Do you think a more open immigration policy would solve illegal immigration?

Question

These people are working and living in our society, supported by a free economy. Their children born in the US are citizens. They are an integral part of our economic system and if cheap labor disappears, supply goes down, prices go up.

Accept that the country needs this labor pool and deal w/ it.

Why not provide amnesty to those in the US already? They are already assimilated into society. Then they can be tax paying citizens like the rest of us. What is the big threat?

kscott-the point being is if we gave working "illegals" legal status they would be paying into the social service systems.

Many of you sound racist, not patriotic.

Answer 1

kscott, where did you get the 2.5 trillion (USD?) figure?
I agree that a broader immigration policy should (morally speaking) be in place if we are going to continue to usurp the best and brightest from developing countries.
I am always amazed when Americans hate the Yankees, because with the brain drain we are literally and figuratively the Yankees. The only difference is, we get angry over a meaningless sport, while the rest of the world has real-life consequences in the form of a diminished professional class that they can ill-afford to lose.

response to Kscott:
I disagree, this is, ultimately, a zero-sum world. There are a finite number of seats in a finite number of classrooms. Most of us consume from society at the front-end of our life-cycle and at the end, this should be off-set by our production in the middle. When we import professionals from developing countries, we are getting them without that initial investment and at the expense of countries that can ill-afford to lose this human asset. Many say that this is off-set by remittances, but I would argue that capital is more than a monetary asset and that there are other societal benefits to keeping one's elites. I think it is intellectually dishonest to ignore the effect of a professional funnel tilted to the West on the developing world. This, in my opinion is an integral part of this debate and is consistently left out of the discussion.

Answer 2

Your looking at this way too idealistically. Hugs and peace and love and diversity will not help when there is no infrastructure left in health care, housing, or food and education if everyone just gets amnesty.

They are not assimilated into our culture as a whole. I work at a hospital and get used to translate on occasion because I speak more Spanish than the customer does English. I am not fluent but I learned when I was a Police officer because about 10 % of the people I dealt with....were not assimilated and didnt speak English.

The onus should not be on US citizens to make everything great for ILLEGAL ALIENS. Do you really think 12 million want to be citizens or they are just here for money and bennies? They send as much back to Mexico as possible for other family members. The Mexican government wants this to continue becasue it is one of thier biggest money earning scams they have.

They get to get rid of people while money comes into them from tthe US and gets spent there by relatives. If this was a trade agreement, I'd bet there would be a huge embargo by the US to even this out some.

This country needs to put businessmen in jail that hire ILLEGAL AILIENS. Then the freebie source dries up and people go on back home.

Answer 3

Native Americans aside, everyone in the United States is either an immigrant or descended from immigrants. It is hypocritical to say that immigration is a bad thing.

Mexicans will stop coming into the U.S. when life in Mexico yields prosperity. It is embarassing that such a poor country shares a continent with us.

A blanket amnesty is not the answer either. Each individual should be considered based on their merit, worth, and contribution to American society. A fair metric should be determined, and a well-defined process for making the decisions quickly. Then, the laws should be enforced.

Answer 4

They are already assimilated into society.

Be serious please. If they had assimilated I wouldn't be driving through towns all in Spanish. There wouldn't be push 1 for English.

You can go ahead and beleive this bull on keeping our prices down but NOTHING is cheaper as a result of this invasion of cheap labor. The ONLY pockets lined are that of the business owner. I pay MORE for everything, plus doubled realestate taxes, higher auto insurance and lots more gangs and drugs.

Even if it was more "open" as you put it ,it wouldn't be FREE and there would still be a process to go through and RULES to follow and some would still get NO as their answer and all those reasons are exactly why they're here illegally to begin with.

Their willingness to work for wages that are not "living" wages only increases my costs through public services in order to meet basic necessities and my prices would still go up anyway. If they all want to do things for cheap and if this process continues like it has....with out-sourcing jobs, companies leaving for cheap labor and importing cheap labor.......it's going to be very, very rich people and very, very poor ones. And not much hope of a "better life" for anyone. People can't keep being taxed to death in order to make up for all the money the big business pockets. Don't be surprised if they don't end up cutting it (social services)off completely. I mean we are already seeing hospitals and clinics close as a result of all the "free" care. You can't suck something dry and then expect it to be there. It has been used and abused severely.

If they are working for nothing they won't be contributing with taxes with all the babies being deducted from it. In fact we'll still end up paying out for earned income credits.

Birthing a baby isn't an excuse for breaking the law. I don't care where they were born. Their PARENTS are here illegally. The baby is THEIR problem......not mine. They made the choice and figure they deserve a get out of jail free card. Most of these kids would be taken away from them if they were citizens and held to the same standards the rest of us are.

Answer 5

It would certainly solve illegal immigration, but would bring about other problems.

We can reasonably grow our population only at the rate at which we're willing to build new infrastructure to support the enlarged population. In recent years, the influx of immigrants, and the children of recent immigrants, have been increasing the population faster than we've built schools, hospitals, and housing. Result: crowding in the schools, hospitals that can't support the costs of their emergency rooms, and... well, in some places, too many people living in abodes that aren't reasonably big enough for that many people.

Answer 6

No, no, and no. I am dealing with it by preventing our Senate from passing the Shamnesty bill. I can not see the logic in giving instant amnesty to 12 to 20 million illegal aliens who are breaking our laws. You don't reward criminals with the fruits of their crimes. That only leads to more crime! The children of illegal aliens should not be given US citizenship. There is nowhere in the US constitution that states that the children of illegal aliens are to be given citizenship.

Our legal immigration policy allows way too many people to become citizens. We need to stop all illegal immigration, build the border fence, increase the number of ICE and border patrol agents, deport the illegals, cut back legal immigration to about 250,000 a year, and enforce all of our immigration laws.

We do not need this labor pool. We could easily get buy without so many servants for rich people, Mexican and Chinese restaurants, landscapers, gardeners, drug dealers and smugglers, gang members, day laborers, etc. We could use prison labor to work in the fields and do other jobs.

If we were to deport most of the illegals, the working class would get a large pay raise, and there would be no unemployment. Fewer people would be on welfare, and fewer people would be without health insurance.

You are incorrect that the illegals have assimilated into our society. The majority of the illegals cannot speak English and they live in immigrant ghettos where they practice their native cultural ways.

Your ignorance about this issue appalling. Below are some sites where you can get some facts about this important issue. I hope that you will take some time to educate yourself about one of the most important issues of your lifetime.

Answer 7

I am imagining a new and very large federal government department already well into the development stage which will be tasked with the huge and important job of seeing to the needs of the 12-20 million new citizens of our country and of laying the groundwork of accomodating the tens of milliions more who will come flooding across the border in the next 10 years.

Answer 8

The "threat" is that it will cost taxpayers 2.5 trillion dollars to provide social services such as social security to those who are now illegals. They haven't paid into social security, they don't make enough money at low-skilled jobs to pay much into it, but they and their families will eventually draw on it. The difference between what they can pay and what they will need is $2.5 trillion.

Fat cats get slave labor and pass on the social costs to the taxpayers. You say we get low prices because the costs are added to the governmental budgets rather than to the products you buy. The "low prices" also come at the expense of working-class Americans whose wages are undercut by the supply of slave labor.

If you think those here are already assimilated, place a business telephone call sometime and listen to the announcement "to continue in English, press one now, para continuar en espanol, marque numero dos."

Deal with it, indeed! Where are you getting this nonsense, from John Kerry?

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Mark, the $2.5 trillion figure is the figure from a study by The Heritage Foundation that was given to the senate.

And Mark, the problem is not with professional people coming here, but with tens of millions of unskilled workers.

Answer 9

some do and a few do no longer. people who incredibly care tend to be from Border States the place the difficulty is the extra serious. the two Democrats and Republicans in those states, or counties interior those states see their faculties, medical centers and jails overflowing. There are Hospitals loosing hundreds of thousands in UN paid medical costs simply by open door coverage. The overwhelming majority human beings in CA voted for and exceeded prop 187, it became later overturned by making use of the Liberal 9th Circuit courtroom. can we care? Hell sure we care. although, our government is powerless to do something approximately it. they're to busy attempting to get the Histpanic Vote.

Answer 10

I believe Texas did a amnesty type program in the 80's for people there from Mexico illegally.