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So by your logic, Americans who are disabled, elderly, and can't work or earn very little (therefore pay little to no taxes) and consume a lot of services should be arrested and jailed for 20 years in the desert? .
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Originally Posted by ndfmnlf
Then why don't we deport 95% of taxpayers? They're just a drain on the system. The US belongs to people like me who are among the top 5% of income earners. The rest of you can move to a different country.
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Originally Posted by ndfmnlf
Define citizenship.
There was a time when black slaves were not considered US citizens. It took almost 100 years from the founding of this country before slaves were granted citizenship through the 14th amendment, even though many of them were born here and worked their a$$e$ off to feed their masters and built the infrastructure of this country.
The point being, citizenship is a fluid concept. Laws change. Constitutions get amended. The criteria for citizenship can be expanded. Illegal aliens can be granted amnesty and turned into US citizens so they can start paying taxes.
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Originally Posted by ndfmnlf
You can also legalize all illegal aliens and tax them. Same logic there.
Citizen and illegal, there's a difference. What could or may happen doesn't matter. Laws haven't changed, our Constitution isn't being amended. Slavery ended 150 yrs. ago and Mexico lost the war even longer ago. What Mexico had 170 yrs. ago means zip. Watch me go squat on some guy's farm, because my grandparents used to own it. They lost it during the depression, it was stolen by the bank, it was unfair. I should have a right to it. I have the right to live there. Hmmmm....how long would that last? It doesn't work that way. But, maybe if I explain to the sheriff when he comes to throw me off, that property ownership is a fluid concept? Maybe he'll understand?
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Originally Posted by SandyCo
I'd like to see some realistic and feasible solutions to illegal immigration. Are we suddenly going to outlaw citizenship by birth in this country? If we require the parents to show that they're American citizens, how is that going to work? It's also funny to me that everyone says "illegals", but what people here really mean is "Mexicans". Does anyone care about other illegals? What about people who come from eastern European countries or the Philippines, for example? No one talks about them. Instead there's this prejudice against people who look a certain way, whether they're actually Mexican or not. That's sad.
What are the estimates? 12-20 million illegal aliens? That number is usually thrown around. Of those, how many are from Latin America? Of those from Latin America, how many are from Mexico? 10% of everyone currently living, who were born in Mexico, live in the United States. THAT'S WHERE THEY'RE COMING FROM. We don't want them because they're brown? Bull$&!T!! Swimming a river is a lot easier than swimming the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans? If 12 million Romanians ran across the Canadian border, I'd say turn them back.
If you have read this entire thread you should now know who and what Anchor Babies are. A very common sight when I grocery shop is an obviously illegal alien woman, not able to speak English, at the checkout stand with a full cart, including not just staples, but items considered luxeries. With her are two or three small children, born in the USA, all medical expenses paid for by you and me. When it is time to pay the bill, out comes reams of food stamps, again provided by you and me. When the smoldering rage courses through my mind, I do not feel one damn bit guilty or feel any need to justify my thoughts or opinions.
Obviously illegal woman? Get out of here. You don't know that for a fact. All you had were presuppositions and stereotypes.
Not in the slightest. I paid for most of my own education, much of which was earned in the school of hard knocks. My father was a career Marine Corps aviator who served his country in three wars rather than the purveyors of the almighty dollar, and I followed suit with my own military years and war. No regrets.
By the way, the appropriate word would have been "envious," not "jealous." I'd have thought you would have learned that in Northwestern. I learned it in prep-school but perhaps I'm just a faster learner than you.
Last edited by Curmudgeon; 05-20-2010 at 12:03 PM..
If you have read this entire thread you should now know who and what Anchor Babies are. A very common sight when I grocery shop is an obviously illegal alien woman, not able to speak English, at the checkout stand with a full cart, including not just staples, but items considered luxeries. With her are two or three small children, born in the USA, all medical expenses paid for by you and me. When it is time to pay the bill, out comes reams of food stamps, again provided by you and me. When the smoldering rage courses through my mind, I do not feel one damn bit guilty or feel any need to justify my thoughts or opinions.
they don't even use food stamps anymore. even here in texas, they now use a debit card (Lone Star) so that they don't have to feel so ashamed. i'm sick of immigrants sucking up all of the freebies while citizens have to wonder if there is enough $$ to fund social security and medicare for us and our families.
Further... So we are clear.. When you are unemployed.. There is no such thing as : Jobs that American's dont want to work. We have 13% unemployment in california : Google - public data
Don't tell me there are jobs that Americans don't want to work and that's why we need Mexican immigrants to pick carrots, etc. I have my Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering and I'd scrub toilets and bag groceries if necessary to secure food/water/shelter.....
What we need to do is kick illegal immigrants out.. Phase out unemployment and tell Lazy arse Americans to do the jobs that are 'beneath them'. As for this theory that prices will be higher... HEllo .. what about taxes .. explain to me how paying someone unemployment for 2 years to do nothing and paying an illegal immigrant below legal wage = Less money than paying the american minimum wage and not giving them unemployment... It would seem as though you people need a remedial lesson in math. Further, lets talk about debt/deficits. If you have any knowledge on how finance works, you'd understand that debt comes w/ interest .. So lets slap that on there too...
Lets add in some 1.6 million college graduates that will be added to the jobless pool this year : College Grads Flood U.S. Labor Market With Diminished Prospects - Bloomberg.com
"Ten months after graduating from Ohio State University with a civil-engineering degree and three internships, Matt Grant finally has a job -- as a banquet waiter at a Clarion Inn near Akron, Ohio. " <- that's what I call a hard working American
Lets talk about ending this idiot philosophy in America of entitlement. I come from a household where neither parent had a college degree.. My dad worked 3-4 jobs.. My dad said to me everyday.. you don't want to live like me .. you don't want your kids to go through what you did.. be better than me son.. And I made it my life's goal to go to college... There was no backup.. It was either do it yourself or end up poor. And my dad never accepted welfare or any other subsidies. He promoted : An honest day's work for an honest day's pay.. He promoted having some dignity about yourself. And most of all, he said.. son, when you make it.. Understand.. Unto those who much is given, much is expected. So I give back... I give back not by giving money out recklessly... If I were in power, I would not 'give back' by taxing productive people to just hand it away to unproductive.. I would give back by being a leader.. When necessary aiding those and putting them on a platform that they can provide for themselves... Empowering people .. not making them dependent ..
So man screw all this liberal nonsense.. Screw all this appeal to emotion.. Screw all of this entitlement crap.. You are granted life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... Just by being in this country you are privledged and afforded something that many people in the world even w/ $$$ don't have... What you do w/ it after that is up to you .. And there is no job beneath any american. Sustained entitlements and unemployment/etc make Americans lazy and feel that they are entitled .. And it results in deficits that you pay back w/ interest.. Interest on that debt can only be paid back if you get a return on what the principle above the annual interest. Tell me wtf kind of return do you get for giving someone money w/o requesting any work?
This country and other countries in the world are made great by an understanding.. that .. in order to have a good life.. you have to work for it .. When people get that.. they cut out the idiocy.. They WILL find work .. if they can't find it .. they will create it ... This goes for both those at the top and bottom who take in more than they receive....
This hand holding is going to be America's downfall.. These idiotic policies based on appeal to emotion and ad hominem attacks will result in the firming of results that lead to our downfall .. And sadly there is nothing the educated/hard working people can do about it. you have enough leeching selfish bums at the bottom tier as you have in the top and they are both serving to rot the hardworking/smart working mid tier at its core.
IF you want to give.. THen give.. it's called charity and everyone should do it..
Morons have become the majority in America. They infect the core of our govt. local/state/federal .. They infect the core of our voting base.. both amongst republicans/democrats ... and in a democracy .. when that happens .. Idiot sh*t results... I have long since given up as this is just the endstate/endgame.
Those of intelligence would serve themselves best to secure themselves and their living.. Don't work beyond a certain level as it will just be taxed away and giving to morons or taken away by wallstreet... Time is money and money is time .. Enjoy your life and let the monkeys have their way w/ trashing this place. Only when it turns into a pile of crap will they get it.. BUt hey, maybe even then, they wont get it... Probably because they are just that dumb. They wont realize the overarching role they played in making it so.
I will borrow one from the good ol' book on this :
As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness (Proverbs 26:11)
ndfmnlf, if I lived in CA I would have no problems picking carrots or strawberries ar anything else. When we were kids, we used to do stuff like that for summer jobs. We don't NEED illegals in here for ANY reason. Hire kids, or the thousands upon thousands that have no jobs. Getting paid something is better than nothing. You can't say that no American wants these jobs so let the illegals have them. Have you asked them? There are once corperate VPs that are now working for Burger King, so yeah, I don't think that picking carrots would be a bad thing. I'd rather be in the sun, than in a drive thru window anyday.
ndfmnlf, if I lived in CA I would have no problems picking carrots or strawberries ar anything else. When we were kids, we used to do stuff like that for summer jobs. We don't NEED illegals in here for ANY reason. Hire kids, or the thousands upon thousands that have no jobs. Getting paid something is better than nothing. You can't say that no American wants these jobs so let the illegals have them. Have you asked them? There are once corperate VPs that are now working for Burger King, so yeah, I don't think that picking carrots would be a bad thing. I'd rather be in the sun, than in a drive thru window anyday.
LOL @ comparing picking produce as a kid vs. doing it in the central valley 100+ Degree heat for 15 hours a day. Not even close to the same thing. Are you serious? Nobody is stopping you or anybody from going down there and working in those fields, they can always use help.
Morons have become the majority in America. They infect the core of our govt. local/state/federal .. They infect the core of our voting base.. both amongst republicans/democrats ... and in a democracy .. when that happens .. Idiot sh*t results... I have long since given up as this is just the endstate/endgame.
They are also well on their way to destroying the social fabric of this country -- that which, in the past, made us unique, successful, strong and united. Even our language is at risk. Now we're torn and polarized with a political system that plays to the ends and ignores the middle. "Celebrating our diversity" has accomplished more destruction in several decades than wars ever did.
As a child of legal Filipino immigrants to the United States, I will be quite frank when I say this; no one is entitled to anything. I thought the whole American ethos was predicated on the idea of "the harder you work, the more you will receive". Legal or otherwise, I think the American system is extremely adept at rewarding those who work hard, and extremely unforgiving to those who sit back and let things happen to them.
My grandfather came to the US back in the 1930s, and initially a field hand in the Salinas Valley. If any of you guys remember, the original nativist sentiments in California wasn't directed toward Hispanic immigrants but rather Asian immigrants. Back in those days, Asian Americans weren't treated with any kind of respect. My grandfather then left to work in Los Angeles in the late 1930s and enlisted in the US army during the war. After the war, he was granted American citizenship, but he decided to go back to the Philippines and start his family there because he didn't like the way Americans treated him back then.
My mom was born with American citizenship, but only came here in the mid 1980s after the Philippine economy collapsed and there were violent protests against my uncle, Ferdinand Marcos. My mom was already a doctor in the Philippines, while my dad was an engineer in Saudi Arabia before coming to the states. They came here with exactly $500. My dad put his family on the wait list to come to the United States, but they were only allowed to immigrate in 2007 (by then, they didn't even want to come here). Now, my parents are extremely successful and live in a nice neighborhood. That's the American Dream coming to fruition. However, it didn't mean that there wasn't years of hard work, because it was extremely difficult.
When my parents came here, there were many who were complaining about much of the white collar work going to foreign born graduates of "inferior" medical schools, engineering schools, etc. My dad didn't mind taking a wage MUCH LOWER than what was offered for his position because the mentality amongst most immigrants is "at least its way more money than I would be making in my country of origin." This is why companies LIKE immigrants, legal or illegal, because to them, its a more cost effective solution. Most immigrants don't come here to be poor, so they will be willing to work at any wage so they won't be poor anymore and can survive decently.
Like it or not, California is an extremely immigrant dominated society. At every single level, from the lowest agricultural worker to the CEO's of some of the Silicon Valley firms, are dominated by immigrants and their children. Any talk about "dealing with the immigration problem" strikes at the heart of legal AND illegal immigrants alike. To some of us who are legal in the US, it's still an extremely painful question since we know how many hoops we had to jump in order to become American citizens. On one hand, it isn't fair to let those who came here illegally to become citizens by cheating the system. On the other hand, it also isn't fair that becoming legal is so difficult to begin with. That's for Congress to balance out, but this is how many legal immigrants I talk to feel.
An even fairer question to ask is: how do you automatically know if someone is legal or illegal? How do you know if someone is an immigrant or non-immigrant? I think people focus too much on the illegals, and not enough on the damage it does to the rest of the immigrant community. What's the point of being an American citizen if you're still going to profile and treat us differently anyways? Takes out a lot of the motivation, doesn't it? If we didn't do anything illegal, we SHOULDN'T have anything to fear. However, America isn't the type of country to automatically assume you're guilty until you prove you're innocent. That's not the country I grew up in. No matter what, the US Constitution protects due process.
AMENDMENT XIV Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Where's the protection for US citizens like me? I don't look any different from illegal Filipino immigrants, or legal Filipino immigrants. Don't think about the illegals for one second; how about American citizens?
Just food for thought.
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