Ridgerunner;13212496:
Isn’t one of the problems with legal immigration that it often takes several years (I’ve heard as many as 10 to 20 years) for immigrants to be able to come to this country? Maybe if the waiting period were shortened, it would encourage more people to take the legal route.
In regard to your comment about ‘compassionate’ people’s behaving this way toward illegal immigrants at the taxpayer’s expense, this may be so but it is also at their own and their family’s expense if they are taxpayers. This is not meant as an excuse to volunteer others’ money, but rather an observation that the so-called “do-gooders” are willing to foot the bill as well.
Are you suggesting that illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from black youth? Perhaps, but I cannot help recalling the same outcry among settled minority groups with regard to legal immigrants for each successive generation. Illegal immigration may have contributed in part to the higher unemployment rate among black youth, but the situation is no doubt more multidetermined than that.
A final observation. Liberals in particular often wonder whether the same negative reaction to illegal immigrants would apply if the majority of illegals were NOT Hispanic. IOW, is there an underlying ethnic prejudice responsible for many of the protestations (not from you, but in general), which has been disguised in terms of pointing to crime rates and unskilled labor?
I don’t have the statistics on the amount of taxes illegals pay versus benefits like free schooling, and the earned income credit. But anecdotally, I am aware of a pair of illegal families, each of which claims the same children in order to get a bigger EIC. No doubt some Americans do this too, but I don’t think people realize how much cheating goes on with illegals, of one kind or another. After all, if your very presence here is illegal, what’s diddling the tax man or the welfare worker? Truthfully, I think this country’s passivity in the face of illegal immigration has created a culture of forgery, falsehood and cheating, none of which can be very good for the children some of the illegals are raising here or the society as a whole.
I don’t know about black youth, but the following is easily observable. If you go to a construction site, virtually all of the workers are Hispanic, and if you know who’s who at all, you know they have almost entirely replaced American workers of whatever color who, not all that many years ago, had those construction jobs. You go into the lower-paying industrial workplaces, and you see the same thing. The only difference anymore is that Central Americans are replacing Mexicans and “refugee” Muslims from places like Somalia are vying with Central Americans for the jobs.
There’s one thing about taxpayer consciousness. Since the debt has been allowed to float upward uncontrollably, not many have much consciousness of what making gifts to illegals is costing any one person. Even when taxes go up, as they have during this administration in various ways, people don’t see it because it’s largely invisible to them.
But some people do know.
Does it matter to me that most are Hispanic? I can truthfully say “no”. I have a long history on here of saying we’re fortunate in that our open borders have largely resulted in importation of Christians from western cultures, unlike Europe where the immigrants are largely from utterly alien, and often hostile, cultures. Besides, have you never noticed how many Mexicans are “lily white”? Mexicans, on the whole, are about 80% Indian in ancestry and 20% Spanish or other European origins. The fact that you can easily distinguish a Mexican (other than perhaps a Mayan Mexican) from a Guatemalan on sight, tells you the “racial” thing is extremely blurry when it comes to the former. But that doesn’t mean I favor open borders. I don’t.
A fair number of Salvadorans are mighty “white” as well.
No, and call me whatever you want for my saying this, but I would gladly accept 1,000 Mexicans over one Somali with a history of fighting in Kenya. Think we don’t have the latter? We sure do. This moronic government has accepted thousands and thousands of them on the grounds that they’re “refugees”. Of course they are, everybody over there is a “refugee” from some vicious opposing group or other.
Finally, I also have a long history on CAF of favoring unlimited or at least very favorable legal immigration from the Philippines (except the Moros). Why? Well, they’re Christian (no offense to you, Meltzerboy, I would say the same about Jews) and a culture that is very heavily influenced by western culture. They like America and are more or less allies and friends of the U.S. Besides, a lot of them have good educations but can’t find decent jobs where they are. There was a time in my life when I processed H1B visas for medical workers. A lot of them were Filipinos and they were excellent people. Interestingly, the top two medical schools in the Philippines are taught entirely in English.
