[mike777]

Yes, as I said, what problem are we trying to solve? How do we measure success?

Please send us your tired and poor, your huddled masses, your homeless and wretched refuse, we need and welcome you.

If you are hungry, let us feed you.
If you are ill, let us heal you.
If you are uneducated, let us teach you while you teach us.

[Winstonm]

I say let all in who want in, reinstitute the draft, and make every illegal immigrant first have to serve 2 years in the armed services to stay here.

[luke warm]

jtfanclub, on May 23 2007, 05:09 PM, said:

Illegal Alien is a made-up phrase people use to denigrate others.  Calling somebody an 'illegal alien', and then saying 'since I call them an illegal alien, doesn't that mean they're illegal' is self-referencing stupidity.

who made it up? who does it denigrate? words have meanings, and words that modify one another also have meanings... an alien, in this context, is one not native to this country... illegal means against the law... so 'illegal alien' simply means a non-native who lives here against the law...

i don't understand your objection to using two words that have meanings to form a term that also has a meaning... there is, after all, such a person as a legal alien

Quote

If I call you a lawbreaker, does that mean you are breaking the law?

is this a trick question? yes, if you call me a lawbreaker that's what it means... you sound as if you're against illuminating words by using their definitions

Quote

Again, a vast majority of 'illegal aliens' came here LEGALLY. Their status has expired, for any number of reasons.

so what? now they are illegal as opposed to their earlier status of 'legal'... if you have a point you are making it poorly, imo

Quote

They did not become 'illegal aliens' simply because you decided to call them such.

that's true, they're illegal whether or not anyone terms them such... but you seem to agree with me that they are in fact illegal... i gave examples, i could give many more, of illegal aliens who break laws being treated differently from citizens and legal aliens who break the same laws... why is that right, or why is it ignored?

mike said:

Please send us your tired and poor, your huddled masses, your homeless and wretched refuse, we need and welcome you.

yes mike, but at one time those who came to this country did so because they wanted to be americans, they wanted to learn the language and they wanted to partake of citizenship... i think that's different from what is happening now... here are some interesting quotes, make of them what you will... the operative word is 'reconquista'

Fox, while speaking in Chicago on June 16, 2004, revealed his vision of the territorial boundaries of Mexico when he said: "We are Mexicans that live in our territories and we are Mexicans that live in other territories [America - primarily the Southwestern United States]. In reality, we are 120 million people [100 million in Mexico and the rest in America] that live together and are working to construct a nation."

Fox's predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, proclaimed on July 27, 1997 that:"I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders [again the Southwestern United States] and that Mexican migrants are an important- a very important - part of it."

Mario Obledo, co-founder of MALDEF (American legal Defense and Education Fund), and former Secretary of Health and Welfare for California, offered this: "We're going to take over all the political institutions in California. In five years the Hispanics are going to be the majority population of this state." It would be a Hispanic state and anyone who didn't like it "... ought to go back to Europe,"

Professor Charles Trujillo of the University of New Mexico, because of the ongoing large Hispanic immigration in the Southwestern U.S., declared that: secession is an "inevitability". And, "We may join Mexico... Throughout history, nations and empires rise and fall. No nation's borders have been permanent."

In a June 12, 2002 Zogby International Poll, '... 58 percent of Mexicans in Mexico believed that the American Southwest belongs to them and 57 percent believed that they do not require U.S. permission to enter this country."

This blunt statement in 1995 from Jose Angel Gutierrez, Professor of Political Science, University of Texas, Arlington, founder of La Raza Unida Party: "This [the Southwestern U.S.] is our homeland. We cannot - we will not - we must not be made to be illegal in our own homeland. We are not immigrants that came from another country to another country. We are migrants, free to travel the length and breath of the Americas because we belong here. We are millions. We just have to survive, We have an aging white America. They are not making babies, They are dying. It's a matter of time. The explosion is in our population." Another declaration from Professor Gutierrez : "We have got to eliminate the gringo (white American), and what I mean by that is that if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."

Now for a scholarly look at reconquista but a similarly disturbing conclusion, there is Harvard Professor Samuel P, Huntington, Chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies , who wrote The Hispanic Challenge in Public Policy Magazine, April, 2004: "[t]he persistence of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two people, two cultures, and two languages... The United States ignores this challenge at its peril... Mexican immigration differs from past immigration due to a combination of six factors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concentration, [in the American Southwest], persistence, and historical presence... Demographically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista (re-conquest) of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway."

what strikes me is that our leaders, who know what's going on, are allowing our culture, our country, to be lost in this way... and i honestly think that the reason can be found in coolidge's statement that "the business of america is business"... there's nothing wrong with business, per se... there's something wrong with business running the country, with business buying and paying for the legislative and executive branches of the gov't... time will tell about the judiciary

[mike777]

Jimmy, what or which problem are we trying to solve?
Are we trying to stop the west going back to Mexico or trying to hasten it?
Are you saying we are being invaded by Mexico and they are trying to take back everything west of the Mississippi?

[jtfanclub]

Quote

who made it up?

Good question. The first time I heard it was in a book by Phil Foglio. Don't know if it's older than that.

Quote

  words have meanings, and words that modify one another also have meanings... an alien, in this context, is one not native to this country... illegal means against the law... so 'illegal alien' simply means a non-native who lives here against the law...

Nope.

An illegal act is one that's against the law. An illegal PERSON is one not protected by the law. That's where we get the word "outlaw" from. So an illegal alien is an alien who is not protected. You can rob them, rape them, even kill them, and you won't be breaking the law. Illegal aliens are, by the literal definition, people you think aren't even human enough to be protected by the most basic laws of our society.

I can't possibly imagine why that would offend anybody.

Heck, I don't even like the status of 'illegal combatant'. Which does not, by the way, mean that they broke some nonexistent law by combating us. It means a combatant who is not protected by the law.

Quote

so what? now they are illegal as opposed to their earlier status of 'legal'... if you have a point you are making it poorly, imo

Girl comes here from Somalia. Gets a resident visa, a cruddy but steady job. Eventually, settles down, marries an American citizen, has three kids. She applies for American citizenship.

A month goes by, no repsonse. Two months, then six. Meanwhile, she tries to get her Visa renewed, but the government, being the government, loses that too. Day after day, she goes to the INS, where she gets shuffled around. Eventually, it expires.

Now, everybody agrees that she should be allowed to be here. She has a job, an American husband, and American kids, but because the INS is such a giant pile of molasses, the forms aren't there.

Now, according to you, tough ***** for her. Leave her husband and kids behind, lose the job, and swim or fly or however it is that you think that she should get back to Somalia where she'll spend the rest of her life, never to see her kids again. But hey, a few days after she leaves, maybe the forms will finally get through. I'm sure they'll have no trouble locating her, even with that pesky little civil war going on.

But why should you care? You were born here. It can't happen to you, so who cares if it happens to her, right? If you think that's a particularly bad horror story, come to Minneapolis. We've got over 10,000 of them, many of them far worse....people who've been tortured by the government of the country they're fleeing and were allowed in temporarily, but the INS has never gotten around to checking up on their stories.

And in fact, a MAJORITY of the people here 'illegally' are in fact in that state. Their paperwork gets done ten years after their visa expires, or it never gets done at all. They got here legally, by the rules they should be able to remain here legally, and yet because of the wonderful speed of our government they no longer have current papers.

It's easy to rip apart a couple million families and tell them to go back where they came from. After all, if you can't reach out and touch it, why should you care?

[Gerben42]

Quote

An illegal act is one that's against the law. An illegal PERSON is one not protected by the law. That's where we get the word "outlaw" from. So an illegal alien is an alien who is not protected. You can rob them, rape them, even kill them, and you won't be breaking the law. Illegal aliens are, by the literal definition, people you think aren't even human enough to be protected by the most basic laws of our society.

Everyone should be protected by the law. Even if you are in some country illegally that should not give anyone the right to rob them or kill them. Now THAT is something that should be carved into stone in a constitution.

Quote

Girl comes here from Somalia. Gets a resident visa, a cruddy but steady job. Eventually, settles down, marries an American citizen, has three kids. She applies for American citizenship.

A month goes by, no repsonse. Two months, then six. Meanwhile, she tries to get her Visa renewed, but the government, being the government, loses that too. Day after day, she goes to the INS, where she gets shuffled around. Eventually, it expires.

Now, everybody agrees that she should be allowed to be here. She has a job, an American husband, and American kids, but because the INS is such a giant pile of molasses, the forms aren't there.

This shouldn't be possible. What the government should do: Fire the people who obviously can't do their job and maybe hire this Somalian lady instead. I mean as mayor if I would hear of such stories I would go through the immigrations department with a HUGE broom. You'll be doing the right thing and if you sell it correctly you'll win popularity too (which unfortunately seems what politics is about now).

[FrancesHinden]

luke warm, on May 23 2007, 10:41 PM, said:

5) citizenship is a requirement for property ownership

Quote

The U.S. would go bankrupt overnight.  Do you know how much of our property is owned by Japanese, Italians, and so forth?

• do other countries have similar laws regarding foreign ownership? does mexico?

This is a subject which many countries struggle with. It's not uncommon to see this type of law elsewhere: the various ways people get round it in some places are to take out a long term lease (rather than buy the property), or to incorporate a company in the country and have the company buy the property.

In Jersey, only a very small number of properties are openly available, and as such as extremely expensive and rarely for sale. Otherwise, to buy a property in Jersey you must either be a resident, or you must be bringing a key skill of some sort to the island (e.g. you are moving there to be employed as a teacher, nurse...)

In some Swiss cantons it used to be the case that foreign citizens could not buy property. Then this was changed, in Valais for example. Then lots of rich foreigners bought up all the ski chalets. Now they've changed it again in particular bits of the canton to protect the residents.

In parts of England, there are desperate problems where locals cannot afford to buy anywhere to live because rich Londoners buy up all the local property as holiday homes. At the other end of the scale, very few English people can afford to live in the best parts of London, because the houses have all been bought up by mega-rich expats (and a few mega-rich non-expat city bankers). Overall, this might be good for the English economy to get these people living here, but it's not good for the individuals who have to cope with a long commute to work each day because they have to live further away.

[Codo]

mike777, on May 24 2007, 04:34 AM, said:

Some good news on the income distribution front.

Congressional Budget Office, May 2007 report says the poorest 20% of Americans have gotten less poor. They had the highest increase in earnings, 78% after inflation, from 1991-2005. The poorest increased their earnings growth much more than the richest 20%

Low wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one third higher in 2005 than in 1991.

Female-headed poor households incomes doubled.
The median family with children saw an 18% rise in earnings.

Yes the poor have not disappeared in America but some progress is being made.

Hi Mike,

please just check this:

If you earn 100 $ and this increases for big 78 % you have 178 $.
If you have 10.000 $ and this increases for just 18 % you have 11.800 $.

Do you think that the gap is getting smaller or wider?

I really hope that the gap between the lowest 20 % and the rest is getting smaller but at least your example does not proofe this.

[luke warm]

jtfanclub, on May 23 2007, 08:49 PM, said:

An illegal act is one that's against the law. An illegal PERSON is one not protected by the law. That's where we get the word "outlaw" from. So an illegal alien is an alien who is not protected. You can rob them, rape them, even kill them, and you won't be breaking the law. Illegal aliens are, by the literal definition, people you think aren't even human enough to be protected by the most basic laws of our society.

I can't possibly imagine why that would offend anybody.

you are wrong, your whole argument stems from this faulty premise... the 14th amendment protects citizens and non- alike under the law

Gerben said:

Now THAT is something that should be carved into stone in a constitution.

it is

Quote

Jimmy, what or which problem are we trying to solve?
Are we trying to stop the west going back to Mexico or trying to hasten it?

it seems that the congress and president are trying to hasten it, at the behest of major corporations who desire a cheaper labor pool... very shortsighted, imo

Quote

Are you saying we are being invaded by Mexico and they are trying to take back everything west of the Mississippi?

yes... but mike, i'm not the only one saying it... look again at the quote i provided from Harvard Professor Samuel P, Huntington

Frances said:

This is a subject which many countries struggle with. It's not uncommon to see this type of law elsewhere

yes, my point was that other countries disallow foreign ownership of property.. even mexico, but their laws bear no resemblance to the ones they want us to live by...

[Winstonm]

Quote

it seems that the congress and president are trying to hasten it, at the behest of major corporations who desire a cheaper labor pool... very shortsighted, imo

I don't know, Jimmy, but this sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory. The fact that it is true should in no way detract from the derision it receives, though, as everyone knows there is no such thing.

[Winstonm]

Quote

you are wrong, your whole argument stems from this faulty premise... the 14th amendment protects citizens and non- alike under the law

Unless you are classified as an "enemy combattant", then you are at the mercy of the military and have no rights at all - or if the president declares a national emergency and institutes martial law - then we are all screwed.

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on May 24 2007, 02:25 PM, said:

it seems that the congress and president are trying to hasten it, at the behest of major corporations who desire a cheaper labor pool... very shortsighted, imo

I certainly agree that migrant laborer's are extremely important for a number of industries. Agricultural work, landscaping, food service, construction, and the like all make extensive use of migrant labor. These industries are actively lobbying in favor of various guest worker programs. At the top end of the scale, a lot of the tech and service companies are doing precisely the same thing with respect to increasing the available pool H1B Visas.

As with anything else, there will be winner's and losers from this all. The primary winners will be foreign workers who will capture higher wages than they could otherwise receive and domestic consumer who will enjoy lower prices. The primary losers are local workers who will face downward pressure on wages. This is part and parcel of that whole market economy that so many people love so very much...

For what its worth, while I am occasionally sharply critical of market economies, this isn't one of those areas where I have issues. My criticisms of the market are based on well known examples of market imperfections. This is an example where a competitive market is behaving in precisely the way that it is intended and I think that its a mistake to try to play King Knut and order the waves to stand still. As I noted earlier, you aren't going to be able to stop migrant labor so long as massive wage gaps exist.

Coincidentally, I found the following article on Salon this morning

Quote

In the "age of migration," a period roughly coinciding with the years 1870-1910, massive flows of workers migrated across the globe. The growth in the labor force due to migration in the United States alone was 21 percent, while countries like Norway, Sweden, Italy, and Ireland saw their labor forces decline by 22, 18, 29 and a whopping 41 percent, respectively.

The fact that an Italian worker could earn four times as much for equivalent work in the United States as he could in Italy is thought to be a key factor explaining that mobility. Big wage-gap differentials create pressure to move.

So here's a little tidbit, derived from "Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility" a monograph by Lant Pritchett, an economist currently working at the World Bank. Wage gap differentials between rich and poor countries today are at least twice as great as those between the U.S. and its primary sources of immigrants during the age of migration. The pressure to move is greater now than ever before.

    The wage gaps in the world today are at historically high levels... it appears that the wage differentials that set in motion the mass migrations in the late nineteenth century are substantially smaller than the current gaps in real wages between potential migration partners.

    If a wage gap of 4 to 1 between the United States and Italy in 1870 was sufficient to create a migration that reduced population by 30 percent over a forty-year period -- even when transport costs were higher, travel was more dangerous, and communication with loved ones left behind was much more expensive and less reliable -- then it is at least plausible that the existing wage differences indicate potential forces for substantially larger labor movements than those currently observed.

The world is extraordinarily richer today that it was a hundred years ago. But that wealth has not been evenly distributed, globally. Far from it. Income disparities between countries far overwhelm disparities within countries.

Economist Dani Rodrik tipped off How the World Works to the existence of Pritchett's monograph in his blog. I've only read the introduction and first chapter so far, but it looks like an essential source of information and ideas on how to think about the massively complex and controversial topic of labor migration, albeit from a stance that the majority of commentators on the issue will likely find politically unfeasible. I can't yet say whether any of Pritchett's policy proposals, which purport to address both the political opposition to labor migration and the inevitability of its happening, make sense. But just the initial contribution of historical perspective seems enough to chew on for now. As long as global inequities in the distribution of wealth continue to rise so to will the pressure on people to move around the globe. Securing borders against that flow doesn't seem like a very good long term bet.

-- Andrew Leonard

[Winstonm]

mike777, on May 23 2007, 02:34 PM, said:

Some good news on the income distribution front.
Yes the poor have not disappeared in America but some progress is being made.

Mike, you really need to stop taking the red pills. Give yourself a month clean and sober and then read this....

Quote

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
     
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: March 29, 2007
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The Roaring 2000s The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

[mike777]

Codo, on May 24 2007, 05:55 AM, said:

mike777, on May 24 2007, 04:34 AM, said:

Some good news on the income distribution front.

Congressional Budget Office, May 2007 report says the poorest 20% of Americans have gotten less poor. They had the highest increase in earnings, 78% after inflation, from 1991-2005. The poorest increased their earnings growth much more than the richest 20%

Low wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one third higher in 2005 than in 1991.

Female-headed poor households incomes doubled.
The median family with children saw an 18% rise in earnings.

Yes the poor have not disappeared in America but some progress is being made.

Hi Mike,

please just check this:

If you earn 100 $ and this increases for big 78 % you have 178 $.
If you have 10.000 $ and this increases for just 18 % you have 11.800 $.

Do you think that the gap is getting smaller or wider?

I really hope that the gap between the lowest 20 % and the rest is getting smaller but at least your example does not proofe this.

smaller.

Why?


If the income of someone goes from 10 billion to 20 billion or if the poors' inflation adjusted income goes from 5000 to 20,000 whose life has improved more?

Amazing how a gap increase of 10 billion for the rich, yet the poor get a better life and good news. Simple. Let's focus on what's really important, not gaps
If you wish to focus on gaps, so be it.

[mike777]

Winstonm, on May 24 2007, 07:51 AM, said:

mike777, on May 23 2007, 02:34 PM, said:

Some good news on the income distribution front.
Yes the poor have not disappeared in America but some progress is being made.

Mike, you really need to stop taking the red pills. Give yourself a month clean and sober and then read this....

Quote

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
     
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: March 29, 2007
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The Roaring 2000s The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

Winston if you believe the poor are worse off than in 1991 I can doing nothing but take that other pill in the Matrix. If you want to believe that gaps are more important than simply improving the economy, ok. btw check out the term Utility.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on May 24 2007, 03:54 PM, said:

Amazing how a gap increase of 10 billion for the rich, yet the poor get a better life and good news. Simple. Let's focus on what's really important, not gaps

If you wish to focus on gaps, so be it.

Nearly all of the psychological studies show that individuals are much more concerned with relative wage differentials than their absolute income. This might not be logical, but it appears to be hardwired in folk's brains... American's are very concerned whether they are keeping up with the Jones.

For what its worth chimpanzees exhibit exactly the same behavior. If you give one chimp a banana and give a second chimp 20 banana's the chimp that got one gets VERY upset.

[Al_U_Card]

Winstonm, on May 24 2007, 07:21 AM, said:

Quote

you are wrong, your whole argument stems from this faulty premise... the 14th amendment protects citizens and non- alike under the law

Unless you are classified as an "enemy combattant", then you are at the mercy of the military and have no rights at all - or if the president declares a national emergency and institutes martial law - then we are all screwed.

Have you been gazing into that crystal ball agian?

[jtfanclub]

luke warm, on May 24 2007, 06:25 AM, said:

jtfanclub, on May 23 2007, 08:49 PM, said:

An illegal act is one that's against the law.  An illegal PERSON is one not protected by the law.  That's where we get the word "outlaw" from.  So an illegal alien is an alien who is not protected.  You can rob them, rape them, even kill them, and you won't be breaking the law.  Illegal aliens are, by the literal definition, people you think aren't even human enough to be protected by the most basic laws of our society. 

I can't possibly imagine why that would offend anybody.

you are wrong, your whole argument stems from this faulty premise... the 14th amendment protects citizens and non- alike under the law

Said by somebody who wants to change the 14th Amendment.

[jtfanclub]

Gerben42, on May 24 2007, 03:59 AM, said:

This shouldn't be possible. What the government should do: Fire the people who obviously can't do their job and maybe hire this Somalian lady instead. I mean as mayor if I would hear of such stories I would go through the immigrations department with a HUGE broom. You'll be doing the right thing and if you sell it correctly you'll win popularity too (which unfortunately seems what politics is about now).

Wouldn't help much. Minneapolis-St. Paul has hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The INS has a small office here, which spends most of its time trying to prevent open warfare between the Hmong immigrants and the 'natives'. They're completely overwhelmed.

[luke warm]

hrothgar, on May 24 2007, 07:41 AM, said:

~~~ Coincidentally, I found the following article on Salon this morning

Quote

~~~As long as global inequities in the distribution of wealth continue to rise so to will the pressure on people to move around the globe. Securing borders against that flow doesn't seem like a very good long term bet.

-- Andrew Leonard

if he's right then the only logical result is one world government, which i suspect is something that george the 41st has always wanted and has instilled in his son(s)...

Winstonm, on May 24 2007, 07:18 AM, said:

Quote

it seems that the congress and president are trying to hasten it, at the behest of major corporations who desire a cheaper labor pool... very shortsighted, imo

I don't know, Jimmy, but this sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory. The fact that it is true should in no way detract from the derision it receives, though, as everyone knows there is no such thing.

maybe you're right, maybe it is a conspiracy in the sense that those in power want the reconquista to take place and are aided by those who have other agendas

jtfanclub, on May 24 2007, 09:11 AM, said:

luke warm, on May 24 2007, 06:25 AM, said:

jtfanclub, on May 23 2007, 08:49 PM, said:

An illegal act is one that's against the law.  An illegal PERSON is one not protected by the law.  That's where we get the word "outlaw" from.  So an illegal alien is an alien who is not protected.  You can rob them, rape them, even kill them, and you won't be breaking the law.  Illegal aliens are, by the literal definition, people you think aren't even human enough to be protected by the most basic laws of our society. 

I can't possibly imagine why that would offend anybody.

you are wrong, your whole argument stems from this faulty premise... the 14th amendment protects citizens and non- alike under the law

Said by somebody who wants to change the 14th Amendment.

whether or not i want to change it has no bearing on the fact that your argument is faulty... you reached a conclusion based on an erroneous premise, period

fwiw i don't want to change the 14th, i want to enforce it... if i get stopped by a state trooper here i'd better have license, registration, and proof of insurnace... i deal with state agencies as part of my job, and some of those agencies are in the public safety realm (state, parochial, and municipal police, etc)... i know what their standing orders are re: this and other cases