Texas business: Pass immigration reform

The Dallas Morning News ^ | 8/28/06 | Henry Cisneros, Kent Hance, et. al.

[Wallace T.]

Often, in the middle of a heated debate, people forget exactly what they're arguing about. But we employers on the front lines of American business cannot forget - we know why the nation must come to grips with illegal immigration. We know that Americans must face up to the reality of the foreign workers we need to keep the economy growing and bring them under the rule of law, for their sake and ours.

[Wallace T.]

Lenin is supposed to have said that capitalists would sell to the Communists the rope with which the latter would hang the former. While the illegal immigrants to our country are not Communists, with a few exceptions, they will transform large parts of this country as surely as the Communists would, especially in the influx goes unchecked.

FReepers who are consumers should take note of the list of company presidents that signed this document. In the case of Pilgrim's Pride, I have preferred this brand because Pilgrim is a political conservative on many issues and it is not Tyson's, a company with close ties to the Clinton gang. My loyalty to this brand is obviously misplaced.

[JRochelle]

Dear Henry,
Take you pro illegal BS and stick it.
Go back to your mistress, you lying loser.

[Dead Corpse]

We don't need illegals to shore up our economy. Massive welfare reform, corporate law reform, and a end to the hated IRS would cause such a boom in this country the likes of which haven't been seen since the Westward Expansion.

[ConservativeMind]

We know that Americans must face up to the reality of the foreign workers we need to keep the economy growing

There is no reality that requires that belief.

Should we also release all prisoners so their manpower helps drive American business?

If a business has grown to an extent that it could not function without illegals, then it should be punished with its failure.

[steel_resolve]

If a business has grown to an extent that it could not function without illegals, then it should be punished with its failure.

Well Put.

[Wallace T.]

Cisneros has always been a liberal, whose political career was based on appeals to Hispanic voters. You would expect him to sign such a petition. What is more disappointing are the so-called conservatives who have signed this article.

One of the signers of the letters was Kent Hance, former West Texas Congressman and Democrat turned Republican. In 1978, he defeated George W. Bush for the Congressional seat that covered the Permian Basin and South Plains areas, in part by out-Texaning the future President. Hance reminded voters that he was a multi-generation Texan who graduated from Texas Tech, as opposed to the Connecticut born Bush, who graduated from Yale. Since then, Hance and many of the others have allied themselves with the pro-illegal crowd for the bottom line.

[Wolfie]

If a business has grown to an extent that it could not function without illegals, then it should be punished with its failure.

I'd say the same for the country.

[Wallace T.]

For the well-informed consumer, esprcially in Texas, here is a list of the signers of this pro-illegal document and their company affiliation:

Signed,

Bo Pilgrim

Pilgrim's Pride, Pittsburg

Harold Simmons

Contran Corporation, Dallas

Bob Perry

Perry Homes, Houston

Vance Miller

Henry S. Miller, Dallas

J. Huffines

Huffines Auto Group, Dallas

Red McCombs

McCombs Enterprises, San Antonio

W.L. Hunt

Hunt Building Corporation, El Paso

James Leininger

M.D., San Antonio

Phil Adams

Phil Adams Company, Bryan

Bob Barnes

Schlotzsky's, Austin

Kent Hance

Hance Scarborough Wright, Dallas

Tom Loeffler

Loeffler Tuggey Pauerstein Rosenthal LLP, San Antonio

Louis Beecherl

Beecherl Investments, Dallas

Henry J. "Bud" Smith

Bud Smith Organization, Dallas

Dennis Nixon

IBC Bank, Laredo

Ernesto Ancira Jr.

Ancira Enterprises, San Antonio

Tom Hewitt

Interstate Hotels & Resorts

Tom Corcoran

FelCor Lodging Trust Inc.

Lionel Sosa

MATT.org, San Antonio

Henry Cisneros

CityView, San Antonio

Henry R. Muñoz III

Kell Muñoz Architects, San Antonio

Harold MacDowell

TDIndustries, Dallas

Pedro Aguirre

Aguirre Corporation, Dallas

Robert "Buddy" Barnes

Dee Brown Inc., Garland

Stephen M. Pitt

Boulder Imports, Houston

Brad Bouma

Select Milk Producers Inc., Plainview

Wayne Palla

Dairy Farmers of America, Grapevine

Jim Baird

Lone Star Milk Producers Inc., Windthorst

Randy Davis

Greenleaf Nursery, El Campo

Josh Bracken

Nicholson-Hardie Garden Centers, Dallas

David R. Pinkus

Tawakoni Plant Farm, Wills Point

Don Darby

Darby Greenhouses & Farms, Jacksonville

Georges Le Mener

Accor North America, Carrollton

Stevan Porter

InterContinental Hotels Group

John Caparella

Gaylord Hotels

Tony Farris

Quorum Hotels

[sheana]

I have no problem with the business' viewpoint. Let them have all the foreign workers they want....just as soon as our Congress passes legislation that takes away EVERY SINGLE benefit, healthcare, education, and anchor babies from the foreigners. Get the foreigners off the taxpayers dime and those companies can have every dam foreigner they want.

[Hydroshock]

Texas Citizens: SEAL THE !*&%$# BORBER NOW!!!!!

[Wallace T.]

Despite the conservative reputation of the Lone Star State, there is an obvious lack of political will to fight illegal immigration. To my knowledge, neither Governor Perry, his Democrat opponent, nor the two major independents, Kinky Friedman and Carol Strayhorn, have failed to take a firm stand against illegal immigration. At least in Arizona, Don Goldwater, nephew of Senator Barry Goldwater, is giving honor to his family's name by firmly opposing all amnesty schemes.

[Hydroshock]

Perry is a rat with a R by his name.

[VOA]

While the illegal immigrants to our country are not Communists, with a few exceptions

Too many (and the cheats that employ them) are bloodsuckers.
I guess we'll settle for a long-term case of financial anemia, just
to avoid a quick, old-style Communist bloodletting.

I think that's called appeasement.

[mysterio]

Henry: Pay workers more or go out of business. The rest of us shouldn't have to deal with deflated wages and an imported underclass that we'll be paying reparations to in 30 years just so you can make a little more profit this year.

kthx

[Wallace T.]

America's drift away from individualism, limited government and national independence has been gradual, over more than a century. American liberals were strongly influenced by the Fabian Society of late 19th Century and early 20th Century England, which advocated the slow and incremental growth of socialism, as opposed to the Leninist model of violent overthrow and dictatorial government.

The pre-1920 immigrant waves were almost all legal, checked closely for communicable diseases (at least after about 1890), and were expected to "root, hog, or die." All the caterwauling of the pro-immigration crowd and their dredging up ancient stories of the Know Nothings of the 1850s or the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s cannot change this fact.

Ideally, public assistance should be left to the private sector, as was the case, even on the local and state level in most instances, until the Depression. However, illegals, who are often paid off the books and whose tax payments through sales and property taxes are relatively small, receive educational, health care, and other benefits far superior to what they would have had in their native lands. The corporate supporters of unlimited immigration receive the benefits of cheap labor. Only the middle and working classes of native-born Americans suffer, due to increased taxes and fees for public services.

[american spirit]

Looks like some of the behind the scenes players are getting a little worried about where the immigration debate is heading. It looks as though their highly paid lobbyists are finally running into some legislators who can't be bought off or compromised to go along and get along on this issue......(I know, it might all be just a pipedream but we can hope can't we?)

[Wallace T.]

I also hope that the outgoing Congress does not stab the conservative electorate in the back after Election Day by sneaking some amnesty provision through around the holidays.

[MissAmericanPie]

All big employers of illegals. I'm sure they are just worried about passing along to the consumer the cost of employing legit citizens and paying them a living wage.

After all, it's so very important to the bottom line to insure their investors a good return on their stock. The American public must decide if the United States is a corporation or our home and demand laws to enforce which ever side they decide to back. When economics, the Stock Market, and the bottom line begins to undermine our culture and standard of living a balance needs to be sought out.

[The KG9 Kid]

The best line I've heard in the immigration debate is that if it were true that low-paid foreign workers are a critical component to a vibrant and growing first-world economy, then Mexico would be like Switzerland considering the amount of low-paid workers it has as it's primary national resource.

I read that the astonishly oil-rich nation of Dubai is being built almost entirely by a foreign low wage workforce. Dubai might or might not be a good example for the United States to follow since they pay about the equivalent of US$2,000/annually as the best wage to construction workers who build their giant hotels and office buildings. Dubai also sure as hell isn't educating and feeding those worker's families or putting them on the 'roadmap to citizenship' or whatever Uncle Sucker is calling it.

[Wallace T.]

Agreed. The United States of America is a nation and not a geographic space in central North America separating Canada from the Gulf of Mexico and Latin America.