do better. I forgot since it has been a year since my Econ class.

Capitalism doesn't equate to exploitation. Ford proved this and most companies have followed- hence the incredible increase in productivity, creativity and lifestyle of the United States as compared to the rest of the world.

 

[SBrocker8]

Being the staunch (evil EEEEEVIL) nationalist that I am, I'd do whatever I could to keep jobs and progress in America. The third world be damned, they can create their own jobs, just not at our expense. As for hordes of illegals, easy, send them HOOOOOOME!

 

[ahenry]

Since I've been a kid, the doomsayers have said that the waves of illegal immigration would destroy our economy. I have seen this economy explode!

I think there are two schools of thought regarding illegal immigration and peoples opposition to it, one is economic and the other is cultural.

Economically speaking, I would contend that the illegal immigrant has created a price ceiling for labor, leading to the inevitable economic result of any price ceiling, which are shortages and black markets.

Culturally speaking, you will get a wide variety of answers depending on who you speak with. As for myself, I believe that illegal immigrants rarely contribute to the American culture.* By their very nature they add to the general lawlessness of society, and they cannot but help to teach their children that it is acceptable to break the law. Notice in fact, how the economic result of illegal immigration ties in with the cultural issues.

Granted, there will always be exceptions, and I have in fact known a couple of those exceptions. One of them, a buddy of mine in the Corps with me there at A&M, was the son of a man that was an overstay* for a short time before getting things straightened out. These exceptions that we can both point out in no way refute the general trend however. The fact remains that border jumpers create an entire “sub-culture” of lawlessness. I am not necessarily referring to the incidental crimes done to illegal immigrants; the rape, robbery, or murder of illegals done to them once they are in America because the perpetrators know their victims will be less likely to report the crime for fear of deportation. Neither am I necessarily speaking of the crime that is done in order to enable entering without inspection; the smugglers, the smuggling rings, the murder and intimidation of smugglers and their “cargo” by rival rings, the kidnapping of young girls for the sex trade, the kidnapping and holding ransom of the illegal alien to force more money out of the illegal aliens family, the forced labor of illegal aliens in atrocious working and living conditions by the smuggling ring in order to exact payment for being smuggled. No, while all those things have caused untold problems here in America, I’m not really referring to that when I speak of the “sub-culture” of lawlessness perpetuated by illegal aliens. What I’m speaking specifically of is the fact that the overwhelming majority of illegal aliens are more than wiling to break a law when that law doesn’t suit them. They will trespass, liter, steal, rape, smuggle dope, murder, defraud the gov’t, ignore any and all traffic laws, the list goes on and on and I have specific and numerous examples of each.

If you really want to know what illegal aliens do, talk to any cop on the street (if you want, I can give you names of ones there in Bryan). In any major city they encounter illegal aliens on a regular basis. In fact, in San Diego in the 1980’s it was found that 12% of all felony arrests involved illegal aliens, while illegal aliens only comprised (at that time) 4% of the total population. Those numbers have only risen since then. Currently illegal aliens comprise a little more than 30% of our total prison population, while illegal aliens themselves make up only around 5% of our total population. Moreover, the prison population is a tiny percentage of the number of illegal aliens that break the law. Ask any police officer how many times they have been forced to let an illegal alien go simply because the powers that be are not willing to foot the bill when the federal gov’t is unable to come pick up the illegal. I would “guesstimate” that a little under half of the crime done in America is done by illegal aliens. Logically, this should be no surprise. Really, what do you expect of a group of individuals whose very first action in their “new home” is to break the law?


*Overstays do not really fall into my general category of “illegal alien” for this debate. Often an overstay becomes an illegal alien unintentionally. Usually an overstay is an individual that desires to comply with the law, and either unknown to him or by circumstances beyond his control, has become an illegal alien due to our overly cumbersome immigration system. There are exceptions, and I have known of those that acquired some sort of temporary legal status with the intention of never leaving and never complying with our immigration laws. These however, tend to be the exception, not the rule. I’m not excusing the action of most overstays, merely saying that for the sake of this argument, I am excluding them when I refer to illegal alien.

 

[kjm]

Many good points made. North Bryan is a hell-hole, and I don't argue your facts. In Bryan, there are more illegals than there are jobs. Idle hands are the devil's workshop as has been said. Bryan seems to be a limbo place where they wait with relatives until they find work. I go the the Bryan Super Walmart just to practice my Spanish.

My personal experience though is the only "lamp" that I can guide my position with. I worked in a jail and only had one illegal brought in and that was an identity mixup. As you said, the INS said release him when we wouldn't pay to hold him for a month until the next INS truck came up to pick him up.

The illegals I have been around usually had jobs that paid well (for an illegal), were law abiding to the extent that they could be under the circumstances and because they live in fear of deportation if they commit crimes and get caught, and so perhaps we've identified a specific type of illegal alien that is the problem: Unemployed Illegal Aliens (henceforth I'll refer to them as UIA's!).

Back in the 1970's my family sponsored a family from India to come and work while they got their lives together. The policy back then was if you sponsored a family or an immigrant, apparently they could come and work. They had to stay completely out of trouble excluding Class C misdemeanors, and the sponsor had to take responsibility for them. In our case, they were wonderful. They bought a house in the neighborhood, paid taxes, worked quite hard and all became citizens. Their son, enlisted in the Army which was unusual for an Indian.

Perhaps we should bring back some sort of sponsorship program that works like the one in the 1970's (they have one now but the red tape has grown considerably since the 1970's). The employer I worked for that had the aliens depended on them to provide the backbreaking labor, but they got paid well, were provided a decent house, and whenever they needed more labor, the aliens would send to Mexico for a relative. When they got here, there was a lot of pressure on them to do a good job and not spoil the good thing or the good name of the family. The patrone system is what they call it, and it works.

I can see why a culture of lawlessness is created when your existence alone is illegal. Find the ones who've been here 10 years and never got in trouble, and I have no problem with allowing them to apply for legal residency so long as they have an employer or other person willing to sponsor them.

I know that flies in the face of the perfectly lawful folks here because you are rewarding people who've broke the law, but if they've stayed out of trouble for a decade, then chances are, they've probably built a lifestyle around staying out of trouble.

As far as saying a population can be condemned because of their disproportionate incarceration rate compared to their population size, you're making a condemning statement about another prominent population in this country whose representation in the courts and justice system is shockingly high. The last I heard this particular group had fully 24% of their adult males either in Prison, on parole, or on the docket.

If they commit crimes, it should be no problem to punish them equally as we'd punish others. I think a sponsorship program would solve a lot of these problems though.

 

[ahenry]

My personal experience though is the only "lamp" that I can guide my position with. I worked in a jail and only had one illegal brought in and that was an identity mixup. As you said, the INS said release him when we wouldn't pay to hold him for a month until the next INS truck came up to pick him up.

When ones personal experience is lacking in a given area, it is often smart to value the opinions of those with more experience. Especially when you can use what experiences you do have to show that in other related areas they were correct…

were law abiding to the extent that they could be under the circumstances and because they live in fear of deportation if they commit crimes and get caught, and so perhaps we've identified a specific type of illegal alien that is the problem: Unemployed Illegal Aliens (henceforth I'll refer to them as UIA's!).

Not so at all. I would certainly recommend that you speak with those who deal with criminals on a regular basis (i.e. cops), to see if most of those illegal aliens they encounter are unemployed or not.

Back in the 1970's my family sponsored a family from India…they were wonderful. They bought a house in the neighborhood, paid taxes, worked quite hard and all became citizens. Their son, enlisted in the Army which was unusual for an Indian.

What does that have to do with anything? I have never suggested that immigrants are bad for America. I have said over and over again that taken as a whole, illegal immigrants are horrible for America.

I can see why a culture of lawlessness is created when your existence alone is illegal. Find the ones who've been here 10 years and never got in trouble, and I have no problem with allowing them to apply for legal residency so long as they have an employer or other person willing to sponsor them.

I don’t either. In the interests of avoiding any hint of amnesty, which we have historically found to create its own problems, I would like to see some sort of time period in which the illegal alien you describe above can voluntarily remove himself thereby showing his desire to comply with the law and then be allowed back in with some sort of legal status. Put that person at the “top of the list” so to speak.

As far as saying a population can be condemned because of their disproportionate incarceration rate compared to their population size, you're making a condemning statement about another prominent population in this country whose representation in the courts and justice system is shockingly high. The last I heard this particular group had fully 24% of their adult males either in Prison, on parole, or on the docket.

You are basing your correlation on race. I am basing my correlation on actions, moreover actions that are well within their ability to control. I related the ratio of the prison population and general public population solely on immigration status. In other words, I didn’t say that Hispanics make up more than 30% of the prison population while only comprising 20% of the national population. I said over 30% of the prison population are illegal aliens, while illegal aliens as a whole, make up around 5% of the general population.

 

[novus collectus]

I can see why a culture of lawlessness is created when your existence alone is illegal. Find the ones who've been here 10 years and never got in trouble, and I have no problem with allowing them to apply for legal residency so long as they have an employer or other person willing to sponsor them.

This is the second flaw with Bush's plan. Why would the buisinesses sponsor a laborer to become a citizen when they will have to legally double their salary to minimum wage the minute they do it? It sounds like a type of appeasment or compromise that Bush is using to give an appearance that his plan has a purpose other than for providing buisinesses with ultra cheap labor with sub par wages and happen to have slave like working conditions. He knows that his amnesty will not be taken by less than half of the illegals just like most illegals did not take Reagans amnesty offer. And besides, how many illegals already here that have comitted additional cimes of identity fraud would fess up and take a risk, that they will probably percieve, of arrest?


(and now that I am back, I promise to not misbehave again )