Immigration issues

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that we change our foreign policy to aid in the betterment of the emmigrating nations.

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How would we go about doing that? Repeal ag subsidies?

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In summary, I'm all for immigration, but I am opposed to illegal immigration.

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I agree with you. We need immigration to sustain our aging population. It would be preferable that this immigration is done in an orderly fashion, with background checks, so we can avoid criminal elements and preferably pick and choose the applicants least likely to end up on the welfare doles.America does take a lot of flack for being too restrictive in granting citizenship, but we have a fairly liberal policy compared to other first-world nations like Japan (forget about it) Australia (you must be less than 45 and have demonstrable job skills; although there are other ways in if you happen to be rich) and the Netherlands (must speak Dutch). I don't think these last two are unreasonable by the way, but imagine the outcry if the United States were to do this.Australian Visa Information | Acacia | Immigration Australia http://www.justlanded.com/english/netherlands/...Edited by gene90, : added linksEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Shortened display form of a URL.

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Do you have any idea how long legal immigration takes? I'll pause a moment to let you consider that question.

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Years, that much is true. But how is it relevant? Is there a "right" to immigrate, or is it a privilege?

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Oh you bet the American middle class needs competition from other countries: open the doors freely to educated, English-speaking immigrants from India, Korea, Singapore, and Pakistan and watch a new white welfare class develop.

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The "outcry if the United States were to do this" would come from employers who don't need language fluency or skilled workers: they need cheap field, unskilled, and semi-skilled labor for short wages.

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Most of those employers are conservative Republicans--that's why the one measure likely to stem illegal immigration (aggressive penalties on knowing employers of illegal immigrants) never gets anywhere in Congress.

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Crime drops in cities with high numbers of illegal immigrants; they pay FICA and other taxes without any likelihood of gaining benefits.

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The "dole" is not something they are ever likely to see.

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I see something in your text about an "outcry", omnivorous, but otherwise nothing vaguely similar to the text of my post.If evil, far-right, reactionary countries like Australia and the Netherlands can be selective in who they admit, why can't the United States?You're right though about how and why the GOP opposes meaningful reform. Cheap labor is good for business and probably a hedge against infaltion. IOW, even unskilled workers can be useful to the economy.The point though, is why immigration is such a touchy-feely subject in the US when it isn't elsewhere. Probably there is some sentiment of economic protectionism in other countries, but the lack of an outcry is surprising and hints of double standards. In this country, we have street demonstrations when somebody suggests building a fence. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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One is that the US has perhaps the most easily accessible borders and the longest virtually open borders around. While it is a fair sea journey to reach Australia, it is simply a walk across most US borders.

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That isn't nearly as significant as the fact that there is a powerful economic incentive for our neighbors to the south to want to immigrate here. We have a large border with Canada, but the Canadians aren't migrating here illegally.But that accident of geography has no bearing on whether or not the United States has the same authority to control migration enjoyed by every nation in the first world. Quite a few people seem to think that it does not, that is what I would like to better understand.

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How can we tell whether someone is here legally or illegally?

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I don't know. Americans have a long history of wanting their government to leave them alone. Because of that, we may never have a good way of knowing who should be here or who isn't. However, what I want to know is if the US government has the right to tell certain migrants that they have no right to be here, and if not, why other countries with more restrictive policies are getting free pass.

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As I pointed out, the bar to strong enforcement of immigration laws is not a soft-hearted liberal conspiracy but the huge corporate demand for cheap labor. The GOP-dominated Congress had several years to enact stiffer penalties (and strong enforcement programs) on those employers and refused to do so.

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I agree with you. Unskilled illegals are good for the economy and good for business, which is why the GOP has always looked the other way.However, I am curious about the lack of indignation for the policies of the Netherlands, Japan, and Australia. And let's not forget Sweden, where being a Nordic immigrant makes all the difference.In fact, there are a lot of countries with more restrictive policies--just about the entire first world, come to think of it--whose immigration policies range from the sensible, to the excessively restrictive, to the downright xenophobic. Why does America get singled out?

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Oh, forget about it. We'd be the scourge of the earth... Come to think of it... We already are.

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Until Pakistan has an earthquake or Sudan or Haiti need peacekeepers.

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What we are discussing is US immigration policy. What some other country does is totally irrelevant to the issue.

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That strikes me as arrogant.Studying other nation's policies, their successes and the failures, can prove quite useful to understanding US policy. As immigration policies go, ours is very permissive. And yes, there are benefits to immigration, legal and illegal. But again, it would be preferable to be able to have some say over who gets here. I don't see why that seems to be such a controversial concept when pretty much everybody else goes to even greater extremes.

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Well if there is no way to tell who is here legally or illegally, why bother?

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Apparently somebody can, because arrests are occasionally made.Maybe posing these questions will get things back on track by de-emphasizing the US:(1) Do migrants have a right to enter any country they please without documentation?(2) Does any sovereign nation have the right to control access across its borders? Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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We need the labor that Mexico, Central, and South America can provide. They need work.

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I agree.

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They are, frankly, in greater proportions than our existing population, hard-working, honest people. The primary opposition to their presence here is racist and xenophobic, waxing and waning with the electoral cycle.

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There is some truth to that, but there is also concern for the law and security.

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In many cases, the economies of their home countries are unable to provide them with a decent living

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I agree.

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because their traditional ways of life have been discarded for extractive and exploitative resource and agribusiness endeavors that feed rootless, globalized corporations.

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I disagree. It is my opinion that the migrants to the USA crave our rather materialistic, consumer-centered lifestyle. That's why they end up buying cars with custom paint jobs, hang out at the mall, and immediately begin living like we do.Even if their original plight were caused by our consumerism, it seems they don't mind taking part in it when they get here.

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They come here because there is no longer a life worth living where they were--sometimes because our "banana/beef" plantations destroyed their traditional, sustainable ways of life

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They seem to have abandoned their "traditional, sustainable ways of life" voluntarily and I don't for a minute blame them. I myself will never understand what is so wonderful about high mortality rates, constant exposure to disease, and neolithic technology as opposed to microwave ovens and MTV. Frankly, if people wanted that, the direction of migration would be in the opposite direction, towards the last struggling remnants of indigenous culture in South America, not away from it. The illegal immigrants are voting with their feet, and their voting for our corporate, consumer-based culture.Has the hypocrisy of you tying that on an Internet-capable computer occured to you yet?Someday I would like to see some beneficent nonprofit group buy huge tracts of native prairie land with abundant food, water, and game reserves, for occupation by 21st century American leftists that are guilt-ridden about our destruction of "traditional" and "sustainable" ways of life. They'll be protected from our decadent postindustrial society and allowed to fashion their own tools, live off the land, and communally own everything with no intrusion from the rest of society. And they can see how they really like it. It's a little dream of mine. Till then, it seems everybody that suggests to me how wonderful "traditional" society only seems to advocate such a life for other people and not themselves.

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Because I am a U.S. citizen. I bear moral, ethical and political responsibility for those policies I advocate, those I tolerate, and the consequences of my opposition to others.

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Because I grew up in a poor working class family, and I know that someone is being screwed coming and going when I see it.

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I haven't heard you rail against Sweden.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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The controversy is over the hypocrisies of the US position. We propose really stupid plans like the "Fence or Wall" that will have no effect whatsoever, yet we do not address the proximate causes.

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Then we agree, at least partially.

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What you had said, and what I replied to, was:

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However, what I want to know is if the US government has the right to tell certain migrants that they have no right to be here, and if not, why other countries with more restrictive policies are getting free pass.

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Okay, does it or doesn't it?I apologize if I was "dishonest" or "misdirected" you but since you dodged the question every single time I don't think it was much of an inconvenience. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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it's not about having the right to come here, it's about having no other options. if your family is starving now are you going to sit there and hope the paperwork goes through or are you gonna come in and hang out outside the home depot and wait for a truck to pull up?

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That only applies to the ones that actually will die if they don't. What percentage of immigrants actually falls under that category? I suspect a miniscule one.

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Taxes nj.

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Sales taxes.

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Use taxes.

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Property taxes.

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Excise taxes.

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Which is nothing compared to state and Federal income tax.

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reduce subsidies,
reduce import tarrifs

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Good luck getting either in a Democratic Congress. The unions are running things now.

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support fair trade legislation,
help foreign governments solve corruption and crime problems (like mexico),
support fair labor standards under international law,
support education in foreign countries,
buy products produced under fair trade standards

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Some of these are a bit too altruistic, especially supporting education in foreign countries. Why should I pay to help other nations compete with the American economy?By the way, you do realize that farmers use the money they get from fair trade to buy chainsaws, right? To clear more rainforest? So they can live more like we do? Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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sustainable, traditional forms of agriculture and production do not preclude civilization and do not require neolithic conditions. how narrow-minded can you be? one example of traditional, sustainable agriculture is crop rotation.

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I'm not convinced by a single, random example. But if your "traditional, sustainable" society means owning a car, a house, and a computer, it's not so bad. If it means living like the majority of South Americans have lived for the last two hundred years, forget it.What really irks me is how so many Americans, who are the richest society in the world, complain about satellite dishes appearing on thatch huts in the Amazon. We're destroying traditional cultures, they say. I say that the people in remote parts of the world see our culture, and favor it to their own. And that we have no right to deny them that just so our anthropologists can continue churning out papers on the "quaint gourd people of" (someplace unpronounceable to my Anglican tongue). We'd like to keep them in poverty against what is apparently their own will to satisfy our own sense of aesthetics, our belief that their way of life is beautiful, so long as we read about it in National Geographic from thousands of miles away.That's why I beat Omnivore over the head with this. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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Helping those worse off than we are is the right thing to do.

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I agree. The problem is that we have finite resources (labor as well as capital) and an infinite number of good deeds that we could potentially do with it. That's why we invented this thing called "money" to make it easier to tabulate how much labor and capital is needed for a particular process.To create an education system from nothing in Third World countries would take quite a lot of money. That would come out of my taxes. I think I pay enough taxes. Come to think of it, we've been building schools in Iraq and Afghanistan and during the last presidential election cycle a certain US political party was very upset about spending all that money "over there" rather than entitlements here. . .If you want to set up colleges in other countries, get a non-profit to do it, not the government.Wow, that took about five minutes. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.