We don't have an immigration problem....

[Flabbergasted]

We have never had an immigration problem.

We will never have an immigration problem.

Period.

[Redstone]

1. It happens that I agree.

The American Indians had a damn big immigration problem...but since then? Not so.

(Disclosure: I'm half American Indian, and Mrs R is an immigrant.)

Redstone

[msongs]

5. the american indians coming here first was the original immigration problem.

before they got there the continent was a wonderland for animals and plants and hasnt been the same since.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[Redstone]

7. Well, if people are so bad, maybe we should all commit suicide?

Redstone

[datahead]

11. LOL

MSONG...I find it hard to believe that someone could make such a silly statement. I honestly can't put into words how I would love to comment here, but I'm going to take my crayons and go home.

[datahead]

2. From another thread but it fits here as well

Unless you are an American Indian, we all came from other countries. And I'm not going to get into what we did to them.

Living in Southern Ca.(San Diego) I see allot of hard working people (Illegal Immigrants) that have been here for twenty, thirty years. They have been caught up in the bureaucratic B.S. of immigration reform for years trying to become legal citizens of this country. Only to hit a brick wall.
Their children, and grandchildren were born here, and over all are respectable members of the community. All illegal immigrants are not criminals, maids, house cleaners, and fruit pickers. And overall these people are good people.
It really burns my butt when I hear people say we should just throw them all out. What if that was the case a hundred years ago when the Irish and Italian's were coming into this country. Maybe we should all read what is on the statue of liberty, and pause to think about where we all came from.

This is just my stupid opinion, but I think we need to get off our high horse here and think about where we came from.

[Saturday]

3. I noticed you did not differentiate between

legal and illegal immigration. When the Irish and Italians came they did not come illegally or in the numbers we are dealing with today.

[datahead]

8. Maybe??? Cognitive Reasoning would help

Since when was it legal immigration to clean out your prison systems (granted petty crimes and some not even crimes against the state...but crimes against the church or disagreement with the ruling parties) but none the less was it legal. Just so happens that when these people arrived at Ellis Island or the Louisiana Port or Brownsville or San Francisco or any other of the major and minor ports that accepted boatloads of immegrants...there where actual caring, feeling, genuine people taking their applications. Many of them who just came from the same circumstances. And low and behold with a piece of paper and a pen and sometimes a simple X they were taken in. Now we have statistics, analytics and computers and way too many levels of government employees with too much power and not the cognitive sense to remember where they put someones application or who they talked to yesterday....OH MY..

[chiggerbit]

6. Well...

...how do you think that minimum wage stayed static for so many years? Of course it's not an illegal immigration problem, it's an illegal employer problem. The problem is that Mexico is a plutocracy, with a small elite ruling class, a small middle class, and a huge poverty class. And OUR employers want the same thing here. Meanwhile, Mexico's plutocracy isn't working so well, lots of political unrest, so their huge block of unemployed "excess" is pushed off on the US, into the welcoming arms of miserly US employers. Michael Parenti calls this the third-worldization of the US. Trust me, if there weren't any jobs for them here, there would be drastically fewer making the try. Do you suppose that last election in Mexico would have come off the same if all those illegal Mexican immigrants had still been at home and still unemployed?

OF course, the Repuglies will manage to talk out of both sides of their mouths, with Bush saying sweet nothings in the immigrants ears, while the other conservative Repuglies talk mean, promote hate. And the Dems in Congress will giddily jump in on the side of the immigrants, not realizing what the dynamics really are, or that their position is going to bite them in the butt. I can't believe that there are any Dem politicians going along with fining these impoverished people $5000. The fines should be on the employers, where it belongs.

If Greenspan were asked and IF he were honest, he would probably have to admit that part of his plan to keep down inflation was put on the backs of illegal immigrant workers.

Anybody have any figures on what the numbers were back in 2000 of those here illegally and what they are believed to be today?

[Jelybe903]

10. Lets Annex

Your Absolutely Right...we can not help Mexico fix its problems and yet we can't fix ours without some cooperation from the Mexican Government. Hum mm thats a catch.

You can not have free trade (NAFTA) with a country that is not equal...Therefore no matter what we do at this point there are still people willing to risk their life to get someplace that at least thinks it has a better way.

Lets just get the whole thing over with right now! Annex Mexico...we may not get a whole lot except a whole new area to pollute...Oh but we are already doing that (or at least our companies are) then we would have to clean up both sides of the boarder along Laredo and Brownsville and the rest of the boarder...But maybe we could get General Motors and Hughes and many other sundry industries to pitch in some of the money they saved by not paying wages in America...and ripping off the Mexican People in their own land instead of ours...

[Lasher]

14. Yes, I have figures on what the numbers were in 2000

The total foreign born unauthorized resident population was estimated at 7 Million in 2000. This population doubled between 1990 and 2000. Assuming this rate of increase has not changed, there are about 12 million illegal aliens living in the US today.

The total (legal and illegal) foreign-born population in the US was 31 million in April 2000.

http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/Ill_Report_1211.pdf

[pampango]

15. Actually, the American Indians came from other countries (well,

actually another continent since there were not countries yet), but then that is true of every group of people except Africans. We all came from there originally. (Maybe we should depopulate the rest of the world and send everyone back to Africa, since everyone else is an "immigrant". ;) Some "immigrated" yesterday, some 10,000 years ago, some 100,000 years ago, but we are all "immigrants".)

I agree with the rest of your post whole-heartedly.

[wildhorses]

4. give these people ss# and get them in our tax base NOW

*sheesh*

people are people and we are dealing with a world economy ...get over it and let's get on with it!!!

we need a product to sell that the rest of the world WANTS/NEEDS to buy...PRONTO!!!!

[datahead]

9. Here's the real catch in this one...

Many already have SS#s...They just call them good numbers...and they file taxes and pay taxes under these numbers...but they will never be able to use the benefits...If we just allowed this to continue on forever maybe it would trump the Republicans social security reform bills...Think of it 20 million people who pay and never receive money from the government...is that theft or just a political oversight...

[wildhorses]

12. no.... they need legitimate ss#... i don't know how to handle all the

details but, i have no problem going ahead with the ones that are already here and working becoming legitimate. am i making sense...there has got to be way...

[Unvanguard]

13. Yes, we do. But the problem is not immigration. It is the laws against it. n/t