I don't even care about the employment issue connected with illegals. I am worried about border security (anyone read Clancy's Teeth of the Tiger?), uninsured drivers hitting people and hospital ER's getting overcrowded.

Well, I'd love to write a scathing letter about pulling my vote, but with Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer as our reps in Cali what's the point.

They can't wait to grant amnesty to illegals. :mad:

Also, we certainly need to penalize the employers...severely

You're probably right, but if no one bothered to write, then Feinswine and Box-her could just claim ignorance or that they're representing the maj. of their constituents. I don't know who your House member is, but CA still has a few good ones left.

HELL NO.

I do not support giving (tax payer funded) handouts just because someone physically made it into our country.

I don't give a damn what job they do. They burden our society and our social systems too much. It doesn't matter what job they work, ONE baby born to an illegal family costs us more than they benefit us. Illegals driving with no insurance cost our society by driving up insurance rates. Crime goes up, uncommon diseases are brought with them, and their poor attitudes (cleanliness, social behavior, etc) are also brought over here. THEY DO NOT WANT TO BE AMERICAN! They just want to suck off the American tit.

I'm all for a good, organized, fair, DOCUMENTED, TAXED and REGULATED guest worker system...

.. but those illegally in our country need to be sent home. I don't give a damn if I have to pay more for a tomato or head of lettuce. I don't give a damn if I have to mow my own damn lawn, or clean my own freaking bathroom!

I still say shoot em as they sneak over and fine, then lock up repeat offenders who hire them!!!:mad:

Forget medicade/medicare, food stamps, earned income tax credits and future social security. Every kid in New York is $17,000 in taxpayer money per year from pre-K to 12th grade. Who is not doing the math here?? Why the rush to open the borders? Why the rush to add 100 million people in the next 50 years? What is so bad about America right now that we need this huge change?

Lots of good points here.

1) Let's keep in mind that the republicrats are both guilty here - no one party can claim the high ground, so it's important to remain focused on the issue and not get divided along party lines.

2) Good to keep in mind that the greatest change is made in influencing those who are on the wrong side of this issue; preaching to the choir is non-productive.

3) All of our representatives need a job reality check. They were elected to represent the citizens of their districts - not illegal aliens. They need to be reminded of that!!

4) There's no shortage of labor here, just a shortage of labor at the wages employers want to pay.

5) Three of the McDill plotters were smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border. See (3), above.

I think this is an issue that gets muddled up by emotion, slogans, and labels. If you call it "amnesty", people get mad. If you call it a "legal, documented, guest worker program", people are more receptive. OK, I think if views get swung by a label, that means people are not rationally analyzing the issue.

The other problem is that its hard to prove or disprove the economy's need for unskilled "guest workers". One person observes that you don't see US citizens lining up to be farmworkers and laborers, another person replies that US citizens would do those jobs if the aliens didn't effectively freeze them out.

So I say, use the program I described above to control migrant worker employment, and apply heavy-enough taxes on such labor to reimburse the country for any and all financial costs attributed to these migrants. Let those taxes be heavy enough to raise the cost of hiring a Mexican migrant worker to be higher than hiring a US citizen. Then let's see if there is, indeed, a big untapped pool of US citizens willing to be farmworkers, busboys, sweatshop workers, roofers, etc. If there is, then there will be fewer migrants hired and more US citizens employed.

(Although, if we do this, we need to be prepared for increased labor costs and the resultant impact on small business profits and on consumer prices.)

Oh, I forgot to add, this would create an opportunity for further welfare reform.

The bottom line is that currently there are millions of jobs being done by illegal immigrants that will not be filled by legal residents at the current wage being paid.

Like I said before, fine the crap out of the employers and curtail/eliminate welfare. Raise the minimum wage so that the people that have lost welfare *can* take these jobs and afford to live.

Be prepared to deal with increased costs for goods. It can be argued that the financial impact on public services due to less illegal immigrants will offset increased costs for business, but somehow I doubt it. We've been living on cheap labor and borrowed time. At some point you have to pay...

There should be NO minimum wage. Gov't. has no business controlling any prices. I've done every job I've ever seen an illegal do. Plenty of teenagers and college kids could use some menial job experience.

Immigrants, legal and illegal, have been a source of cheap labor in this country from the beginning of this country.
Huge amounts of money have been made through the employment of immigrants, both legal and illegal.
Do you really believe the Chinese laborers that built the railroads across this country had some "special inside knowledge" of how to lay rails?
Why do any of you really believe that in the over 200 year history of this nation, employers have never been prosecuted for the employment of illegal immigrants?
OK, maybe a few times to keep the voters pacified.
MONEY, PROFIT. Big money.
These folks making the big money have been more than willing to share it with their political representatives.
I'm absolutely certain the politico's that make our laws were never influenced by those "donations".
Legal and illegal immigrants have been a great tool for the suppression of unions.
And who pays the price of this cheap labor?
I'll give you a hint, it isn't the employers.
Get a mirror for the answer.
Next question.
How much would it take for you or your kids to pick strawberries in Ventura county?
$25 an hour? More?
How much would you pay for a small box of strawberries?
Car wash, landscaping, dry wall, just about every bit of food you eat. It goes on and on.
We need a rational answer that understands the history of WHY these people are here, not shoot from the hip emotional opinions.
Bottom line.
If you feel strong enough either way, speak with your vote and your Congressman.
This is still a Representative Republic, isn't it?

I've been in parts of the country in the last month where illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America have not yet arrived, (these are few and far between), and every single job is still being done by plain old Americans. Blue collar whites/blacks/whatever mowing lawns, bussing tables, teenagers flipping burgers, etc...

I tell you, after living in CA. for so long it seemed downright exotic. :eek:

There is a place in U.S. society for immigrants from Mexico and everywhere else if immigration is handled in an orderly, legal way. To claim that we need them to do every blue collar job in our society because "Americans won't do it" is a steaming pile of horseschit and insulting to Americans.

Rick, I'm just an old goat...nobody really cares what old goats say, right? But somebody earlier mentioned a strawberry crop.

Lebanon, Oregon still has a "strawberry festival" every June. It boasts of having "the world's largest strawberry shortcake". Pieces are given away after the big parade. Today, frozen strawberries out of Mexico are used for this cake. Why? Before "child labor laws" hit the scene, I along with many other local (GRADE SCHOOL) kids, went into the surrounding fields to pick the berries and other crops when they were ripe. Some years, school would be let out a few days early. I recall being paid 25 cents per hallock...that was a carrier of 8 baskets of strawberries. Didn't take me long to figure out that picking beans at a dime per pound was the better deal.

Hey, we, the kids then, didn't feel exploited...we thought it was a way to pick up spending money.

This also taught us the value of a good education. It didn't take me long to figure out that I didn't want to pick berries and beans for a living.

I just got off the phone - long discussion with a friend revolving around a benefit dinner coming up for our wounded Veterans. He was telling me about recent news from a buddy of his who is a commander in Baghdad that just did an airevac for one of his troops. The soldier was nearly killed in an ied explosion. He lived (barely) but will spend the rest of his life without legs.

As I understand it, we're supposed to be fighting "there" so we don't have to fight "here". Whether that's idiotic or not is for another time. What I'm trying to come to grips with is how can we face our wounded Veterans and tell them that we don't really care about "here" because our borders really don't count. What insane logic can be applied that says it's ok to go to war in one place to defend our country but it's not ok to defend it at home?? Just how can we claim to be supporting our troops when we demonstrate a complete contempt for the goals we ask them to fight for?

PLEASE somebody help clear this up for me. I feel like the house has fallen on me.

BIG TIME! Plus one. No borders=no country.

Clearly the current system of paper documents is not good enough. It is too easy to get fake papers, and employers have too much incentive to accept the fakes.

We will need a genuinely effective way to identify alien workers. With all the work done on biometrics, from electronic fingerprints to retinal scans, shouldn't we be able to come up with an identification method that is difficult to fool, linked to a reliable database that tracks an alien's status?

Once you have that, then you essentially have the way of identifying which alien is legal and which is not. Then you can start spot-checking employers and making the penalties on employers so harsh that the sane ones won't dare hire illegals. And you can start administering the migrant worker visa program I described, imposing the higher tax rates on migrant labor, enforcing quotas on migrant labor, enforcing requirements for their behaviour, and so on.

The key to all this is an effective identification system. I think it can be done, if the US government actually makes it a priority.

(This could, of course, lead to a national ID card. I don't think I have a problem with that. But need to muse about it some more.)

Of course that's correct.

Imagine illegal immigration were stopped and all illegals deported.

Do people think there won't be anymore carwashes, restaurants, landscaping companies, etc. in California anymore? That's absurd.

You know, when you start about I.D.ing people, I think about the Germans putting numbers on Jews and the whole Nat. ID thing (isn't that what SS is?) is just scary. I don't have an answer, but I do feel branding people is wrong. Just shoot them as they sneak in, and punish the employers who hire them:mad:

If they don't speak English (since to become a citizen you have too) that is a start, do away with that crap Clinton signed into law printing ballets in foreign languages. The Government should only print (other than those learning to become legal) ballet, driver manuals, ect in ENGLISH

Here, by the way, is a outline of the proposed law. The devil's in the details but this is a start to figuring out what Bush and Congress are working on.

Major provisions of the bipartisan immigration compromise:
___
CURRENT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
_They could come forward immediately and receive probationary legal status.
_Bill creates a four-year, renewable "Z" visa for those present within the U.S. unlawfully before Jan. 1, 2007.
_Undocumented immigrants may adjust status to lawful permanent residence once they pay $5,000 in fees and fines and their head of household returns to their home country.
_People under age 30 who were brought to the U.S. as minors could receive their green cards after three years, rather than eight.
_Undocumented farmworkers who can demonstrate they have worked 150 hours or three years in agriculture can apply for green cards.
_No green cards for "Z" visa holders can be processed until "triggers" for border security and workplace enforcement have been met, estimated to take 18 months. Processing of green cards for holders of "Z" visas would begin after clearing an existing backlog, which is expected to take eight years.
___
BORDER SECURITY
_Hire 18,000 new border patrol agents.
_Erect 200 miles of vehicle barriers and 370 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.
_Erect 70 ground-based radar and camera towers along the southern border.
_Deploy four unmanned aerial vehicles and supporting systems.
_End the program in which illegal immigrants are released upon apprehension.
_Provide for detaining up to 27,500 aliens per day on an annual basis.
_Use secure and effective identification tools to prevent unauthorized work.
___
WORKPLACE ENFORCEMENT
_Require employers to electronically verify new employees to prove identity and work eligibility.
_Increase penalties for unlawful hiring, employment and record keeping violations.
___
GUEST WORKERS (requires border security measures to be in place first)
_Create a new temporary guest worker program with two-year "Y visas," initially capped at 400,000 per year with annual adjustments based on market fluctuations
_Workers could renew the Y visa up to three times, but would be required to return home for a year in between each time. Those bringing dependents could obtain only one, nonrenewable two-year visa.
_Families could accompany guest workers only if they could show proof of medical insurance and demonstrate that their wages were 150 percent above the poverty level.
___
FUTURE IMMIGRANTS
_Spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents would be eligible for green cards based purely on their family connections, but other relatives such as adult children and siblings would not.
_380,000 visas a year would be awarded based on a point system, with about 50 percent based on employment criteria, 25 percent based on education, 15 percent on English proficiency and 10 percent on family connections.
_Apply new limits to U.S. citizens seeking to bring foreign-born parents into the country.
_Visas for parents of U.S. citizens would be capped annually at 40,000 and those for spouses and children at 87,000.