Posted on 10/11/2007 6:54:07 PM PDT by kathsua
What is "illegal"? As of July l, not wearing a seat belt in Kansas makes you illegal. If you hold your crying child in your arms in a moving car, you're illegal. You are illegal if you smoke a cigarette in some cities, or if you burn your field, wash your car, or water your lawn during a ban. You can even become "illegal" without any effort on your own part.
Millions of people in this country arrived with their families as young children years ago. They grew up, went through school, married Americans, and had children, who, by birth, are Americans. If you think that being married to an American or being a parent of American children gives a person legal status under current law, you are wrong. Marriage or familial ties does not change your immigrant status.
Then people should "get legal," shouldn't they? Well, they very much want to, but today's immigration law makes it virtually impossible. See, you cannot apply for legal status while in the U.S. You must apply from your home country, even if you haven't lived there since you were a baby, and you have no home there to go back to. But suppose you do go back to your native country to apply. Part of the application process to come to the U.S. from another country includes an interview and affidavit both, which ask the specific question if you have lived in the U.S. without documentation. If your answer is "yes," then you must wait 10 years before applying again. If you lie and say "no," that's perjury (remember your name is on those children's birth certificates), and you are indefinitely barred from re-entering the United States. Millions of U.S. undocumented residents are in this very situation today. No intentional "crime" was committed, no harm or damage to anyone, yet in this era of terrorist paranoia, there is no avenue for millions of hardworking, otherwise law-abiding, people to become "legal."
Is it a realistic expectation for mothers or fathers in this situation to leave their families with no legal hope to rejoin them? Most Americans do not understand that strict enforcement of current law amounts to government-forced abandonment of families. U.S. society already feels the negative effects of broken homes and poverty from loss of breadwinners. Our country is not made better or safer by creating more.
People who are already here working, who have family ties, education, English, live upright lives, and have positively contributed to our society, should have some reasonable way to apply for and get legal work/resident status. It's time to change the law.
In other words if you had been living in Boston in the 1770’s and new the identities of those law breakers and tax cheats who stole tea from a ship and threw it into the harbor you would have turned them in. YOu would certainly would have opposed the actions of those criminals called Minutemen who violently attacked a group government employees at Concord Bridge.
Under the laws of the day those who fought for an independent nation were criminals. The man whose signature was first on the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock, was a wanted criminal because of his smuggling activities.
I partly agree. If we could just find THESE illegals and give them a way to apply for and get their appropriate immigration papers, I’d support it.
The problem is 12+ million illegals, most of whom do NOT fit into this idylic description of the “perfect immigrant”.
BTW, the problem with your analogy about breaking the law is this. If you were going 70 in a 55, you were breaking the law, but it wasn’t a big deal and you’d just get a fine.
However, if you drove 70 and the police were behind you and you kept driving 70, and you continued each day to drive 70, you’d soon lose your license, and then you’d end up in jail.
An illegal trespasser doesn’t just break the law once, he lives in a state of lawbreaking. It’s not like someone who committed a crime once and then is just living in fear of getting caught for that crime. It’s a person who each day is living in fear of getting caught COMMITTING a crime.
Still, as I said, if all we had left were the couple hundred thousand illegals who came here as children, who married americans, and who got real ids and real jobs and pay real taxes, I’d be the first to support giving them legal status.
so let’s just all break the law and call it a day because we all work hard.
“I thought those folks were called anchor babies?”
No “anchor babies” are born on US soil...
This is about the illegal aliens who were born in Mexico and elsewhere and brought to the US by their illegal alien parents...
The “DREAM Act” crowd...
BS. There's no reason for the "abandonment" of anchor babies by their illegal parents. Anchor babies are citizens of their parent(s) country. Just as are children born to American citizens in another country.
Are you suggesting that Mexico would be justified in taking over the United States, or that our founding fathers were unjustified?
ping
Here’s a question: are you an accomplice if you are aware of people who illegally burn music and don’t alert the authorities?
live upright lives...
Same argument could be made for anyone who has ever broken any law. Hey, I murdered a guy in 68, but I’ve lived a great life ever since.
Deport!
Legal Mexicans also need documents to enter the United States.
“....let hard working people alone...”
I agree whole heartedly!!! I sure wish the IRS would have been more understanding when I scrawled the very same thing on my 1040 that one time :(
Bull excrement!
Would support putting pressure on the employers of illegal aliens to fire their illegal alien workers. The illegal aliens would return to Mexico (and other countries). The border should be secured (this should be started earlier, but if successful will probably finish by the time there is a mass exodus of illegal aliens). Then some sort of 'guest worker' system can be put in place so that millions of foreigners more can come in legally (and get background and medical checks) and get jobs, pay taxes, etc. There should be some degree of punishment for illegal aliens already here (just as there should be some degree of punishment for intentional jaywalking, being in a moving car without a seatbelt (when illegal), smoking in places where smoking is illegal, etc. That part of the author's article is not very persuasive.
Could be advantageous for both countries in the long run.
Not bad, but couldn’t we just enslave them? ; )
Shame on them!
If you are a real family, and a real mother and father, if you have to go ANYWHERE at all, take your children with you!
What kind of parents are these that would abandon their children if they have been caught breaking the law of this country and have to go back to their country of origin?
The legal hope to join them? The legal hope is take your children with you were ever you have to go.
In other words your argument betrays your idiocy. The flow of illegals into the US includes criminals and terrorists. They are not coming to America seeking freedom and intending to build a new country as were the colonists. So how in hell you get off fabricating an argument such as that and trying to shove those words in my mouth? Don't play those silly games with me.
Whoever this writer is they are completely ill-informed about US immigration law. Thousands of illegal aliens adjust their status to that of a legal resident every year through a variety of wavers and application processes and no they don’t have to leave the country.
Good idea. I'll do that right away!
ROTFLMAO
Pipe dream. Kinda hard to do when we're talking about an invasion of 40? million people, and our "government" allowed it.
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