500,000 march in LA

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

Eric, wages are not based on what a person needs, they are based on the value of the job or skill that that person performs.

 

If the amount of people skilled at laying brick is small enough, and bricklaying is a valued commodity, then the wage for that job will be higher.

 

If a person's skill isn't that valued, then unfortunately they will have to get a second job.

[Dr. Zaius 0]

Market forces are a means to an end, not the end itself.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Was listening to Michael Savage today (yeah, I know he's more than a little biased), and he mentioned that in Los Angeles County alone, more than 100,000 immigrant children (as in they were born in the US to illegal immigrants) are on welfare, costing taxpayers more than $275 million per year.

 

Just one example of the cost of illegal immigration.

 

Also heard that the Mexican government isn't nearly as nice to illegal immigrants who come into their country from Central America. Usually, if caught, those people go to jail for a year or two, and then are deported. Kind of makes you think. And yet many in the US persist in this lie that we should just let them come to our country to work, and that they're all good honest people.

[Art Sandusky 0]

I don't see why we can't just prosecute the fuck out of businesses that hire these illegal immigrants and eliminate the motivation to fly under the documented radar. Oh yeah, that'd be bad for businesses, and businesses are far more important than people. My mistake.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Yeah, see, Bush likes to say that it's unrealistic to deport all these people. Of course it is...you can't arrest and deport 11 million people or whatever it is, overnight. But...you can make it a felony to knowingly employ an illegal alien, and you can cut off their access to health care and welfare. You can also change the law that says anyone born in the US is automatically a US citizen. Of course, Bush won't do any of these things. But, if the above measures were enacted, it would slowly force illegal immigrants to leave the US.

[Hektik 0]

Undocumented immigrants typically do pay into payroll taxes (and they pay into social security, which they are never eligible to recieve). They also have extremely high workforce participation rates. Your typical "illegal" is working more hours than the average US citizen and the argument that they're "getting free benefits" isn't really that clear cut. Undocumented immigrants are an incredibly "efficient" source of labor in the neoclassical economic sense. This is why Bush and co. aren't fully embracing the xenophobic wing of the Republican Party yet, there's a strong competing interest for undocumented workers to be exploited as much as possible.

[SuperJerk 0]

Undocumented immigrants typically do pay into payroll taxes (and they pay into social security, which they are never eligible to recieve).

I keep hearing this, but I don't believe it. How do you pay into Social Security system, or income taxes for that matter, if you (a) don't have a SSN, or (b) are being paid in cash?

[Hektik 0]

Most undocumented workers use false social security numbers. Undocumented workers pay $7 billion a year to the Social Security Administration. This money is deposited into the "earnings suspense file" at the SSA but because the SSNs are false, the immigrants can never collect the money when they retire. They also pay into Medicare and whatever other taxes are taken out of their W2.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

See, I think part of it is, like Hektik said, that there is this obsession with cheap labor in this country. Basically some conservative Republicans want to create a de facto peasant class in this country, and see the middle class continue to decline.

[Art Sandusky 0]

My current job is getting petitions signed to get the Working Families' Party certified as a South Carolina political party, and when we ask people if they'd like to sign, we lay down the basic facets of the party. These are raising the minimum wage, educational reform (namely re-working appropriations which are currently all kinds of out of whack in this state), and healthcare concessions from large employers (as well as a state prescription drug negotiating plan).

 

Anyways, the point is that, at least around here, people have been brainwashed to put the business and employer over the good of common people. I've been told that the minimum wage is too high more times than I can count, and am told that raising wages will do nothing but hurt businesses by one out of three people who decline to sign the petition. I'm told frightening things like "but that will hurt business, and without business we don't have jobs." I also hear "but things will be more expensive if you increase minimum wage!" To this I respond that prices have continued to escalate despite it not being raised in over a decade and ask for another excuse. Then I get the pro-business response. It's fuckin' disgusting to me.

 

(by the way, to stay on topic, the party wants to do what I suggested a few posts up, that being making the companies that hire illegal immigrants accountable and punishing them)

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

You can also change the law that says anyone born in the US is automatically a US citizen.

 

That would require a constitutional amendment, cochise.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Yep, which Congress could get done if they wanted to.

[EricMM 0]

Good gods sir.

 

You think they should have written it in pencil?

 

Ooops wait, they WANTED immigrants back then.

 

Christalmighty.

 

*Waits for that SJ post on the minimum wage, again*

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Yes, back then this nation badly needed warm bodies to grow, that is true. But in this day and age, we are virtually the only country in the world where you can become a citizen by being born in this land to illegal immigrants. Hell, I just read a story off Drudge about a woman who gave birth in the desert, and cut the umbilical cord with a nail clipper. And yet this child gets all the full rights of US citizenship? It's abuse of the system, and it's an offense to everyone who has worked hard and gone through the process to come to this country and legally apply to be a citizen.

[EricMM 0]

... being born is an abuse of the system?

 

You'd deport an American because their parents were illegals? Because they're Mexican?

[Dobbs 3K 0]

You'd deport an American because their parents were illegals? Because they're Mexican?

 

Yes, that's exactly what I'd do. If I had my way, they wouldn't be "an American." They'd be an illegal immigrant just like their illegal immigrant parents.

[Jingus 0]

Dude, invader, I don't usually argue this bluntly, but you're just a thousand different kinds of WRONG there. That's one of the more coldblooded and stupid things I've ever heard. Punish the child for the sins of the parents? Deny citizenship for someone who was BORN here? If you're born in this country, you're an American, period, and that should NEVER change/

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I don't see how a law-breaking woman sneaking into the American Southwest desert and squeezing out a child constitutes the creation of an American, but that is how the law is right now.

 

We can only handle so many Mexicans (and again, it's more than just them sneaking across the southern border). At some point they'll have to be eliminated in one fashion or another, or maybe we should just start billing their native countries for their presence here.

[Perfxion 0]

Moron3k, stop being a fucking retard. If a person is born on US soil, they are a US citizen. No matter where their parents are from. Whether its Mexico or New Mexico, London or New London, China or Chinatown, it doesn't fucking matter. They are citizens. What makes you more American? Because you were born here as they were.

 

Best goal is to try and stop extras coming through, its hard enough to kick out the 11+ million here right now.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Look, I accept the fact that the law says they are a US citizen. But like I said before, it wouldn't be that hard to make illegals leave the US. Prosecute employers that hire them, and cut off all welfare and social services to them. With no income and no means of suckling off the US government, they would be forced to leave eventually. It would take time, but it would work. You wouldn't have to use the army or some gestapo type tactics like some are claiming.

 

Finally, build a wall to protect the border, and use lethal force if necessary to defend it.

 

Seriously, why are some of you so anxious to see the sovereignty of this nation undermined? So we can eventually have the same problems places like France and the Netherlands are having?

[SuperJerk 0]

Most undocumented workers use false social security numbers. Undocumented workers pay $7 billion a year to the Social Security Administration. This money is deposited into the "earnings suspense file" at the SSA but because the SSNs are false, the immigrants can never collect the money when they retire. They also pay into Medicare and whatever other taxes are taken out of their W2.

This may be true, but there are also undocumented workers who are substandard wages paid in cash.

[EricMM 0]

Invader3k

 

Mike? LiM?

 

You're even Miker than Mike! Highfive!

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Seriously, why are some of you so anxious to see the sovereignty of this nation undermined? So we can eventually have the same problems places like France and the Netherlands are having?

 

The Western European countries that you are referring to have the stricter immigration laws and nativist bent that you seem to be calling for.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Invader3k

 

Mike? LiM?

 

You're even Miker than Mike! Highfive!

 

I have no idea what any of that means.

 

As far as the Western European countries, they sure seem to be having problems with Muslim immigrants. I realize a lot of those people are immigrating legally, but it just goes to show the problems that can happen when one culture tries to co-exist with another in the same nation. I guess we can look forward to race riots and a revival of neo-Nazi groups in this country.

[snuffbox 0]

Finally, build a wall to protect the border, and use lethal force if necessary to defend it.

 

Where, exactly, does the money for such jurasso-conservative ideas come from? Putting up a crude barbed-wire fence around a barnyard can run thousands...I can only imagine how much a massive, heavily guarded, wall would cost to build. Of course, we shell out at least 50 billion a year fighting that devil, marijuana, so its likely to happen.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Use prison labor or something. Where there's a will, there's a way.

[EricMM 0]

Yeah, put all of Americas prisoners on the boarder of Mexico.

 

Noone will try to escape, right?

[snuffbox 0]

Wow...you're like Barry Goldwater after a couple cups of bourbon. Too bad you lack the political sense that he had.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Let them escape to Mexico. We've probably taken enough of their criminals already.

[snuffbox 0]

Im glad to see that good retarded comedy is returning to this folder...