And you wonder why CALIFORNIA has budget problems??? Because the FEDS refuse to enforce the immigration laws, and refuse to Amend the Constitution so that illegal aliens are not allowed FREE medical and social service care. The Red Carpet that people like Maverick have spoken of when it comes to California and Illegal Aliens is a FEDERAL RED CARPET! Make no mistake about that. From one of my previous posts on the subject: California Illegal Immigration . . . For the sake of argument, even if one were to agree with the absolute numbers that are being estimated by www.fairus.org the fact of the matter is that ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS A FEDERAL ISSUE which has not properly been addressed let alone ENFORCED BY CONGRESS, and as a result, has wound-up costing State and Local governments ( ie. California ) hundreds of millions of dollars. Maverick, in case you didn't know . . . back in 1994,all of those LIBERAL CALIFORNIA voters passed Proposition 187 with 59% of the vote and it became law the next day. Proposition 187's provisions require California law enforcement, social services, health care and public personnel to: 1. Verify the immigration status of persons with whom they come in contact. 2. Notify certain defined persons of their immigration status. 3. Report those persons to state and federal officials; 4. And deny those persons social services, health care, and education. In 1995, the above State Proposition 187 was then deemed "unconstitutional" because it pre-empted the Federal governement's exclusive constitutional authority over the regulation of immigration, Congress' exercise of that power through the Immigration and Nationality Act, and other federal statutes. Thus, until the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA interprets the 14th Amendment to NOT include the offspring of illegal aliens, states like California will continue to have to foot the bill for illegal aliens that are giving birth on American soil. In 1994, California paid for 74,987 deliveries to illegal alien mothers at a total cost of $215.2 million according to www.fairus.org In fact, illegal alien mothers accounted for 36% of all Medi-Cal funded births in California for that year! Moreover, the estimate for the total number of illegal alien "anchor" babies from the nation's seven states with the highest concentration of illegal aliens was $3.1 billion in 1993. Obviously, the CALIFORNIA ECONOMY is much more diverse and productive than that of Arizona. The sheer size of the economy is enough to attract illegal aliens to come to California to seek work, most of which is menial labor in Agriculture and Homebuilding. Moreover, the fact that Proposition 187 was deemed "unconstitutional" by a federal court further enhances the PERCEPTION that California is an attractive place for illegals to come to. Until the UNITED STATES CONGRESS AND GEORGE BUSH COME TO REALISTIC 21st CENTURY TERMS WITH THE 14th AMENDMENT, AND THE INS ENFORCES IMMIGRATION LAW, economically attractive states like California are going to continue to see their resources and budget sapped by illegal immigration. http://www.fairus.org/Research/Research.cfm?ID=1407&c=9
This argument is growing tiresome. We have been through all this before have we not? The question is what do we do with the 10 million illegals that are here NOW? We all know what we should have done. It's easy to play monday morning quarterback. Every President from Bush to Clinton down to Reagan should have done something about it. OK, they didn't. Fine, let's get over that. What do you do. Everyone is attacking Bush now because he wants to give them amnesty. OK fine, attack him. It's Bush's fault. Now what do YOU want to do about it. See everyone just keeps shouting but I haven't heard one solution yet on this board. Not one.
You're right. We can't deport them all in a week. But surely we shouldn't adopt policies that will make things worse. We should start sending a strong signal that we intend to get a handle on the situation. I don't see how you do that by giving an amnesty. Or by giving them more incentives to come here.
Ok, how about tightening up our borders with troops redeployed from Europe & Asia...and once that is done and America's borders are resonably well sealed, grant Green Cards & Residency to (non-Muslim) illegals already living here. Deportation need only be used against criminal immigrants. America can successfully absorb these 10 million illegal aliens, but only if they are not joined by another 10 million over the next few years. Bush's solution seems rather incomplete to me.
OK, well first of all, after listening to Bush's speech today he seemed to mention that he was going to tighten up security at the borders. Having said that, can someone please explain to me exactly how you propose to do this? Do you want us to build a wall like in Berlin with military guys standing guard with m-16's? And what, they are going to shoot and kill every man, woman and child that tries to sneek across. Yeah I can see the headlines on CNN, 5 children and their mother shot to death in horror while trying to enter US. Yeah, the liberals would have a field day with that. We'll have more casualties on the borders then in the Iraq war. OK, so fine we do that. We kill people at the borders. So we have armed men for thousands of miles along the border? It's not like we are protecting one road here. You have to protect every inch of that border. Is this even feasible? Then what about Canada? Same thing there? Here is my proposal and I admit its not going to get much praise on here. I think you have to leave the borders open. But here is what you do. You need to remove the incentive for illegals to come over here. I would propose that if any business or farm employs any illegals, they would be issued sharp fines and if they continue to violate the law, they could have their business license or their farm shut down. You penalize those who are hiring the illegals. If the farmers know that they run a great financial risk by hiring illegals and its not like they can hide them since they will be out in the fields working, then they will have an incentive to not hire them. And if nobody hires illegals then they will not have an incentive to come here. I think this is a much better solution and one that will actually bring in tax revenue rather then cost tax payer money to put up a gestapo on the border. I just see policing the border as a public relations nightmare. Can you imagine the body count? I believe you have to give people the incentive to act or not to act. You can't force people to do anything in this society or any other.
We're not thinking on the same page here. The goverment should not be fucking shooting people! I never suggested that at all. Better fencing, more patrols, more radar monitoring, and instant expulsion of anyone caught trying to sneak in...that's all. Fining employers of illegals may do more harm than good, as these people who'd really prefer to sharecrop or bus tables will instead be forced to break into cars and other acts of theft to support themselves.
As long as Mexico standards of living don't get better, I am afraid you can't do much. They have nothing to lose by coming to the US. Immigration can cause problems in the short and long term and one of which could be the big cultural divide between the latino and the white community but it is unfair to say they come to the US to take advantage. The US would probably be brought to a halt without them.
You are very naive though. How can you talk about policing the borders without violence. You are sadly mistaken. Before you engage in such an action you better be able to reap the consequences. Look at the Iraq war. Nobody gave a second thought to the idea that there would be this kind of guerilla warfare. Almost all of the lives lost have been from this and not the actual war itself. You need to think these things through. If you are going to put armed military on our borders and think that there won't be any violence you are living in a fantasy world. Look at the lengths at which cubans go through to get into florida. They put 40 people on a raft that can hold 10 out onto the ocean knowing that there is a 90% they will all drown and die before they reach shore. If these illegals want to get in they will, armed soldiers or not, and when they persist, force will be used. I'm not sure you are going to want to see the results on the evening news.
How often do the coyotes (people smugglers) turn violent when stopped by border patrol? It almost never happens. I think you're inventing problems where there are none.