Illegal aliens in Oregon and US (buy, construction, live in)

[Steve97415]

Originally Posted by fastfilm

Steve97, although I indeed applaud your fact-based legal quotations, I dispute the "schizophrenic attitude" as being solely the realm of the richest Americans. The rest of us do those tasks for ourselves (wash our own cars, care for our own children or yards,) and find that illegals compete for our own positions of employment, while depressing wages for all.

I'm in complete agreement on this one (and I don't think I implied that our national duplicity it is the realm of any particular economic class). There are whole regions of the country where hard agricultural labor is still done by farm owner-citizens. Who plants and brings in the wheat harvest in North Dakota? Who gets up at 4:00 a.m. in rural Wisconsin to milk all the cows? If they can get by without a labor force of pure illegals in the upper Midwest (yes, I know that there are a few), why can't we do so on the West Coast and the South? Part of the answer has to do with the corporatization of the family farm.

[Clear2land]

My first job was picking string beans. I earned enough to buy a bicycle. I had great fun and met some really nice people. Machines have replaced a lot harvesting work.

[Steve97415]

I used to do corn-detasseling contracts in Iowa when I was in college 25 years ago. I suspect that's mostly a migrant-dominated job if it's still done at all. It's too bad. You end up with a very different sort of work ethic in later life if you cut your working teeth doing farm work as opposed to taking orders at a fast food restaurant. Looking at the lack of enthusiasm so many of our young people have, it isn't surprising that many businesses show a preference for migrants who come from a culture of hard labor.

[wildberries61]

Don't you think we probably have something to do with how we are raising our kids. We are more interested in involving them in every sport,beauty pagent etc. trying to make them the next star. We teach them to go for the top instead of working their way to the top. Most kids don't want to take over the family farm or ranch. Farmers and ranchers are selling due to lack of family involvement.
My mom use too pick cotton as a kid and thats how the whole family worked to put food on the table and when I was growing up that was the last thing I wanted to do was to work in a field. I grew up in the 70's and I was going to be a cool parnet not like my parnets. Boy, were we wrong look at us now.
Alot of people don't even realize how the produce and meat they eat get to the market.

[mrkool]

There are many good points being made in this thread, and fortunately we aren't getting a bunch of the knee-jerk accusations of "racism."
The illegal alien invasion is a huge threat to our national security, culture, and cohesiveness. To deny this is either a lack of knowledge, or a lack of recognition about all the negative social indicators occurring in places with large Latino populations.

[Steve97415]

Originally Posted by mrkool

To deny this is either a lack of knowledge, or a lack of recognition about all the negative social indicators occurring in places with large Latino populations.

But it is quotes like this that are just the problem. It is when the objection is stated in ethnic terms, e.g., "large Latino populations" rather than as a rule-of-law complaint, e.g., "undocumented migrants", that the distinction between legal compliance and xenophobia is slurred. It is precisely the objections to language and culture that portray immigration reformists as narrow-minded knee-jerkers who are in need of a diversity-training workshop. If we don't drop the ethnic cleansing agenda pronto, and make the issue strictly a legal one, we'll never get the ground swell of support needed to enact meaninful immigration reform. Remember: most of our congressional representatives come from communities with "large Latino populations". A good number are Latinos themselves -- in some cases their family's history in the area may go back hundreds of years.

[xphx]

Just wanted to state some facts: Most of the illegal "Mexicans" that are coming over our border would be called Native Americans had their nations been hijacked by the English rather than Spanish colonists. Before it was Mexico it consisted of several different "Indian" nations. Once the land was colonized, these indigenous people where ruled by their European colonists and are still governed, for the most part, by their descendants. Their borders where fought over, bought and sold by Europeans. So when you complain about the "illegals" breaking our laws remember that mine and your ancestors did not have much regard for their laws, or lives for that matter. At least these "illegals" are more tolerant. Could they very well have some small right to this land? What goes around comes around.

[fastfilm]

In Los Angeles, the illegals are the least tolerant batch of people I've ever encountered, and my basis of comparison includes the horror of Ku Klux Klan idiots in the South in the 1950's. The illegals here despise anyone who's not from their home country, and reserve a special hatred for American citizens. The illegals' xenophobia is in fact deja vu to the "bad old days" of devisiveness, such an unfortunate setback in this country where we've worked so hard to get past that.

And yes, in 2006, illegals are most certainly breaking major American laws in illegal entry and do not have squatters' rights of residency any more than any other nation allows same. And with the imprimatur of "getting away with" breaking a major law, illegals continue breaking law after law after law after law once they reside here.

If you insist upon a what goes around comes around scenario, here's the one foisted on us in L.A. that I wish for you to experience: every sign where you live will change into a language from another country, everyone around you will cease speaking in any language you can understand, your ever increasing tax monies will go to criminals for medical services that you yourself will never receive and to pay for assorted civic services to them that you will never receive. And you, the American citizen, will be considered the un-PC bad guy by rabid separatists who want to turn back the clock 500 years.

[BlackShoe]

All over the Web,on countless message boards and forums,the issue of illegal immigration is the number one "hot button topic".That means that America is waking up.Those huge "rights demonstrations" of last spring actually were a great thing,there has been a huge backlash of sentiment and new awareness of just how serious this problem is.The notion that it is too late and that they are here to stay is nonsense and defeatist.One horrible analogy--In World War 11 the Germans,with a fraction of the current US population and no technology in todays sense,rounded up and sent to concentration camps about 12 million human beings.Oddly enough,that is about how many illegals are in the US.If the dumb Germans could find them why cant we find them and deport them?Large parts of the Southwest have been Balkinized.Can civil war be far behind?Dont take the notion that it 'cant happen here",it sure as hell can."Hippie Heaven" Oregon with its tradition of being socially "progressive" it already seeing the illegals flooding in.Who knows,someday soon Oregon might become "North Mexifornia".

[robin from Oregon]

Another perspective........
Look at the City Data stats for Cornelius, Oregon. Cornelius has a 38% Hispanic population. Many of the Mexicans that I work side by side with live there. Yet the crime stats are well below the national average, and are MUCH lower than many towns with little to no Hispanic population (such as some in the Southeast US which I have been looking at, since I may be moving). Social problems are more a result of poverty than ethnicity. Immigration is an exceedingly complex issue. While I understand and sympathize with the views of many on this forum, the reality is that if all the illegal immigrants were suddenly rounded up and deported, our economy would crash. I work in an agricultural business here in Oregon that is highly labor intensive. BTW, this is a family owned business, not "corporate agriculture". Not all of agriculture is akin to wheat farming. When we hire in the spring, I never see Americans lining up outside our doors looking for work. The people I work with are hard working, caring people who have left their homeland and all that is dear to them in order to provide for their families. They aren't here to take over. They're here because the Mexican economy is on the verge of bankruptcy. Most of them would like to return to Mexico. In my opinion, what we need is more than just border security. We also need a viable guest worker program which will allow the workers that our economy needs to enter this country legally, and also allow them to return to Mexico without fear that they won't be able to get back. If they could travel freely across the border to earn a living and to return "home", most of them wouldn't want to stay and settle here. For what they make working for a few months here, they could support their families all year in Mexico. Many wouldn't even bring their families with them in the first place if they knew they could return. But as it is, since it is so risky to try to get here, they don't dare return home and then come back again. Since they know they can't go home, they bring their families with them, and settle here. For most of the folks I know, that would not be their first choice. Many come here planning to return, but then their kids grow up here, and for them, Mexico is no longer home.

I know several men who have worked in this country for many years, sending money home to support wives and children that are still in Mexico. One gentleman I know personally sees his family only every few years. They do what they have to do to put food in their childrens' mouths. There is no welfare in Mexico. If you don't work, you don't eat. And there is not much work. The work ethic of most of the Mexicans I know would put many Americans to shame. I wonder how many of you who have posted know these folks personally. I have befriended them, worked with them, and taught English to them (which yes, most of them do want to learn - it's just an exceedingly difficult language, especially for people who have on average a 3rd grade education). Last year I spent 2 weeks in Mexico learning Spanish, and I came to really appreciate the culture and realize how much these folks have given up to come here to make a living for their families.

I believe that I am as patriotic as any of you. I am even a conservative republican. But I am in a position that has enabled me to see both sides of this issue. I agree that we need more border security, but any solution that doesn't address the needs of the industries that are dependent on immigrant labor will end up hurting this country in the long (and short) run. And this isn't just a US problem. It occurs all over the world where you have a prosperous economy in close proximity to a third world economy. People have migrated from areas of scarcity to areas of abundance since the world began. I have heard the argument that it's different with the current migration of Mexicans to the US because "our" ancestors assimilated into the culture, became Americans. Really? How many of "our" ancestors who came here 300 years ago assimilated into native American culture? How do you think the natives felt about the white man's "illegal immigration" into their lands? We cut down their forests, destroyed their hunting grounds, murdered their families, desecrated their sacred places - and now it's "our" country, and we're enraged about the Mexicans, most of whom have native North American ancestry, coming into "our" country. We could build a wall across the border, but in the long run I don't think you can stop a human migration any more than you can stop osmosis. You may slow it down, but eventually people will move to where there is opportunity.