Do you support Arizona?

[Amaris]

Easiest way to massively slow down illegal immigration? Come down hard on businesses who hire them. Don't punish the people; punish the ones who perpetuate the situation.

Exactly. These people are only doing this because businesses allow it. If I were here illegally and needed money for my family, I'd work for any business that would take me. I would only be human, after all. The businesses that engage in this practice need to be fined hard, so that they learn to follow business ethics instead of engaging in a form of indentured servitude.

 

[Tom Riley]

That is one way of doing it, I'm just not entirely sure how easy it would be to find out about a company doing it. I don't know all that much about the exact procedures or paperwork a company has to go through with hiring and paying their workers, but I'd imagine it would take more than just a quick glance at each company to find out if they're employing illegal aliens. And there are a whole lot of businesses in the US...

 

[Balrog]

Easiest way to massively slow down illegal immigration? Come down hard on businesses who hire them. Don't punish the people; punish the ones who perpetuate the situation.

Yep.

Here's what needs to happen:

1. Clamp down the border. Nothing works until the country controls the flow of people in and out of the country.

2. Start a program that helps immigrants become legal and supports a path towards citizenship. I do not agree with blanket amnesty, but I do think freeing up the process to citizenship must happen.

3. Come down hard on companies who hire illegals. Remove any incentive that promoted further illegal activity. Not only that, hiring illegals below minimum wage without any need to care about the working conditions is simply immoral. Personally, I cannot understand why people who are against the Arizona Law aren't upset about this. I guess they're more happy to buy stuff cheap than care under what conditions they are being produced.

 

[Professor Zoom]

If you get here legally, that's one thing...I'm all for legal immigration. But people who come here, do not pay taxes, and proceed to collect all sorts of public assistance? It's not right. And given our own economic woes, we do not have the luxury of keeping this an academic argument any longer.

Emphasis mine.

That's not entirely true. While they don't pay Income taxes, they do pay sales tax, each and every time they buy something. In fact, they just might be like a LOT of Americans who earn below a certain amount and not OWE any taxes.

AND, how do we know they are collecting "all sorts" of public assistance? How are they collecting it? From the State? If that's true, then perhaps the state should stop giving "all sorts" of public assistance. Speaking of which, what sort of public assistance are you referring to?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Plus illegal immigrants contribute a huge amount to social security through automatic deductions which they can not collect on later on due to having fake SSNs. Removing illegal immigrants completely would destroy social security.

At the local level they are indeed a drain on public resources, but they make up for it partially through sales taxes at the state level and surpass what they use through social security at the federal level. They are actually a net benefit to the nation's economy, regardless of what you think of illegal immigration as an ethical/legal concern.

 

[Balrog]

Plus illegal immigrants contribute a huge amount to social security through automatic deductions which they can not collect on later on due to having fake SSNs. Removing illegal immigrants completely would destroy social security.

Social Security's not going to be around after the Baby Boomers are retired en masse. It's unfunded now.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Plus illegal immigrants contribute a huge amount to social security through automatic deductions which they can not collect on later on due to having fake SSNs. Removing illegal immigrants completely would destroy social security.

Social Security's not going to be around after the Baby Boomers are retired en masse. It's unfunded now.

What the illegal immigrants are contributing NOW is going to retirees right now. Remove them and perhaps Social Security would be even worse off.

Edited to add:

Ultimately, the contributions of illegal immigrants to the economy as a whole is a LOT more complicated than I think people realize. Simply deporting every single one might result in unexpected, unintented consequences to the economy.

Personally, I would like to see a seasonal visa. Of course, that means they would be legal and that means they would have to be paid better.

Which the businesses that employ them don't want to pay.

 

[Chaos Descending]

So it seems to me that the options are either:

A) Ignore the situation and allow a class of people to be exploited in order to maintain the economy
B) Deport all the illegals and destroy the economy
C) Legalize all the illegals and destroy the economy.

It's truly a no-win scenario!

 

[Captain Ice]

If you get here legally, that's one thing...I'm all for legal immigration. But people who come here, do not pay taxes, and proceed to collect all sorts of public assistance? It's not right. And given our own economic woes, we do not have the luxury of keeping this an academic argument any longer.

Emphasis mine.

That's not entirely true. While they don't pay Income taxes, they do pay sales tax, each and every time they buy something. In fact, they just might be like a LOT of Americans who earn below a certain amount and not OWE any taxes.

AND, how do we know they are collecting "all sorts" of public assistance? How are they collecting it? From the State? If that's true, then perhaps the state should stop giving "all sorts" of public assistance. Speaking of which, what sort of public assistance are you referring to?

Quite a number of them actually DO pay income taxes. They simply cannot collect income tax refunds. They have SSN cards with real numbers on them. The SSNs simply belong to other people.

As for other sorts of public assistance, hospitals in Arizona are required by law to not turn anyone away. Illegal immigrants use them instead of going to doctors in some cases. In others, they come across the border simply to use the Arizona hospitals because then their children will be legal US citizens.

Removing illegal immigrants completely would destroy social security.

At the local level they are indeed a drain on public resources, but they make up for it partially through sales taxes at the state level and surpass what they use through social security at the federal level. They are actually a net benefit to the nation's economy, regardless of what you think of illegal immigration as an ethical/legal concern.

This is quite true. While here, they buy groceries in our stores, buy gas at our gas stations, and use our restaurants. All of these collect tax revenue.

So it seems to me that the options are either:

A) Ignore the situation and allow a class of people to be exploited in order to maintain the economy
B) Deport all the illegals and destroy the economy
C) Legalize all the illegals and destroy the economy.

It's truly a no-win scenario!

Maybe Starfleet Command should use this scenario instead of the Kobayashi Maru.

 

[gturner]

Removing illegals won't destroy the economy for the simple reason that our economy did fine prior to any massive influx of illegals, and the economies of Canada, Australia, Japan, and Europe likewise do fine without massive numbers of illegals.

What illegals do is add a distortion to the economy, making some otherwise marginal endeavors profitable while harming others. As with most things in the marketplace, their presence affects the winners and losers. Those businesses that stand to lose if the illegals are removed are quite willing to lobby for a continuation of the status quo. Those that were badly harmed by the presence of illegals have long since shrunk into obscurity or gone out of business, so they no longer factor in.

However, those protesting the situation with the illegals are largely the rank and file Americans whose wages are depressed by competition from an excess of underpaid, unregulated labor.

I argue that the system we have is disfunctional for both the US and Mexico. We now have businesses that have become addicted to cheap labor and the Mexican government has become addicted to the wages the illegals send home and the absence of a large part of their labor force.

If we have ten or fifteen million illegal immigrants, who tend to be in the prime of their working lives, then Mexico is missing ten or fifteen million productive citizens. The Mexican economy didn't have to provide jobs for them. The Mexican government's economic and business policy wasn't transformed by the protests of ten million angry people who couldn't find a decent job at home. This eliminates the domestic pressure on the Mexican government to make their economy perform, enabling the good-old-boy network of landed gentry to continue profiting from their antiquaited system.

At present, their economy is good at two things: Keeping the establishment in power and in control of a very poor country, and created millions of economic refugees.

 

[Kail]

A heart felt congratulations to these hard working, law abiding people who came to our country the right way, and followed all the rules to become US citizens. Best of luck to them, I wish them all happiness and success! Way to go, and just in time for the 4th!

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/07/new_crop_of_citizens_sworn_in.html