What ever happened to "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..."

CookingWithCarlo.com ^ | 01/11/2004 | Carlo3b Dad, Chef, Author

[ovrtaxt]

Yes, my family crossed a border from Canada into the United States in the dead of night in hopes of securing a better life for their children.

My family applied legally, left Spain and entered through Ellis Island. Am I more of a legitimate American than you? Yes, I have the record of law to validate it. You have the record of a criminal act.

Sorry if the truth hurts.

[dennisw]

Your view of illegal immigration is highly colored by you working with them. I have read Anthony Bourdain's  "Kitchen Confidential" ,who worked with so many Hispanics in NYC restaurants. I am familiar with the food industry. I know there are tons of illegals working in the restaurant business. Many of them fine people but illegal as heck, as illegal as me stabbing someone with a knife or drunk driving. There wouldn't be so many restaurants if it were not for illegal aliens. So what? If the iron and steel industry had been allowed to hire illegal aliens we would have a lot more American steel companies alive today. 

Legal legal legal legal legal legal. 
We cannot have illegal aliens flooding our sovereign nation. Make this current crop of 12 million legal and you will provide a huge incentive for more illegal immigration, Same as happened from Ronald Reagan's' amnesty. This is not Mexico, this is the sovereign nation of the United States of America. GWBush plan dilutes my precious American citizenship. GWBush mocks it! I have no sympathy for this tide of illegal Mexicans/Central Americans flooding my country. They are greedy pigs butting into the line of orderly immigration 

How would you feel if you tried for years to bring a relative here from Italy? Someone who dearly wants to live here and contribute on a high level? He is university educated. Then Karl Rove/GWBush come along and says "Screw you Carlo! Mexicans and  Central American law breakers go to the head of the line. Screw your Italian biologist cousin!"

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Not any more.
We are Republica Norte.

[dennisw]

Legalize illegal immigration and you will get a lot more of it. 

Reward illegal immigration with "temporary guest worker programs" and you will get a lot more of it. 

Legalize 12 million illegal aliens and you will encourage those who wish to come here legally, to try their luck coming here illegally.

Legalize those who play games with visas and you will get a lot more of it. Are you aware of how many Latinos (Colombia, Ecuador and Argentina especially) come here on tourist visas and stay illegally? Hire immigration lawyers to tie up the courts and get them green cards.

[Rebelbase]

"It is not like it used to be. Nowadays, immigrants do not care to assimilate into the "American" culture. And the State accomodates them (multilingual education, voter's ballots, etc.)."

Could you imagine the outcry if there were a requirement for a person who becomes a citizen and is allowed to vote to have to have a reasonable proficiency of English?

[dalereed]

"How much would the taxpayers pay to hunt down,go through the court sytem and send them back over the border?"

Hunt down the employers, fine them the maximum, and the project is self supporting.

[cajungirl]

Times change. Sentiments change. Good policy for a country in its infancy two hundred years ago may not be good policy for a country in its maturity. We cannot take everyone who wants in for whatever reason. We have to make judgements about who is yearning to breathe free and contribute. We cannot become the world's mecca for those who would take advantage of freedom and give nothing.

[ClintonBeGone]

Good for you Carlo, you're right on with this statement.

[waterstraat]

My family applied legally, left Spain and entered through Ellis Island. Am I more of a legitimate American than you? Yes, I have the record of law to validate it.

My ancestors also came here legally, we have always tried to be respectful law abiding citizens. There is a difference between those criminals who dont want to follow the law, and those who do respect law and our government.

[hershey]

We need to make English the national language as a first step to hanging onto our identity as a nation. Would you believe it, here in MA, we finally outlawed bilingual education...but we had to get a republican governor to implement it, and the NEA is still fighting it tooth and nail.

[Rebelbase]

I agree 100%

[Rebelbase]

"We need to make English the national language as a first step to hanging onto our identity as a nation."

Or else we're doomed to eventual Balkanization.

[OESY]

Good post, Carlo, nicely sprinkled with memorable quotations.

It's either the Bush Plan, or Do Nothing. As we begin to build a front-end database of arriving visitors, we have to clean up the back end -- the 8-10 million already here, who made it in -- the vast majority of whom are good contributing people.

A program should not condone or encourage illegal entry, but no one will pay for the billions it would take to enforce a non-voluntary plan. So you need a program of incentives, and the best incentive is to legitimatize their existence because we aren't going to deport them.

Pardon my mixed metaphor, but where the rest of the world has a brain drain, we are the magnet that attracts them. The benefits are ours. We depend on their labor, their ambition to make it, their contribution to the economy and, yes, their taxes to fund our the government, including our fight against terror, social security and the rest. Beyond that, we depend on them to fashion their ideas into products, start new companies with their savings, and hire Americans as we saw so abundantly during the technology boom which is now experiencing a revival.

Bush presented a well-thought out incentive program that will help us get a handle on uncontrolled immigration and potential terrorists within our borders. It recognizes reality and has political side benefits.

[peteram]

I have a cousin in Italy who came over a few years ago on a student visa and learned to be a helicopter pilot. During the course of his schooling, he became very interested in becoming a U.S. citizen and be able to stay here. When he looked into it, he was denied. I believe their reasoning was that there was a quota of immigrants allowed from each country and that there was a long (several years) waiting list that he can get on.

I seldom got to see him before his visit and now see him more rarely. I really wished he could have stayed and become a productive contributor to this country like his uncle (my father) did. But the law was the law, and he went back.

[autoresponder]

How about having your cousin learn some Spanish and sneak in across the border?

Mexicans do it.

Islamic terrorists do it.

Lets all just break the federal and state laws now.

Starting with defunding the IRS and other agencies.

We US citizens seem to have now been told that US law means nothing.

If I was your cousin I would not let illegal aliens from Mexico, Central America, or the middle east or Red China sneak in and take his spot he has waited for.

Time for the old "student Visa" trick and getting lost in the USA?

It seems the INS and IRS and FBI do not consider this any big deal.

Especially if we go along with GW's "non-reciprocal" worker plans.

Call your US Rep and 2 US Senators and ask them which laws e can now ignore.

IRS statutes?

No Problemo for Pedro and his working under the table paid wife getting food stamps and free medical care.

This is going to encourage more Americans to go "underground".

1099s or nothing at all.

We are told it is now "The American Way" and fine with DC and both parties.

Line up suckers, here come the hordes of more lawbreakers.

US citizens will foot the bill.

Or will we?

If they did not/do not control, arrest, try 12-24 million illegal aliens here now in the USA how can they come after 280 millon honest Americans?

America is governed with the consent of The People.

You!

Say no!

100% reciprocal agreements with Mexico and other countries or forget it!

The line is drawn in the sand now.

Dare them to crossing it in DC!

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

If I may, let me slightly modify your prayer.

"May God Have Mercy Upon A Lawless America, Where Once We Had Enforcement of Laws Under Which We All Entered and Lived."

Nearly every poor person on earth would love to live in America. Should we let them ALL live here? There are 18 million horribly impoverished people living in Calcutta, India. When an airliner lands there and its door is opened, you can smell the human waste of the city.

Let's bring them all here.

Don't they have that right?

Think how cheaply you could get your lawn mowed in America if we brought in 3 or 4 billion of the world's poorest people?

Now, that would be what you'd call "huddled masses!"

Those cheering illegal immigration should be the first to allow illegals to crowd into their houses and neighorhoods. I'd like to see the next half million illegals move into Crawford, Texas, and build a tarpaper shack city there. Better yet, fill the green public lawns of Washington, D.C. with them. This, after all, is the stronghold of support for illegal immigration.

Illegal Mexican immigrants have imported their familiar Mexican civic corruption with them to the point some cities within greater Los Angeles are hopelessly corrupt with everyone on the take.

Illegal immigration is destroying America. It's a cancer of ethnic strife and hatred and is undermining all respect for the law. Lawlessness begets lawlessness.

Legal immigrants know illegal immigration is wrong. Anyone with half a brain knows unrestricted immigration is in the process of destroying America's culture, legal system, health care, entitlements, language and sovereignty.

Of course we are populated by immigrants and their descendants but this country has had rules regarding immigration since its first days of existence. Without those rules and their serious enforcement, we are doomed as a nation.

A nation without control of its borders will not long remain a nation.

Legal citizens of a sovereign nation have the absolute right, through their representatives, to declare who may visit and/or stay in their country.

It's my house and I decide who enters it. If not, it is not my house.

[NittanyLion]

It's either the Bush Plan, or Do Nothing.

False choice. There's any number of additional alternatives that could be adopted. Surely you know that...

[BureaucratusMaximus]

BUMP to your comments.

[OESY]

There's any number of additional alternatives that could be adopted.

Sorry to disappoint, but they will never be enacted. Look how long it's taken to even recognize there's a problem. The catalyst was 9/11. It's the Bush Plan, or no action at all because the alternatives are too costly, in terms of dollars or votes.

[thathamiltonwoman]

Sentimentality makes very bad law.