Thats it? Thats the best the anti-American pro communists like you have?

Pathetic.

Borders on countries are there for a reason. The fact that you hate America and want it destroyed from within is sad.

Whats sad is that you aren’t smart enough to recognize a simple fact. Do you lock your doors or leave them open and unlocked with all your valuable exposed?

America needs to lock its doors and keep its valuables safe from all who would like nothing more than to rob us.

Inviting friends over is fine. Controlled immigration is fine.Illegal immigration is wrong and irresponsible.

Barry could end all the questions by doing one very simple thing, but he refuses to do so. You know why? It’s because there is something he is embarrassed about on his birth certificate. Something very embarrassing. So he spends millions of dollars keeping it very secure and hidden from view.

You should be ashamed of yourself and you would be if you had any sense of honor or integrity.

On the issue of Dobbs and your ‘outrage’ over CNN keeping him on the air, I find it more complete utter nonsense. Dobbs is actually performing his duty which is to report news. The news is that Hussein hasn’t released his birth record, notwithstanding, an ‘official copy’, that no one in Hawaii will actually sign or seal.

I know how it must upset you and your brown shirt fellow fascists that there still are some actual news organizations that still allow journalists the freedom to report news instead of being in the tank for Hussein and ‘making the news’, like the mainstream media is.

I’ll make this brief since I have to get to work.

First, thanks for not calling me a racist this time around.
To your points:

Legal vs illegal. Civil or criminal, it is a crime to enter this country against the law. Why do you think they pay smugglers a lot of money to help them get here?

There are many studies on illegal immigration and crime. Harvard is a very liberal institution that gives scholarships to illegal aliens. Perhaps that induces some bias. I have cited a couple for you, but you discredit them because they do not agree with your beliefs.

To your third point: You seem to be saying that we should legalize them so they wouldn’t be illegal anymore. We did that in 1986. Sorry, but that didn’t solve the problem. I just love your phrase “de facto immigration through illegal routes”. You obviously believe that the US has no right to secure it’s borders. This we will not agree on!

Our policies are discriminate? PLEASE! This country allows an extremely high number of legal immigrants. The Chinese seem to have no problem getting visas. Mexicans recieve a large proportion of legal immigration visas. We should be selective when choosing new citizens. (Not discriminitory, but selective.)

Working off the books. So your “logic” is that since some Americans work illegally, cook the books, etc, it is discriminatory to forbid illegal aliens to work illegally? Twisted…

Illegal employment definately has benefits, for illegal employers. This is NOT a gain to US tax payers as the illegals use more in benefits than they pay in taxes. As for sales tax, first, less is spent by illegals ,therefore less tax is collected, because of their depressed wages. Second, they send a large proportion of their earnings home. Remittances are a huge portion of the Mexican economy. Money sent home is lost to our economy. No sales tax is collected. Your “logic” is completely full of holes.

Driving is a priveledge, not a right. The crime (civil or criminal) of coming here illegally does not earn the priviledge of having a driver’s license. Why should we grant the priveledge of driving for the purpose of making the crime of working illegally easier to commit? Again, your “logic” is twisted to suit your idealogy.

Your last sentence is interesting. Yes, we need a practical solution and one more humane than the status quo. We need to have a little compassion for our own citizens who’s jobs have been taken by illegal immigrants. An estimates 8 million non-agricultural jobs are being done by illegals. How about some campassion for our LEGAL citizens instead of the illegals.

And while we’re at it, why do we kowtow to Mexico? Mexico is not a poor country. They have mineral wealth, oil, a great tourism industry. And yes, an elite class that does not allow the common people to share in the wealth of the nation. That is a root cause, yet no one is adressing it.

You bring up a number of issues.

I think we should separate opinions and beliefs from empirical fact. I have no interest in discussing your beliefs beyond what you have said, though I disagree with them.

Nor do I think that your beliefs have any more basis in fact than any act of your imagination, such as your belief in God or who might win the World Series. As such, they are inarguable. Any discussion we have about them would be metaphysical, illogical, and fruitless.

So, first I will cull out your beliefs, which I repudiate but will not discuss with you:

“Legal immigrants are by and large not a crime problem. They come here legally, pay the fees, pass the physicals, pass the interviews, have sponsors etc. I know this personally because my wife is a legal Chinese immigrant. Then there is a string of criminal behaviors when they stay here. This disrespect for the law often does not stop at employment related crime. Driving illegally, DUI, drugs and gang related activity are not uncommon among the illegal population. Where I lived in Colorado, they were the norm. Race is not the issue, much as you would like to discredit us as racists, that is simply not true of the majority who oppose illegal immigration. Being from a culture where there is not respect for the law probably is a cause of illegal immigrant crime. (Not that the legal system of Mexico deserves respect, another diversion…) Play the race card if that’s all you have, but it’s not a valid argument. I do not recall any headlines saying “Latino Catholic blah blah blah”. Illegal alien is not a race or a religion or even a nationality. “Illegal alien” is a choice, a behavior. Nice try, but it’s a false argument.”

And now, I will discuss empirical fact, which can be rationally debated and truth derived:

Regarding the difference between legal and illegal immigrants, there are a number of issues here to discuss, and you comment does not address them.

First, the designation of “legal” and “illegal” is a little bit misleading because under 8 U.S.C. §1325(a), it is a crime for a person to enter the U.S. illegally, whereas it is merely a civil violation, under § 1227(a)(1)(B), for an alien to be present in the country illegally. Someone in the act of crossing the border will be adjudicated differently than someone say, who committed a crime once in the country and is found to be in the country illegally, since at that point being present in the country is no longer a criminal offense, but rather a civil infraction.

Secondly, the study by the Harvard sociology department looked at both legal and illegal immigrant populations, which were cross checked with prison data and census data, both in the realm of black and white. Their conclusions were quite clear that when grouped by all offender types (federal and state), illegal and legal immigrants were both underrepresented compared with US citizens in the penal system, in disproportion to their population in the country. It can therefore be factually concluded that immigrants – legal and illegal – reduce criminality in America. The study that you referenced looked only at Federal correctional facilities, which are drastically fewer in number and offender populations than state and county correctional facilities.

Thirdly one of the compelling reasons for Comprehensive Immigration reform is the huge distortion between legal immigration routes and de facto immigration through illegal routes. It has been argued that reforming the system to allow more legal immigrants would reduce the numbers of illegal immigrants, since those seeking to study, work, obtain asylum, join family members, etc., would be able to do so legally, and solve much of the problem related to their presence in America illegally.

Moreover, the policies used by US immigration authorities unfairly penalize certain nationalities and races; visa applications from China, Haiti, Philippenes , Mexico etc, will take much longer and have much less chance of success per capita than those from Western European countries, for example. The system has been widely criticized for its perversities, and a key diplomat resigned from the Foreign Service some years ago in protest of these policies considered racist, as described in an article in the world respected and highly objective diplomacy journal, Foreign Affairs.

Now regarding behaviors considered undesirable (working off the books, taking jobs illegally, driving illegally, etc.) there are specifics points to be raised under each separate consideration:

Working off the books: This is a common practice by citizens throughout the country. Take a peek into any restaurant or bar and you will see this behavior taking place right under the nose of the authorities. Self employed persons and business owners also cook their books quite commonly in this country. To address this problem we have policies already in place to catch and punish violations. Under the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal treatment under the law per national origin, any attempt to set up special legislation to be harsher on immigrants would be unconstitutional.

Taking jobs illegally: While true that a grey market economy depletes potential contributions to specific tax rolls, it is also true that many illegal immigrants pay federal and social security taxes without ever receiving any benefit, so this represents a net gain to US taxpayers. Moreover, the 12 million people living and working here illegally have been shown to have strong advantages to local and national economies. This is because of the availability of low wage labor, as well as the jobs and wealth that are created by business owners who benefit from low wage labor, as well as the businesses and employees of the businesses that provide goods and services consumed by this segment of the US population. Additionally, their spending generates specific gains in state sales tax in exactly the same percentage as legal residents and citizens.

Driving illegally: The initiative to grant drivers licenses without proof of legal residency in the country is beneficial for a number of reasons. First, it ensures that drivers who happen to be illegally in the country will carry insurance for any eventual liability, and it creates a biometric record that can be useful if indeed the immigrant in question commits a crime or must produce ID for any reason. Empirically it can be shown that denying a drivers license is ineffective in stopping people from driving altogether, though it might indeed discourage it. Providing a drivers license then puts the burden upon the immigrant to obtain the necessary privilege, rather than de facto force all immigrants to take their chances in order to survive. In this sense it is also a more practical solution, as well as more humane than the status quo.

Legal immigrants are by and large not a crime problem. They come here legally, pay the fees, pass the physicals, pass the interviews, have sponsors etc. I know this personally because my wife is a legal Chinese immigrant.

The first thing illegals do when they come here is well, come here illegally. (Or as you point out, overstay a visa.)Then there is a string of criminal behaviors when they stay here, take jobs illegally, etc. Working under the table tax free is a crime. (And their employers are just as gulty!) Using a false ID is also a crime. To come here is illegal, to support yourself here without documentation is illegal. What part of this equation do you not understand?

This disrespect for the law often does not stop at employment related crime. Driving illegally, DUI, drugs and gang related activity are not uncommon among the illegal population. Where I lived in Colorado, they were the norm.

You try to apply the stats of LEGAL immigrants to the illegal population. That comparison doesn’t hold water. This is broken out in the study that I referenced for you.

The mention of Latino crime stats is because Latinos are the bulk of the illegal immigrants. Being Latino has nothing to do with it.

Race is not the issue, much as you would like to discredit us as racists, that is simply not true of the majority who oppose illegal immigration.

Being from a culture where there is not respect for the law probably is a cause of illegal immigrant crime. (Not that the legal system of Mexico deserves respect, another diversion…)

Play the race card if that’s all you have, but it’s not a valid argument. I do not recall any headlines saying “Latino Catholic blah blah blah”. Illegal alien is not a race or a religion or even a nationality. “Illegal alien” is a choice, a behavior. Nice try, but it’s a false argument.

As for Tanton, he has answered his critics. NumbersUSA explicitly is against racism, I have not seen anything racist on FAIR or CIS either. Again, the race card is trumped by the facts.

If you silence Dobbs, why not the SPLC. Let’s recognize the long term effects of degrading the constitution.

An example: the “birthers.” Do you really think Obama would have gotten as far as he has in politics if he wasn’t a citizen? Don’t you think someone would have figured it out long before now? (And btw, Hawaii IS part of the U.S, in case you didn’t know!) And Dobbs persists in repeating this utter nonsense and giving it credibility! I could cite many more examples,

Dobbs is a disgrace to the journalistic profession.for his fuzzy so-called “facts” and dubious interview subjects. I’ve been writing to CNN for the past two years to try to get him removed. I don’t watch him at all, but I still think he should be removed from the air. His “reporting” feeds into the paranoid fringe and encourages them. CNN should be ashamed of themselves.

Legal immigrants are by and large not a crime problem. They come here legally, pay the fees, pass the physicals, pass the interviews, have sponsors etc. I know this personally because my wife is a legal Chinese immigrant.

The first thing illegals do when they come here is well, come here illegally. (Or as you point out, overstay a visa.)Then there is a string of criminal behaviors when they stay here, take jobs illegally, etc. Working under the table tax free is a crime. (And their employers are just as gulty!) Using a false ID is also a crime. To come here is illegal, to support yourself here without documentation is illegal. What part of this equation do you not understand?

This disrespect for the law often does not stop at employment related crime. Driving illegally, DUI, drugs and gang related activity are not uncommon among the illegal population. Where I lived in Colorado, they were the norm.

You try to apply the stats of LEGAL immigrants to the illegal population. That comparison doesn’t hold water. This is broken out in the study that I referenced for you.

The mention of Latino crime stats is because Latinos are the bulk of the illegal immigrants. Being Latino has nothing to do with it.

Race is not the issue, much as you would like to discredit us as racists, that is simply not true of the majority who oppose illegal immigration.

Being from a culture where there is not respect for the law probably is a cause of illegal immigrant crime. (Not that the legal system of Mexico deserves respect, another diversion…)

Play the race card if that’s all you have, but it’s not a valid argument. I do not recall any headlines saying “Latino Catholic blah blah blah”. Illegal alien is not a race or a religion or even a nationality. “Illegal alien” is a choice, a behavior. Nice try, but it’s a false argument.

As for Tanton, he has answered his critics. NumbersUSA explicitly is against racism, I have not seen anything racist on FAIR or CIS either. Again, the race card is trumped by the facts.

I think you ought to go hug a socialist, Master Sergeant. Unless you want to go back to the days of tenant farming.

They know what they’re doing. It’s communism, rules for radicles, call it what you like. They are disingenous liars and proud of it.

on August 29th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

From PEW: “Latinos without US citizenship represent 29% of all federal offenders” And what proportion of the population are they? …
————————–
Federal offenders are a small percentage of overall criminals in the country. Although yes, federal facilities have a higher percentage of immigrants, most crimes are state crimes, and sentences served in state or municipal facilities are therefore in the overwhelming majority.

Thus even with the higher percentage of immigrant violators in federal prison, when you look at the numbers for all prisons, immigrants are still underrepresented per their percentage of the national population. Harvard discussed this in their findings.

Since you mention Latinos and crime, I think it is important to point out that John Tanton, who founded CIS, NumbersUSA and a dozen or so other groups dedicated to ending immigration, has published views supporting eugenics, a permanently discredited form of quackery social science that linked racial markers to intelligence and human achievement.

I think you need to go back to Locke and the tabula rasa (blank slate) concept to understand the true relationship between ethnicity and criminality in America. As Napoleon Bonaparte said, ability alone is nothing without opportunity.

In any case factual and objective data prove that criminality is lower among immigrant populations. It is not an opinion, but statistical fact. Dobbs et al feed disinformation and stereotypes every time they start talking about illegal immigrant this or that.

If you ran a headline saying White Protestant Kills Family of Four, or White Protestant Apprehended for Cop Slaying every time it happened, and Dobbs started screaming about it on his show then public perception would be very different about white protestants, don’t you think?

People are NOT racist for questioning the president.
People are NOT racist for being against government-run health care
People are NOT racist for wanting to look into a birth certificate
People are NOT racist for being concerned about illegal immigration.

And what many of you are doing is projecting. You are who you are and since you’re full of hate, you believe that others must be running on hate too. Turn off your computers, turn off your televisions and turn off your radios. Go do something more constructive and healthier for yourself and the world.

Because your divisive attitudes and downright intolerance for opposing views is why you should just bug off.

You are VERY entertaining, but frankly, you make no sense.

I will admit to some protectionist leanings, but rest assured I am not a marxist.

Yes, I am for keeping jobs here. Much of that is a moral issue. We outlawed slavery in this country, but buy essentially slave produced goods from third world countries. We have laws to protect the enviornment here, but allow but goods prodeced from polluting factories elsewhere. There’s a big moral hole in these actions.

Much of that is that I see corporations tearing this country apart seeking cheap labor. The long term consequesces to our country are obvious. I do not have a solution to the corporate tendancy to regard short term profit as the only motive. You can sentence a person to jail if they commit crimes, corporations have the ability to move away from laws and thus evade any moral responsibility. We need to find a method to counter this. That’s not marxist, it’s common sense.

Regarding H1B’s, I am not for eliminating them, but providing a viable system that allows a reasonable level of immigration of the best and brightest without depressing wages or discouraging Americans students from entering the technical fields. As it stands now, it is an abused system that floods the workplace with cheap, and predominantly low end workers. Effectively, the corporation gets the ability to offer residence as a form of compensation to the worker, lessening the need to pay an otherwise fair wage.

As for your “study” on crime rates, there are logical holes large enough to drive a truck through. Obviously someone had an agenda to push. Yes, well assimilated Legal immigrant communities do well. Illegal imigrants are another story. From PEW: “Latinos without US citizenship represent 29% of all federal offenders” And what proportion of the population are they? … http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/104.pdf
That’s quite an article.

As for “worldview”, let’s just say that I have been around the block a few times. Please do not try to dismiss my opinions with this nonsense. You seem to enjoy talking down to those of us who have a different opinion. Sorry, but your view is not the only valid one.

But, we do agree on a few things. Yes, this country needs to be more business friendly and yes we need to raise our educational standards. Yes, the Krazy Kristians are nuts. (Not to be confused with mainstream religious folks!)

Common sense tells me that a world view is shaped by personal experience. Those who have limited experience beyond their own streets, neighborhoods, cities and countries will have a distorted or inexistant world view. An opinion is not a world view, nor is repeating what seems to be a popular consensus about criminality and immigration.

Harvard University researchers, in a peer reviewed academic paper on public health, demonstrated using census data and crime data that legal as well as illegal immigrants have less incidents of crime than their native born counterparts. I highly encourage you to read the paper because it illustrates the very important fact that perception is not reality.

Harvard found that when shown images of inner city neighborhoods with clotheslines and grafitti, where immigrants were present, compared with images of nicely trimmed lawns and cookie cutter houses, people invariably assumed that the higher crime rates were in the chaotic neighborhoods. The truth was opposite.

Crime rates are low among immigrants because they will not risk deportation for a quick buck. They also stick together through tight family networks and social support groups so that they are able to meet basic needs without resorting to crime (and no a visa violation is not a crime, it is an administrative offense).

Here is an overview of the report — I would rather point you to the original study, but since you are a scientist I chose a science website.

http://www.livescience.com/str.....crime.html

So you see stereotypes can be very misleading. Garbage in, garbage out.

http://www.myvisajobs.com/Top_Visa_Sponsors.aspx

Vince, you are a Marxist and didn’t know it.

Marx’s labor value theory, which states that the cost of the good is equivalent to the labor that goes into it, is a pillar of Marxian economics, as detailed in Capital (1867). The theory goes back, if you will allow me, to the physiocrats of the late 18th Century who proposed that all economic value comes from the land. Adam Smith also upheld this view in Wealth of Nations (1776), so it’s not just commies like me who refer to it. However it was Marx who put it into hard social science.

You and Marx, like it or not, state the same thing — Marx took classical economics to show that the value of labor power must depend on the number of labor hours it takes on average, to feed, clothe, and shelter a worker and make it possible to do the work. This means wages will eventually depend on the number of labor hours it takes to sustain the worker. Let’s say five hours of labor are needed to feed, clothe, and house a worker each day so that she can drag herself into work the next day. If one labor hour is worth one dollar, the correct wage would be five dollars per day.

So, what you are saying is that immigrant labor costs less because they are better able to survive for less money than US citizens. So, because US citizens cannot accept the conditions immigrants do, wages drop as a result. In this sense, I would generally agree with you and your ally Marx, except for one thing.

Minimum wage is set by federal law. If the wage is too low, it is because of federal policy, not because of immigrants.

Now, if wages in professional jobs are low, perhaps it is simply that immigrants are more competitive than US workers. If you go with Marx, then profits should all go back to the workers, instead of to the capitalists, so you would have no problem. But since you probably think socialism is evil, you are going to have to live with the fact that the capitalists who pay your salary will choose whoever costs less.

Consider this: perhaps Americans are too addicted unnecessary luxuries, overpriced brands and status symbol, wasteful lifestyles, and generally “keeping up with the Joneses”, to be able to compete with immigrant workers. If so it’s your problem, not theirs.

Now what you and Marx fail to appreciate is that the theory of labor value falls short. Profits are not gained by only exploiting workers so much as taking risks, curtailing or foregoing consumption, and better organization of production (including moving companies overseas where tribute is less).

In fact, the wages that immigrants earn here will be spent and taxed, and the businesses they work for will encourage greater productivity in the national economy. In other words, with cheaper labor, the US will produce more, consume more, and enjoy the advantages of job growth and greater general prosperity as a result.

If we curtail the technical labor visas as you propose, the response by industry will be to shut down US operations and move to India, Brazil or wherever high skilled, low cost labor can be obtained. In that case you will no longer have a job at all, much less a high paying one.

Regarding engineers:

Yes I have been in many engineering facilities because I have engineers in my family. My experience is that roughly half of the engineers I have seen in high paying jobs (let’s say $150k – $250k per year) are foreign born, because US citizens are not producing high caliber engineers. You have also admitted that the older generation of engineers is on the way out (whether they have targets on their back or not) and that surely you recognize that any technical field requires a transfer of knowlege to younger generations. Who will do this for our country if we block foreign engineers and stick to the protectionist agenda you propose.

Any educator will tell you that the US is lagging behind the rest of the world on technical skills from secondary education all the way through post doctoral work. If developing nations like India or Brazil are able to produce higher caliber engineers than the US it is because those countries emphasize technical training whereas we emphasize sitting around munching potato chips and watching sitcoms from an early age.

So you won’t accuse me of spreading leftist propaganda, I found this link to the nice conservative Christian Science Monitor, showing that US students lag way behind in science and math.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/.....-usgn.html

Part of the obstacle of course are the dimwit creationists who would rather hold to the theory that the world is 6,000 years old than look at what science has to say. This goes back to Copernicus, so it’s not an easy problem to fix.

Another factor that must be considered is the shift away from US manufacturing and industry in general. There are two main reasons that I can see: 1) excessive taxation on businesses, forcing them to overseas tax homes, and 2) the high cost of US labor. Immigrant labor has been shown by numerous think tanks, universities, and organizations to be highly beneficial to the US economy. I will go into that later, but it is worth mentioning here.