Border crossing
 

why is it.......if you cross the north korean border illegally, you get 12 years hard labor......
but......if you cross the u.s. Border illegally, you get a driver's license, social security card, welfare, food stamps, and free health care?

who's bright idea was this??????

...and a job that pays double the money they can make in Mexico. They should get the 12 years hard labor without pay. We could and should make them work for free.

those who have no testicular fortitude

The argument is always that we need them to do the jobs we won't do. I call BS on that! WTF did we do before they started coming over here? We made it along just fine. Yes times have changed but us not wanting the jobs is because of THEM forcing the hourly wage down for THOSE jobs. It is a dumb dumb problem that could be easily corrected with harsher punishment and restrictions. I suspect the employers don't want to let go of the cheap labor. What else could it be?

I'm raising 3 BS flags on this one.
:bsflag::bsflag::bsflag:

"did we do before they started coming over here?"

African slaves and Chinese, Italian, Irish immigrants.

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Illegal Mexican Labor harvests almost all our produce in this country. They get paid **** and are not treated well, but if we didn't have mexican labor . . . A head of lettuce would cost $15.

Go outside Home Depot (anywhere in CA) there are hundreds of illegal skilled and unskilled mexican workers that will take day jobs for $50 - $100 and work their asses off. We don't realize how good we have it here . . . even if jobs are difficult to come by.

No one will enforce the immigration laws, b/c our country/economy has always depended on a cheap source of labor.

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Immigration is like Trade it has to have a balance if not it will fail ...

I think you are right, BS, and I agree with you that they will work their tail ends off. I have a buddy who owns a very successful landscape company and he uses many Mexican immigrants, legal ones however. He arranges to bring them in from Mexico on, I believe, a H1-B Visa. As part of the process, he has to advertise in the local paper for the positions for which he is hiring and the wage he will be paying. Guess what. Nobody shows up (at least they did not prior to the economy going to heck). Armed with the fact that he cannot find local workers for the wage offered, he then applies for Visas and gets the same crew back year after year. He takes the legal costs involved in doing so, and splits it among the workers and has it deducted from their wages. The Mexican workers love it--they get to fly here with actual Visas rather than some other less savory way of making their way to Indiana. They pool together and get inexpensive housing and pack them in. They are very hard workers and never give him any trouble. Even several of his supervisors come to him that way. He travelled to their campesino in Mexico once (all the guys come from the same place--heck it spreads by word of mouth that my friend is a good guy to work for) and they all lived like relative kings down there. Of course they have to leave their wives and children for 9 months of the year, but when they come back, they are able to enjoy the houses they have built with their earnings, their car, etc.

Yes, we need cheap labor, and we need some of the young'uns to get off their butts and provide it.

Ok let them harvest produce but 15 years ago no construction guys had teams of Mexicans. At least the ones around where I live. I know what you are gonna say, "if not for them it would cost 3 x as much to build a house." Maybe so, but so be it.

Tough words, ALL very true, ALL very right.
I, with ALL due respects, will like to comment on this matter.
I agree that Illegally trespassing any property or Border should be punished.
I agree that allowing a foreigner to work CAN be done legally and can be positive.
Being a Puertorrican, ( U.S. citizen because of a Law ), I had to put up with insults, offences, and prejudice when I served in the Navy. I was a good guy, I served well, I was proud to be there, and the highest I got or achieved, the worst and hardest it got from some coworkers.
I was called from thieve, oportunist, prick, to even "taking from the eating table of an American Family because I was removing an American Parent from a job".
It hurted me REALLY BAD. It still hurts today.
Why did the NAVY hired me instead of an American ? Why ?
Why did the NAVY hired Filipinos ( some of the finest and most gentle coworkers I ever had ) to do the cooking and clerical jobs in the ship, many of them NOT U.S. citizens, instead of an American ? Why ?
Why do the U.S. ( and other Countries ) hire so many alliens to work their low paying jobs ? Its not because Lettuce will cost more if they don`t, it`s because in each business, the owner of that business needs to stay afloat, and if that is what works for him best, that is what he/she will do.
When a foreigner takes a bullet in his ***, while serving in the US Army or the Marines, or when a foreigner AirForce guy gets shut down and dies, it hurts the same, to that Serviceman and to his/her Families.
When a Dad, or a Mom, leaves home to work far away, it hurts the same, no matter where.
A Dad, or a Mother, who leaves his Country to work for another Country who treats him/her like inferior Human beings, and pays them less than fair compensation, and he/she does that with respect and dedication, shall be respected and at least be left alone to make a living for his Family.
I do know that nobody here has being racist or anything like that, it is just a Legal or Not matter, I don`t dissagree with any of you. But this "ilegal Allien thing" makes me sick, I know the feeling. I was there taking an American`s job, but also was there fixing Transponders so my Carrier Pilots could fly safely and comeback safely, while somebody else was back Home watching the news with a Coke on hand and his/her kids on their side.
This words are very tough words, even when they are all true.
Anybody who tries to go to work and make a living, shall be applaused and not critizised.
If anybody wants to talk truth, then what about those Americans who hire illegals, what about them , isn`t that illegal, isn`t that even worst. Perhaps they have already figured out that work and a job is for those who want and do work hard, thats why they are hired I believe.
VERY RESPECTFULLY,
JT

Good points JJJ, I agree with you and I appreciate your service to our country.

But your good name is ruined by a few bad apples.

In our area, there are a number of migrant workers and have been for 50+ years.
We have seen all come through the area, Mexicans, Peurto Ricans, Dominicans, etc.
So what they don't realize is that even though the "white man" in this are is extremely white and some talk with a very funny accent (Pennsyvania dutch),
most of us understand Spanish.
So I hate when I am walking through the grocery store and I get bad mouthed in Spanish. You should see the surprised look on the old womens faces when I spin around and say " lo ciento, yo esta no gordo cerdo" I am sure this is not the correct way to say it, but they get the point.

I also hate when I am passing through Miami International or Peurto rico International
and I go to the ticket counter and the gate agent acts like they know very little English so they don't have to help me and then two minutes later I see them speaking to a colleague in perfect English.

By the way, one of my best friends and co-worker is in Venezuela.
He moved to the U.S. to get away from the situation there and on his trip back to renew his visa, it was denied on a technicality.
Here is a case of a guy doing it the right way and then screwed by the system.

Bigshrimpin's right...our food prices across the board would sky-rocket w/out them...IMO the problem is we didn't institute control measures when the numbers started to grow...and now they are so large, they are nearly uncontrolable...no matter what the bleeding heart libs say, public sentiment has turned to demanding more control and it's gonna take time, but it's coming...

Parishht,
YOU ARE RIGHT 100%
It`s always a few "Bad Apples" who hurt everybody esle.
It`s the same ANYWHERE we go.
I have a story for you guys, that proves your point;
One day at was at the Base Comissary Store, I was buying green-plantains, which is part of Puertorricans diet 99% of the time. I was waiting in line with a bunch of plantains in my cart, and a couple of Puertorricans behind started talking **** about me and the plantains. They though I was American, because they said in spanish, " Look at this Gringo buying all this plantains" ( I don`t look like a typical Puertorrican physically speaking ), so the guy though I did not understand spanish. I acted like I did not understand. They kept talking ****. One even said; "He will have to stick`em up his *** because he does not know that they are not bananas ( Plantains can not be eaten without cooking them, they taste really bad raw ). They were laughing hard. I let them talk until I payed my stuff, and turned around and told them in pure spanish, " They are for tostones" a chip we make with fried plantain. They realized what they had done, and you guys know, in the Military that can cost someones rank/money/or even jail time. I did not say one more word, they started begging me from not reporting the incident, I realized they were also in the service. I reported this to their Command, they for sure got their asses chewed by their C.O., I hope they learned the lesson.
It`s a complex problem, it comes from ALL sides.
In my case, I try to preach against racism or prejudice whenever I see it. We all must get rid of this "desease" of our Society`s, at least one offender at a time, and not ever become one of them again.

All excellent points fellas. It is most definitely a super complex issue with no easy answer at this point.

What are your thoughts on this:

Yes the price of food would go up without illegals, but at least the $4 per head of lettuce would go back into our own pockets. Kinda like borrowing from your 401k and paying yourself back with interest.

I'm seeing it in the tech industry first hand, not illegals, but jobs going overseas and money being paid out and not going back into our economy....all while shrinking the job market and forcing American salaries down. They've figured out that they can get people in India who barely speak English to do the programming and have a bare bones American staff of so called "SME's" (subject matter experts) to write the specs and be the middle man b/t IT and the business.

But what happens in a lot of cases is the Indian outsourcing companies pad their estimates so much it makes me wonder if we actually save a dime.

Offshore companies still have not figured out how to fully take over System Admin and systems programming infrastructure type roles......yet. I guess if they write a bad program it doesn't impact things as much as if they let an entire server go down for a day impacting hundreds of users ability to do their jobs.

So, which is worse - having to pay more for something and having the money go back into the economy or paying less, shrinking the job market and US salaries, and the money goes to a foreign country?

I'll admit I don't know the answer.