This is what I don't get when it comes to Illegal Immigratation - why are we blaming them?

I mean if there weren't any jobs for them to find here in the states would so many of them still attempt to cross the border?

And what really sucks is it's the corporations and wealthy fatcats that use illegal immigrants. Don't want to pay minimum wage to have your crops picked - hire an illegal. Don't want to pay minimum wage to have your toilets cleaned - hire an illegal. Don't want to pay minimum wage to raise your kids - hire an illegal. And not only do you skirt minimum wage laws but any taxes associated with employing someone.

Why bother having illegal immigration laws? Why not instead go after businesses that hire illegal immigrants? They are the reasons that illegal immigrants come to this country. If there were no jobs for illegals I'm sure some would still come to our country but I would suspect much less than what we have today.

What we need to do is change our policy in Latin America and stop propping up corrupt governments because it's good for American business interests operating in those countries. We have destroyed the economies in many countries this way and now we are trying to destroy Venezuela for oil interests. If people have a decent life in the countries they are immigrating from, they wouldn't come here.

fill those pockets on a regular basis - this goes for both sides.

...I think the best solution is a combination of immigration law and policies that go after employers of illegal immigrants.

That once was this country's raison d'etre. We were a land of opportunity. (Not so much of course for the original residents of North America.) Now we are a land of greedy corporations and small minded people, all on a power trip.

Which they are doing in order to lower prices, which we take advantage of.

We don't really want Americans in those jobs - we want the lower prices.

So we pay lip service to condemning the illegals for coming illegally. But do nothing about really enforcing the law (as a nation). Most employers follow the law, too. How many have worked for an employer who did not fill out an I-9?

In the long run, it is not a big issue, and does not really affect people's lives that much - the only ones who really hate it are the racists, of course, and that is why they are so prominent in anti-immigrant circles.

(who are quite "legal") who actually cause economic problems. There's been resistance here to immigration since before there was a United States and, obviously, before there were any laws governing immigration. In colonial times it was the German immigrants that the English immigrants worried about, then came the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, then the Asians and Hispanics.

And if illegal immigration were somehow largely resolved, but legal immigration was dramatically increased, the focus would shift from the immigrants "legality" to their mere presence. Witness the UK where the immigration debate is not about "legality" but about the large number of legal immigrants. (The "bigoted" woman who asked Gordon Brown "where the Eastern European immigrants were flocking from".)

The conservative anti-immigration groups FAIR and NumbersUSA both openly advocate reductions in legal immigration, though they know that focusing on illegal immigrants for now serves their purposes, too. Something tells me they wouldn't be too thrilled with a solution to illegal immigration that involved more legal immigrants.

They're desperate, and American Business is hooked on cheap undocumented labor. It's a match made in hell.

...for when they can't get slave labor

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8428272

Think about it - with new laws like what is in place in Arizona, the rich americans that use illegal immigrants now have a tool to threaten their hired illegals to work longer, work harder, work in more inhumane conditions, work for less money - simply because an illegal who complains could be reported and returned back to Mexico. I see very little different from the hispanic people who work our shit jobs today from the african slaves that picked our cotton during pre-civil war time or the chinese that built our railroads as the US expanded west. And all of it is setup so that the wealthy Americans can just get wealthier without any fallout from abused workers.

The corporatists who want a huge exploitable underclass. They're here because they are wanted here. There is no "line" to stand in for getting hired to work these jobs. The SPECIFICALLY want people with no legal standing or recourse.

they are allowing themselves to be exploited by those fatcats but due to many of our own policies toward their countries they have no choice. I'm beginning to see this from a different angle. It comes back to the greed element. We have the greedy bastids running the show and thats what we've got to change

We are going to be SPINNING OUR WHEELS yapping about "immigration" for years to come. The blowhards follow one another, one right after the other, giving their If-I-were-King-of-the-world dicta: "They have to learn English. They have to pay a fine. They have to go back to Mexico. They have to go to the end of the line." And on and on. Hoops and more hoops to jump through, with the usual Lucy-snatching-the-football-away always a probability. The real problem on both sides is IMMEDIACY: Business owners and managers want/need cheap labor NOW. The laborers want/need money and food NOW. And BOTH of them are willing to break laws to get what they want NOW, so get over the HOOPS.

We in this country have to face some ugly truths about ourselves here: It's all a matter of good old American capitalistic Suppy and Demand:: If the U.S. didn't DEMAND drugs and if the U.S. didn't DEMAND cheap labor, they WOULDN'T BE HERE. Only slightly tangentially, on to the military-industrial complex, if the U.S.'s business were not the manufacture and sale of arms, a certain amount of conflict in the world would be lessened, or as they say it another way, "The U.S.'s business is to manufacture and sell arms, then they get all upset when shooting breaks out."

But we yak and yak, ignorant of history and past solutions (like guest worker programs) and blind by choice, DENIAL, of unpleasant realities: We DENY that "illegals do the work Americans won't do," whereas anybody has known or heard somebody say, "I wouldn't take that job for less than $15 an hour," or said it ourselves. And as for cheap labor, what do we think OUTSOURCING by big businesses is all about? No, blame NAFTA. Deny. Resume the yakking.

SOLUTIONS:

* Labor: In the '60s there was a guest worker program. They applied/enlisted/registered, entered to live and work in an orderly manner, and went home and returned the next season. No, most Americans will NOT do stoop labor and other menial jobs, admit it, certainly not at the wages offered.

* Drugs: The U.S. needs to sink the cash into rehab and preventative education programs----or else LEGALIZE the damned stuff and get it all regulated and taxed. In Mexico, the peons do NOT use pot recreationally. They know it is a pain management tool, "When a woman gives birth or a man breaks a limb..."

* Crime: If AZ, or wherever, is infested with drop houses, shootings, kidnappings, dangerous dog neighborhoods-----------arrest THOSE perpetrators aggressively. If they happen to be undocumented, found out AFTER the crime arrest, then deport THOSE. Not a fakey gimmick that goes after everybody (notice the "immediacy" angle).

it would break some unwritten law about preserving our glorious free market capitalist system and demolish the fabric of our economic policies. besides there's no room in our prisons and parole systems for affluent middle class business owners anyway.

:sarcasm:

minimum wage. So because there are jobs here they can break the law and its not their fault? So if i have the opportunity to break the law i can do so and its not my fault?

Fighting amongst the victims lets the perpetrators off the hook.

It's a simple civil offense and they come because our policies have helped to ruin their lives at home. They just want a chance to take care of their families like you and I.

oh and a few more for my buddy list - I'm keeping track of unfeeling asshats spewing rightwing "legal" talking points, watching them get pizzas is the only positive of these discussions anymore...

in common with them. People in the US can chatter about "respecting differences" all day long--but real solidarity comes from finding solidarity and that's what many in the American working class are too foolish to do. We think that we are "better" than Mexican labor. In actually, we are simply less oppressed. And that could change at any moment. It's a divide and conquer strategy. During Reconstruction, plantation owners and capitalists told Southern whites if they didn't work for pennies a day, they'd hire Black workers for pennies a month. Same shit, different century.

Same reason the Left is always to blame for the Center's failures.