Posted on 08/30/2016 3:44:46 PM PDT by FightThoughtControl
Wrong. They are both sides of the same coin. We are importing 1.1 million legal permanent immigrants a year along with 640,000 guest workers annually. Since 1990 35 million legal permanent immigrants have entered this country. We have just had three of the four largest decades of immigration in our history. Why are we importing so much foreign labor legally at a time when we have the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years? Legal immigrants use the welfare system to a much greater degree than the native born.
Illegal immigrants present the same kinds of problems. They are competing against Americans for scarce jobs. They are depressing wages. They are using the welfare system mainly thru the 300,000 anchor babies born annually to illegal aliens. Birthright citizenship makes them US citizens eligible for Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, etc.
The impact of legal and illegal immigration must be seen as a whole.
Most thinking people are not against immigration, but ARE against two things:
I would add a third. We must reduce legal immigration substantially to protect American citizens and their jobs and their social safety net. Government data collected in December 2014 show 18 million immigrants (legal and illegal) living in the United States who arrived in January 2000 or later. But only 9.3 million jobs were added over this time period. In addition, the native-born population 16 and older grew by 25.2 million. Because job growth has not come close to matching immigration and population growth, the share of Americans in the labor force has declined dramatically — a clear indication there is no labor shortage.
I disagree that they are both sides of the same coin. They are not.
I agree that the problems with legals and illegals share a similarity because the legal immigration has been artificially shaped to mirror as closely as possible illegal immigration, they are are different as a self inflicted bullet to the brain and a cancer that kills.
Both have a same end result, but are in no way philosophically, ethically, or morally the same, and I think that makes all the difference in the world. Just my opinion.
The parents of one of my friends came from Mexico.. I’m almost certain that they were illegals back in the early 1950s, I’ve just never asked... anyway his mother just passed away at around 80 yrs of age... lived in SoCal since the ‘50s and never learned English. People outside SoCal don’t know what it’s like to be colonized the way that we do. The radio dial is now filled with foreign language broadcasts. Billboards go up in Spanish instead of English. You shop in malls that you have patronized for years and find yourself getting eyed as if you don’t belong there... which in the opinion of the Reconquista crew you don’t.
My friend is a Trump fan so apparently the deportation thing isn’t a deal breaker. Of course it may be because he’d like to see some of his deadbeat illegal alien relatives sent packing, a number of them had been leaching off of his mother.. not every Mexican is a hard worker as some simpletons want to believe, there’s more than a few who know how to game our welfare system and are an expensive burden in a lot of ways, the criminal justice system included. Our court and jail costs will drop dramatically following mass deportations assuming that godsend ever happens.
We will just agree to disagree. I have been working on this issue for over 9 years lobbying on the Hill and in Richmond.
A friend of mine wrote this article: Two Sides of the Same Coin: The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration by James R. Edwards Jr
Both have a same end result, but are in no way philosophically, ethically, or morally the same, and I think that makes all the difference in the world. Just my opinion.
When you talk about the real impact on this country, they are intertwined. In fact, many illegal aliens join their legal relatives in this country rather than go thru the legal process, which can take many years. Chain migration extends way beyond the nuclear family, which is why many wait so long.
Are massive legal immigration and massive illegal immigration related? If so, how? Many in policy circles hold a view of “Legal immigration, good; illegal immigration, bad.”1 The logical extensions of such a simplistic perspective are to assume that the overall level of legal immigration does not matter and to underestimate any correlation to illegal immigration. But the facts show a distinct connection exists.
In brief, this report finds:
Legal and illegal immigration are inextricably related. As legal immigration levels have risen markedly since 1965, illegal immigration has increased with it.
The share of the foreign-born population who are illegal aliens has risen steadily. Illegal aliens made up 21 percent of the foreign-born in 1980, 25 percent in 2000, and 28 percent in 2005.
Mexico is the primary source country of both legal and illegal immigrants. Mexico accounted for about 30 percent of the foreign-born in 2000, and more than half of Mexicans residing in the United States in 2000 were illegal aliens.
The level of illegal immigration is severely masked by several amnesties that legalized millions of unlawfully resident aliens. The largest amnesty was the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized 3 million aliens.
Amnestied aliens to date have been fully eligible to sponsor additional immigrants. This has contributed to the ranks of immigrants, both legal and illegal (and often both).
Many aliens who receive a permanent resident visa each year have spent years living in the United States illegally.
“Anchor babies” and “chain migration” provide opportunities for many aliens to plant roots in the United States. Those aliens might not otherwise have done so.
An overly generous legal immigration preference system, whose bias is toward relatives and against ability, sets unrealistic expectations. Many aliens who technically qualify to immigrate face the reality of backlogs and waiting lists.
Amnesties, technical qualification for a visa, chain migration, and vast opportunities to come to the United States (particularly via tourist visa, the most abused visa by eventual immigrants, according to the New Immigrant Survey) all foster an “entitlement mentality” among many foreigners.
I can agree to disagree with you on this, kabar. I read enough of your posts to have a reasonable handle on where you are coming from on most issues you comment on, and I respect that.
Take care
The immigration law in '86 was supposed to legalize 1.5 million illegals, which turned out to be closer to 4 million in reality.
It was also supposed to prevent more illegals from working here without green cards and never, ever were illegals supposed to be given any kind of government assistance!
Democrats running Congress, never had any intention of putting into effect, the teeth to prevent another 1.5 - 4 million illegals to cross our borders and many, if not most Republicans elected came to understand that those businesses that gave them big donations, never wanted the spigot of cheap labor turned off!
After Reagan left office, the first Bush President, welcomed more and more illegals, thanks to the big party donors; the social service agencies, both government and non-profit "religious institutions" made millions out of "serving migrant communities;" the NEA got in on the act and demanded taxpayer funding to more school buildings, teachers, especially the English immersion (which never materialized - the schools went ahead and taught the kids in Spanish so that even illegal's kids born in the U.S. spoke with a Spanish accent because that's all they heard at both home and school!).
Welfare, WIC, free meals at school, first lunch, later breakfast and now back packs to take home for later, medical, dental, education, Section 8 housing "allowances," you name it, they (illegal aliens) get it and the grown up kids if the original Amnesty aliens realize that millions more illegals are no longer coming for the field jobs their parents worked at, they are coming to America for Santa Clause government give-aways they will get.
And, no, they have no desire to assimilate, liberals assure them they not only don't have to speak English, anyone demanding that they do is a racist and should be sued!
Excellent and informative post, and I’ll second everything you say. I saw that all myself.
I’m responding to everyone at once because there was a lot of overlap in questions. Thank you for taking the time to comment even if you think I’m disingenuous.
To be clear, I am strongly advocating for deportations. I am trying to build bridges with people who might not agree because I think we need to persuade people to vote for Trump or else ALL Americans are in for trouble. The only way I’ve ever been able to persuade anybody on such a heated topic is if I earnestly try to see things from their point of view and acknowledge their concerns.
This post was originally made on the liberal Reddit/Politics forum. After the Thought Brigades relentlessly downvoted it into oblivion (so that no one would see it), the Thought Authorities removed it entirely and refused to restore it when I politely inquired.
I’m new to social media but felt I had to do something as my civic duty. Sorry about the bold/italics thing. I wrote the essay myself based on my own research after I realized that most of our media has been egregiously distorting the truth and that most of my relationships were still fooled and looked at me like I was crazy.
I stand by my assertion that overall immigration policy (both legal and illegal) is critical. To just focus on one misses the forest for the trees. The big picture is that overall immigration policy (since the 60s) appears to be a deliberate attempt to undermine and transform American society (even according to official government reports). Overall immigration needs desperately to be slowed down.
To reiterate, many immigrants are decent people who might pay taxes and not technically be on welfare, but still receive benefits in excess of their taxes paid. Think about someone living in an apartment with 3 children. That person might pay a small amount of property taxes via their rent payments, but they are not paying the (national) average of $12,300 per pupil per year.
To those who might be offended at me lumping all immigrants together, I reiterate that I am speaking about averages and not individuals.
I’m just trying to politely get the word out and counter all the propaganda.
Regards,
Thanks for responding. Welcome to FR.
Thanks for the welcome. Your site has been very helpful to me as a place to get the whole story which is offensively lacking on major media outlets.
To those who might be offended at me lumping all immigrants together, I reiterate that I am speaking about averages and not individuals - FTC
Lumping all immigrants together (or all women, or all Blacks, or all Whites or all of any demographic) is how we lose the argument. The reality is that not all are the same of any demographic.
Our side wants people to be seen as individuals ... individual responsibility, individual reward for individual effort, etc.
The other side wants demographic groups to be lumped together. Blacks might vote 80-20 Democrat. Those of Mexican ancestry might vote 65% Democrat. Vote fraud occurs when we concede the entire demographic and allow blue precincts to report 99% or 100% Democrat when in reality that is not the way the individuals voted.
The same is true in other areas besides voting. The Left benefits and wins when people are lumped together.
National Cohesion?
From the immigrants perspective, the last thing they want is for their kids to become Americanized. To immigrants that means becoming like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber.
Most immigrants dream of owning their own small business. Every landscaper dreams of owning his own landscaping business. Every IT consultant dreams of owning his own IT consulting business. etc. But thanks to the media and dominant culture, immigrants don’t see owning their own business as becoming Americanized. They see pop culture as Americanized.
re: family reunification is highly abused.
The Catholics, Evangelicals and Mormons are strong supporters of family reunification because they are theologically pro-family. Turning them to be anti-family will have serious unintended consequences. I’m not talking abortion here... I’m talking the safety net.
You just might survive here.
Hey, “tl;dr” means too long; didn’t read.
Can you summarize? Brevity is the soul of wit.
You bet, kabar...
re: are highly likely to support big government.
This generalization is totally unfounded. Most Immigrants come here to work. Most do not come here to take welfare.
Take Mexicans as a sub-group. There are at least 5 distinct types of Mexicans politically. In a heavily Mexican working class suburb all 5 groups have voted for the small government slate of candidates when small v big government was the choice presented.
PAN president Fox (Andy Garcia in the movie FOR GREATER GLORY) is a libertarian leaning Republican type.
PAN president Calderon is a Santorum type social conservative. Libertarians and Social Conservatives make up the PAN party which has held the presidency of Mexico 2 of the past 3 times.
The current PRI president is a Chicago Democrat; Not a Bernie or European socialist. The PRI is the epitome of the corruption Mexico is known for. Prior to President Fox, PRI held the presidency and the Mexican Congress ever since the 1920s. PRI has two types of people:
1) People who seek power and personal wealth through politics.
2) People who just want to be left alone, avoid hassles and thus choose to go with the flow and not fight things like the PAN people do.
PRD is the 3d Mexican Political Party. Its people are Bernie and European Socialist types. They are Occupy Wallstreet and BLM on steroids. They are idealists. They have never won the presidency. They always vote against. They can be convinced to vote against PRI, against the corruption of the Clintons and Chicago Democrats.
From what I can see, Indians are politically split, just as Mexicans are. The current Indian president is a Santorum style social conservative. Past presidents have been corrupt PRI style Chicago Democrats.
Remember, on several occasions voters of Mexican ancestry in heavily Mexican areas have voted 100% for the small government slate when given a clear choice. (In those elections the lone Hispanic who voted for big government was a Puerto Rican lady on welfare.)
You don’t get it do you?
If you are here ILLEGALLY you are not a decent person nor are you an immigrant. You are a criminal
Enforce the laws. Limit incoming immigration until we can figure out who is who. Build the wall strengthen border security
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