My 999th post: Are Immigrants Welcome in the Big Tent?

[DjTj]

At the 2000 Convention, this was in our platform:

Welcoming Our Newest Americans.

Immigrants enrich the tapestry of American life, making our economy more vibrant, our workplaces more productive, and our nation stronger. We believe that all levels of government, in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors, must devise and pursue a comprehensive immigrant integration agenda that will make the newest Americans full participants in the nation's mainstream. That's why Democrats support reforming the INS to provide better services, and investing the resources needed to reduce the backlog of citizenship applications from nearly two years to three months. Democrats also support increased resources for English language courses, which not only help newcomers learn our common language but also help us promote our common values. And, we believe that family reunification should continue to be the cornerstone of our legal immigration system.

Democrats believe in an effective immigration system that balances a strong enforcement of our laws with fair and evenhanded treatment of immigrants and their families. The Clinton-Gore administration provided long overdue leadership in dramatically improving border management and law enforcement, including a major expansion of the Border Patrol and curbs on abuses of the asylum process. We also recognize that the current system fails to effectively control illegal immigration, has serious adverse impacts on state and local services, and on many communities and workers, and has led to an alarming number of deaths of migrants on the border. Democrats are committed to reexamining and fixing these failed policies.

We must punish employers who engage in a pattern and practice of recruiting undocumented workers in order to intimidate and exploit them, and provide strengthened protections for immigrant workers, including whistleblower protections. Doing so enhances conditions for everyone in the workplace. We believe that any increases in H1-B visas must be temporary, must address only genuine shortages of highly skilled workers, and mist include worker protections. They must also be accompanied by other immigration fairness measures and by increased fees to train American workers for high skill jobs. The Democratic Party is committed to assuring an adequate, predictable supply of agricultural labor while protecting American farm workers who are among the poorest and more vulnerable in our society. We reject calls for guest worker programs that lead to exploitation, and instead call for adjusting the status of immigrants with deep roots in the country. We should have equitable asylum policies that treat people the same whether they have fled violence from the Right and Left. And we support restoration of basic due process protections and essential benefits for legal immigrants, so that immigrants are no longer subject to deportation for minor offenses, often committed decades ago without opportunity for any judicial review, and are eligible to receive safety net services supported by their tax dollars.

http://www.democrats.org/about/2000platform.html

This is actually much more immigrant friendly than some of the dialogue on DU. Are we less tolerant here than mainstream Democrats, or is the world different in this age of terrorism and outsourcing?

My pro-immigrant platform would include:

• Opposition of H1-B and other temporary visa guest-worker programs.
  
• A corresponding increase in national quotas for family reunification and faster processing for those waiting for green cards.
  
• Punishment for corporations that hire illegal immigrants
  
• Opposition to laws that seek to deny social services and health care to those in the United States based on immigration status.
  
• Increase border security to focus on terrorists, not immigrants.
  
• Support an amendment to the Constitution that allows naturalized citizens to run for President.
  

What other pro-immigrant policies do you think Democrats should support? What do you agree or disagree with in this list?

[KamaAina]

1. What about allowing *dual* citizens to run for President?

Because you know that whole issue is really about Ahh-nuld, who has (as far as I know) not renounced his Austrian citizenship.

I have a problem with doing anything that might help the Repukes, even if it is the right thing in principle (e.g. McCain-Feingold, which is really gonna come back and bite us in the butt this fall).

So, basically, my platform is "Support all immigrants except those who openly profess admiration for Hitler and sell their state down the river to Enron", I guess.

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. I think the descendants of European invaders should be allowed to stay

as long as they will cease their aggression designed to impede the sons and daughters of the indigenous people of the continent to move about it as they wish.

[cryofan]

3. we are less tolerant of being RIPPED OFF

OK, suppose you and I and 10 other people own a business, an office building in a good location in a large metro area, which we built ourselves, or inherited from our individual parents. Suppose we hire an office manager to manage the building. Each owner operates his own business in an office of the building. We owners may each compete with each other, if we happen to be in the same business as one of the other owners. For example, you and I may both be dentists. Of course we also compete with the dentist down the road. But we all do well in our own respective because this office building is well located and attractive to customers.

Now suppose one of the owners, "Joe," notices a unused office on one of the floors and bribes the office manager to allow him to rent out that office to a competing dentist from down the road. Joe takes a fraudulent "rent" as a kickback from this competing dentist.

Who loses? Not Joe or the office manager--they get a slice of the competing dentist's business, and that new dentist sures likes all the new business he is getting in his fancy new office.

But someone does lose: the rest of the owners, and especially you and me, because we are dentists, and we now have more competition. We now make less money because the added competition lowers the price we can charge, and we get less business. Also, all of the owners are not getting the rent from the building they built.

Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but that was an analogy: the office building is the USA, the American citizens are the various owners, and you and I are the menial laborers whose wages are being depressed (ever hear of "the law of supply and demand"?), and who are having to fight for jobs with immigrants.

The office manager is a politician, and the treasonous owner "Joe" represents the business interests who are want to increase their profits to the detriment of the American citizens.