5 myths of anti-immigration talk

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
It's a straw man and not worthy of discussion. Saying they are just "racists" is wrong. Many people who are minorities themselves have problems with illegal immigration. Did you ever think about that, but I guess it's just evil whitey keeping the brown people down.

I didn't say that all people are this way. However, a significant number of the anti-immigrant group are doing so due to racist tendencies. You spent time in Texas, you can't tell me this isn't the case... most of the anti-immigrant folks that I know personally are somewhat or fully anti-hispanic racist. The strength of the political movement is built on the ease of political racism.

So the US in the 19th century wasn't concerned about the outside world at all? I think this is a very weak argument.

Look it up. When were immigration controls established in the first place and why did the policy change? I'll hint that it had something to do with Margaret Sanger and limiting the number of evil brown people from the US.

You probably don't know US policy in the 19th century very well... the US was very self-involved prior to WWII, and had very little interest in the outside world. Particularly around the time of WWI, there was quite substantial sentiment to just ostrich up and not get involved in the outside world. This sentiment meshes easily with the racist politics and made it possible to pass anti-immigration policies.

I'm not sure it is possible to do both, unless you believe it's ok under a democratic president and not ok under a republican.

That makes no sense. You can be against amnesty and for legal path to immigration that's reasonable. I am.

I would support making it easier to come over, but it is necessary for the US to keep the restrictions they had on people entering the country. Your suggestions just seem like amnesty to me.

I support making a legal path to immigration, over here or over there. I think it's impractical to tell everyone over here to go home and then allow a similar number to come over... the ones who want to come are here, so let's make it possible for them to come over legally.

The proposal I'd support:

• Allow employers to list jobs at the border
• Conduct entrance interviews (by USCIS) on potential applicants
• Allow those that pass minimum qualification levels to enter on a 30 day visa
• If they are able to find work within the 30 day timeframe, allow them to stay on a rolling 1 year work visa which must be re-applied for each year with employer signoff
• Minimize costs for these visas, on the order of $50 each
• Allow those here already to apply for 1 year visa same as anyone else
• Visa allows travel between home country and US, either unlimited or reasonably limited

That's pretty much it... The number would not be limited at all for this type of visa, and would include a SSN (or whatever the equivalent is for immigrants) to allow the employer to pay taxes on the. FICA and Medicare taxes wouldn't apply for this type of visa, as they wouldn't be eligible for these services, but instead a tax to cover the program that would run ~80% of the level of FICA/Medicare taxes. That would pay for the program and then some... and you could add the other 20% on in taxes to support FICA anyway, if the lessening of the tax was a problem politically. To limit the effect on local economies, you could limit the number of jobs permitted to be posted on a local basis, say to locations with low unemployment, and/or if it's not an agriculture or service job you could require the job to be posted for at least two weeks or a month locally before it was permitted to be filled with this type of visa.

That's not an amnesty plan, it's an economically sound plan for allowing immigration based on need that fills jobs as they appear but restricts it to qualified applicants who are applying for legitimate jobs.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Vesayen
1. I do not want my country over run by a foreign culture which does in many, though not all instances, learn the language.

2. I do not want to pay my taxes to support social programs on the local, state and federal level of people who do not pay some, or any taxes.

3. Some jobs, such as the construction industry, Americans really would do, if the wages were not driven into a hole by employers who pay illegal immigrants very little or below the minimum wage.

4. The violation of federal laws on a mass scale irks me.

5. Employers violating laws on a mass scale also irks me.

QFT!

[Whoha]

Re: 5 myths of anti-immigration talk

Originally posted by Oerdin
5 myths of anti-immigration talk

By Andres Oppenheimer
Sunday, January 20, 2008

Let's debunk the biggest myths of the anti-immigration movement that has swept this country and may still have an impact on the 2008 presidential race: that it is not anti-Hispanic, that it doesn't oppose legal immigration and that it's against only "illegal" immigration.

Most U.S. Republican presidential hopefuls -- with the exception of Sen. John McCain -- and cable television anti-immigration crusaders on CNN and Fox News are deceiving the public with their claim that they are only against "illegal" immigration.

Oh boy!

• Myth No. 1: "We are only against illegal immigration. Undocumented immigrants should get in line for visas." That's deceptive because you can't demand that people get into line when, for the most part, there is no line to get into.

While the U.S. labor market is demanding 1.5 million mostly low-skilled immigrants a year -- and will demand many more in coming years, as the U.S. population becomes increasingly educated -- the current immigration system allows into the U.S. an average of 1 million legal immigrants a year and most of them are already here.

"There is a huge mismatch between what the U.S. labor market needs and the supply of immigration visas," says Frank Sharry, head of the National Immigration Forum, which advocates both secure borders and a path to legal residence for many of the 12 million-plus undocumented immigrants in the United States.

On top of that, most anti-immigration groups want to reduce legal immigration. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a favorite of radio and cable television Hispanic immigrant-bashing news shows, wants to reduce legal immigration from the current 1 million a year to about 300,000, with a 20-year cooling-off period.

As someone who favors a return to replacement rate immigration, I do not see any republican candidate on the state supporting that. They are not "anti-immigrant".

• Myth No. 2: "Anti-immigration advocates are not anti-Hispanic." Maybe many aren't but when was the last time you heard anti-immigration Republican hopefuls or cable television talk show hosts lashing out against illegal immigrants from Canada?

In addition, the escalating immigration hysteria has created an ugly environment that affects all Hispanics -- both legal and undocumented -- in many parts of the country, as recent studies by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have shown.

"We are seeing more discrimination and harassment," says Michele Waslin, of the Immigration Policy Center. "Anybody who is Hispanic-looking or has an Hispanic last name is being treated as an undocumented immigrant."

Immigration, both lawful and unlawful has been dominated by Mexican nationals(hence hispanics) for 40 years. Is any desire to shift away from that situation anti-hispanic? If so then this point is weasel worded enough to be correct, but it also applies to every candidate.

• Myth No. 3: "We are a nation of laws, and the law says you have to enter the country legally." Yes, but we are also a nation of immigrants. And, by the way, nearly half of all undocumented immigrants enter the country legally, and overstay their visas.

What point is he trying to make? Every Nation on Earth is a nation of immigrants.

• Myth No. 4: "Building a border fence will solve the problem." Wrong. As long as the per capita income in the United States is five times bigger than that of Mexico, and as long as U.S. labor market demands millions of low-skilled jobs that Americans won't fill, people will jump over the fence, dig tunnels under it or come through Canada.

Why oppose a fence if it won't work? Isn't it just practically a jobs program for illegals? While building a fence alone won't do the job, not being able to build a fence means you won't get all that far with solving any problem.

• Myth No. 5: Those of us who criticize anti-immigration groups are "amnesty" and "open borders" supporters. Baloney. Many support both border protection and an earned path to legalization for millions of undocumented workers who pay taxes and are willing to learn English.

There are already paths to citizenship for such people. Giving them another special path is amnesty.

The only way to solve the current immigration crisis will be to legalize undocumented workers who have paid their dues and to increase economic integration with Mexico and the rest of Latin America in order to reduce poverty and emigration pressures south of the border.

Ahahahaha. More free trade, which by the way places South America in a losing fight against communist china, isn't going to solve a damned thing.

The rest is, for the most part, populist demagoguery.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_548344.html

If anything, I want more populist demagoguery.

[Ming]

Originally posted by snoopy369
The proposal I'd support:

• Allow employers to list jobs at the border
• Conduct entrance interviews (by USCIS) on potential applicants
• Allow those that pass minimum qualification levels to enter on a 30 day visa
• If they are able to find work within the 30 day timeframe, allow them to stay on a rolling 1 year work visa which must be re-applied for each year with employer signoff
• Minimize costs for these visas, on the order of $50 each
• Allow those here already to apply for 1 year visa same as anyone else
• Visa allows travel between home country and US, either unlimited or reasonably limited

Not a bad plan... but to make it work, we would have to really step up enforcement. We would have to shut down businesses that used illegals (to get companies to actually play by the rules for a change)

We would also have to keep an eye open for companies that abused the system by offering workers the chance to "qualify" but then took most of their salary back as a kick back to stay in America.

There are indeed too many low skilled jobs that need to be filled and in most cases, immigrants are the only ones that will do them.

However, maybe if we revised the entire welfare system, that wouldn't be the case

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by Ming
However, maybe if we revised the entire welfare system, that wouldn't be the case

that's the thing over here. we have 1.5 million unemployed and 3 million on sickness benefits, many of whom could work. yet we're always fed the line that we need mass immigration to fill jobs, whilst paying millions of our own people to sit on their lazy arses and do nothing.

[Barnabas]

Andrés Oppenheimer is a very very simple minded journalist, especially when he talks about economy.


He is actually a pro republicans right winger, only in the issue of immigration he is against Bush.

[chequita guevara]

That really was a bad article.

[Ben Kenobi]

You spent time in Texas, you can't tell me this isn't the case... most of the anti-immigrant folks that I know personally are somewhat or fully anti-hispanic racist. The strength of the political movement is built on the ease of political racism.

I was there, and what I saw is that there was considerable suspicion about the benefits of immigration from everyone, not just the white folks. Plenty of hispanics who are bona fide American citizens have a problem with the ones who skirt the system.

Think of it this way, they are the ones who suffer most of the problems of illegal immigration because it happens in their backyard.

You probably don't know US policy in the 19th century very well... the US was very self-involved prior to WWII, and had very little interest in the outside world.

Considering I'm a history grad you might want to rethink that assumption.

At the time, they had the most open immigration system in the world. That's the flip side of the percieved isolationism, they would take anyone who was fleeing troubles and wars in their homelands.

Particularly around the time of WWI, there was quite substantial sentiment to just ostrich up and not get involved in the outside world. This sentiment meshes easily with the racist politics and made it possible to pass anti-immigration policies.

Except for the fact that it wasn't until after the first world war, that the US began to enact restrictive immigration laws.

Wilson really changed things. The whole policy of intervention in the affairs of the world is Wilson's policy, and to some extent is still being carried out today.

As for your proposal, I like the idea of the employer being able to conduct interviews with those from other countries without running afoul of the current immigration restrictions. Right now, as it stands someone who goes to the US to take an interview would be breaking the law if they came there on a visitor's visa.

Visa allows travel between home country and US, either unlimited or reasonably limited

No, not unlimited, perhaps after a year continuous residence in the US. This is an important restriction.

That's not an amnesty plan, it's an economically sound plan for allowing immigration based on need that fills jobs as they appear but restricts it to qualified applicants who are applying for legitimate jobs.

I owe you an apology then. You are taking the regulation about those who enter the US seriously. Thanks for the plan, overall I think it has considerable merit.

[Dinner]

I put the article up for discussion without comment and the answers have been very illuminating. Some useful and well thought out while certain usual suspects stuck to glib one liners. Nice to learn who really wants to discuss solutions and who doesn't.

[DinoDoc]

****ty articles aren't a good basis for discussion.

[Patroklos]

I put the article up for discussion without comment and the answers have been very illuminating. Some useful and well thought out while certain usual suspects stuck to glib one liners. Nice to learn who really wants to discuss solutions and who doesn't.

Its funny that you think that comment will get you an out. We know what you think Oerdin, why don't you just start calling everyone who disagrees with you bigots and get it over with?

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Ming


Not a bad plan... but to make it work, we would have to really step up enforcement. We would have to shut down businesses that used illegals (to get companies to actually play by the rules for a change)

We would also have to keep an eye open for companies that abused the system by offering workers the chance to "qualify" but then took most of their salary back as a kick back to stay in America.

There are indeed too many low skilled jobs that need to be filled and in most cases, immigrants are the only ones that will do them.

However, maybe if we revised the entire welfare system, that wouldn't be the case

The first wouldn't be a big issue. The reason for the amount of illegal immigration we have now is it's too hard to be legal, so there's a black market like any other difficult or impossible to obtain good. Make a reasonably easy legal path to/for these workers, and the illegal immigrant trade (which is what it is, a trade) will basically go away. You probably could cut back enforcement, or leave it the same, and let the enforcers focus on the bad violators - like your next paragraph.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Patroklos

Its funny that you think that comment will get you an out. We know what you think Oerdin, why don't you just start calling everyone who disagrees with you bigots and get it over with?

And I think you're an idiot.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by MikeH
I presume the people advocating a fence just want to make sure that the mexicans coming over the border are physically fit enough, or resourceful enough to get over/under it? Make sure you only get the best quality illegals.

Well, we can't afford a thirty mile wide moat like you guys have.

[Dinner]

Not that it helps them given how many illegals are in the UK.