OK, fair enough. It exists and is not being used by employers due to limitations that make it unattractive for them to pursue.
So your proposition is to put the immigrant workers desires first, rather then the employers. I see where you are going with this.
However, the vast majority of these workers are as we currently see them; unskilled labor.
Yep. I compete for my job with overseas IT workers every day. Why should a car salesman be different?
You mean the mechanics, roofers, construction workers, plumbers, landscapers (not mere lawn cutters), business owners, etc. Those "unskilled" laborers.
I see that you're from Michigan. Perhaps you should get out more. Illegal immigrants do more than pick fruit.
As for competition, there wouldn't be. We have a Federal minimum wage, and most States have minimum wages. As you suggest below, we could have a "non-citizen low wage", mandating a maximum that such people could make. A citizen worker would not be allowed to accept a "non-citizen" wage because the employer is forced to pay the Federal / State minimum wage.
"Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." I think I read that somewhere.
There is a difference between making individual citizens, as meant in the quote above, and letting people come here as suits there convienence for monetary profit.
Let me answer your question with a question. What would be the point of denying citizenship to others once you have it yourself? Nice club, is it exclusive, or can anybody join? And to those that say they welcome those who follow the rules, I agree. I recommend changing the rules.
See above. It's not about denying everyone citizenship. No one has ever made that point. But I don't have a problem with having criteria. Apparently you have none.
Yep. Although we could work out a 'non-citizen' labor wage, as a suggestion.
And this is my other problem. What you are now arguing is a essentially a new slave class. At the very least, you are arguing for a legal caste system.
Or we could accept that prices will rise, but the illegal aliens won't be such a drag on society anymore since they'll be able to buy health insurance and pay into the services they currently receive.
Yes, they will be. From where will they get their health insurance? From government subsidies. Hence, they will continue to be a drag on society. What services will they receive that they could actually pay for, given that you are also making the suggestion of a "non-citizen" low wage.
Even if we accept that prices will rise, people will only pay so much for a given product. Do you really think that people will pay $8 for a head of lettuce, regardless of whether that lettuce is picked by a legal worker or immigrant. I posit to you that some prices will still be acceptable on an individual basis, but the composite effect would be devastating. Are you trying to destroy the U.S., or solve the problem.
Solved the border control problem, which I see as numero uno.
Yes, if you believe that the sole problem is merely people coming to this country illegally. But that is not the sole problem. It is the underlying root cause of the many other problems which are what really concern people.
No one says, "Oh, we just shouldn't have illegal immigrants here just because they are illegal." The complaint is the effect that those illegal immigrants are having. And that, you have not solved.
Created a solution to illegal aliens using services they didn't pay for, numero dos.
No, you didn't, because you haven't actually given a way for people to pay for those services. In fact, your suggestion makes the problem worse. Under your "solution", those who are now illegal and made citizens would have access to services which they don't currently have. And yet, they would still have no way to pay for them. Most would not even make enough to be taxed, especially if we implement your "solution" of a "non-citizen low wage". Hence, they would get
more services, but still don't pay anything commesurate into the system.
Your solution also supposes that if they were allowed to get taxable jobs, that somehow that would create those jobs for them to get. How many gardeners do we need? Now many fruit pickers do we need? We're somehow going to magically have more because we have opened the floodgate to even more eligible workers? I don't think so.
And even if they got all the jobs, those who are citizens would be out of a job and take services which they couldn't pay for. Hell, some non-citizens, because they can't get work in there own country, and those countries typically don't offer government mandated services, would then come here because they could get more by not working here then they could get by not working there.
Your solution has not only
not solved the problem, but actually excacerbated it.
Lowered crime by giving now-legal aliens the ability to report crimes against them, numero tres. I'm sure there are more.
I am in law enforcement. In my experience (what is yours in this, by the way, other then what you heard on the news) illegals have no problems with reporting crime. We take countless reports from them.
And, I'm assuming here, considering that you have little experience with the actual workings of law enforcement, such people now reporting crimes would actually "cause crime to go up". Alot of crimes go unreported, and not just from illegals. If the reason they chose not to report them was because of their legal status, and they now reported them, crime statistics would actually rise.
What you're also assuming here is that law enforcement would actually be able to solve those crimes. In most crimes, there is very little suspect information, and what is given are vague physically descriptions given by victims. And can be accounted for by experts in the field, most descriptions given usually have inaccuracies. So, just because those crimes are reported doesn't mean that crimes would be solved and go down.
If my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle. We can't prevent it. Haven't the will, haven't the money, haven't the cops, haven't the jails.
Haven't the will, granted.
But what I suggest would not cost all that much to have a significant impact, nor would it require gobs of law enforcement. All you have to do is make it so painful for some high profile people in companies that everyone else would be too fearful to do so because of the consequences. Simple enough.
Has enforcement stopped illegal drugs?
Because we don't take it seriously.
Has it stopped prostitution?
Because we don't take it seriously.
Did it stop booze trafficking during prohibition?
Because you physically can't control the manufacture of alcohol.
We dont' want it stopped, hence it will not stop. Continuing to propose a solution that can't happen is not a solution.
Contining to propose a solution that isn't an acutal solution isn't a solution either.
I propose a cure for that.
Like a lot of drugs, your cure is worse then the acutal disease.
Not most people who shop at Wal-Mart, and they are more than you or me.
I would disagree. But here we fall into more personal opinion, with no clear factual basis, so I'll leave it alone.
But it isn't going to change. So I deal with trying to keep my job using whatever advantages I possess, rather than railing about how unfair it is that my company keeps shipping more and more jobs overseas. I can't change the latter, I might be able to influence the former. Do we want to solve problems, or complain about them?
This whole statment is pre-supposed that your solution would actually solve something, which I have shown that it won't.
When people say their main concern is securing the border, and then dance around and come with a thousand different non-border-related reasons why they would never agree to an amnesty or a meaningful guest worker program, they have another agenda. When they start throwing their fear of people speaking Spanish or their American culture changing and how it bothers them, I begin to perceive what that agenda is. I doubt they look themselves in the mirror and admit they're racists. But you tell me what you call it when people are not really interested in any solution that does not involve everyone who speaks Spanish and has brown skin going home right now?
This is complete obfuscation. You know that illegals cause a measureable effect on the economy and standard of living. It is not there mere presence which is unpalatable. No one is making the argument that they don't want Mexicans here simply because they are Mexican. When they give you the reason, you call it "dancing". And when they don't agree with your solution, it must be because of racism. That is just twisted, I hesitate to call it, logic.
It is the
net effect of their presence, which is measureable to some extent, however we just refuse to even try to measure it.
Xenophobia is akin to racism. Nobody likes change at first, but the USA is a polyglot society. Most of us have ancestors who came here and were segregated for one reason or another by those already here, or who chose to segregate themselves. We're a society based on change. I live in Detroit, which is hugely diverse. From polish-based Hamtramck to largely Middle-Eastern Dearborn, we run the gamut. Spanish-speaking? Dude, I go grocery shopping next to people wearing chadors or yamulkes and speaking every language I ever heard of.
It is not the change people have a problem with. Most Americans have show a willingness to accept different aspects of various cultures. But what is wrong with Americans wanting their own culture and sence of identity? You obviously think that something is wrong with it.
Hell, we celebrate days that are significant in Mexican history which they don't even celebrate in Mexico!!! We have Juneteenth, St. Patrick's Day, Hanukkah, Cinco De Mayo, etc. And yet somehow we're racist. Give me a break.
What people don't want is this turning into Mexico. Why? Because we see what Mexico has to offer. Hell, that's why they're coming here, because there are significant aspects which even they don't like!
I'm not aware of anyone suggesting that Hispanic immigrants not be required to follow US laws. Not even aware of any cultural beliefs they have that would chap most of us.
And because you don't have those beliefs, everyone who does not see cultural things as you do is a racist. Please! That is arrogance of the highest order.
Yeah, you know that whole freedom of association thing that we say we like to have in the U.S.
I answer them as I do the others, untrue. They've been debunked more times than I can remember.
Your source did not address what I said in any way. For instance, I said:
"75% of all outstanding felony warrants in Los Angeles County are for illegal immigrants."
Your source addresses "75% of the people on the Most Wanted List in Los Angeles are illegal aliens." I said nothing of the sort. I did not specify murder warrants either, as your source points out.
I said: About 90% of hit & runs in my department which are solved were caused by illegal immigrants.
1. Your source does not address this.
2. Even if it did, I would trust the Traffic Investigator to whom I spoke with and compiles Department statistics before I trusted even Snopes, unless they could prove that he is provided intentional falsehoods.
3. You are calling into a lie something for which you can have no facts in evidence to support your position. That goes to show your credibility in other issue as well, in my opinion.
I said: Roughly 75% of all DUI arrests are committed by illegal immigrants.
You could be partially right. I did fail to say "in my Department". Once again, I would take the word of my Departments traffic investigator over even Snopes. You could not even possibly refute these stats unless you called and he actually told you different. Even then, I would posit that the statistics have changed, not that they never existed.
Of course, I have provided no source other then stats given to me by a member of my Department. You can choose to believe or not believe them. But considering his fiance is the child of illegal immigrants, I would wonder what his motive would be.
Yep. If we never let the Italians in, we'd have no Mafia.
But we let them in. We can be blamed. We didn't "let" the Mexicans illegal immigrants into this country.
If they're legal and paying taxes, then they are paying into the system they take money from. Like citizens do now.
And as I've shown, they wouldn't pay taxes based on your hypothesis and proposal.
Competency tests. We can't force citizens to speak English because a) no national law regarding language and b) you can't take away their citizenship for not speaking correctly. With immigrants, you have a stick; no citizenship until they master it to a given degree.
But as you have argued above, there would be effectively no difference between a citizen and non-citizen. So what would the carrot be, since they would have all the rights and privileges of a citizen anyway? Answer: there wouldn't be, so there would be no incentive for them to learn English.
It gives us planning tools, which does allow us to solve problems, and it beats rough guesses, which get blown up 1000% and then repeated in endless hate-filled emails someone insists on posting on various discussion forums. Hehehe.
You certainly aren't refering to me, because I have never read said e-mail.
Yeah, it's that some (or most?) don't want ANY migrant workers, period.
Ok, so what.
They keep coming up with more and more minute points of law, obscure references to emails that they read, arguments over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and anything they can think of to defend why they're not really racist, but they still don't want illegal aliens to get amnesty or a blanket alien worker program. It's pretty clear what they want, as I've been saying. I know they get all puffed up and angry when called racists, but I can't think of another word for them when they go to such lengths to find ANY reason why they should be kept out / sent packing.
So rather then attacking the argument, you chose instead to attack the person. Good strategy. Just like the modern liberal. Call anything you don't like hate-filled so that they can be emotionally discounted.
I've already addressed it in posts above. Keep up or take notes.
You mean the post you made after I said that you didn't address it...
