illegal immigration

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

There are people who are trying to move into this country legally and the illegal immigration slows down the process. We need to stop giving these people a drive or flight back to where they came from where they can just TRY AGAIN and just shoot a few of them. It's cheap and it'll lead to a lot of people thinking twice about sneaking in.

I bet we'd have a lot less people pulling that crap if we'd just shoot about 10 of them in their faces.

[Jenner]

B-but then... who would collect my trash...

[phyco126]

I wonder how many Canadians you'de have shot.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

I wonder how many Canadians you'de have shot.

With how often you hear people going on about Canada being "better", I don't figure it'd be a whole lot. lol

[meg]

they come down for work sometimes. this comic book artist got deported for doing a commission at a comics convention. how retarded is that.

say it ain't so!

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

they come down for work sometimes. this comic book artist got deported for doing a commission at a comics convention. how retarded is that.

say it ain't so!

Mexicans come in for work, too. They get permission first.

[Aaron]

no one has a problem with the ones that come in with permission to work.

It's all the ones that decide that they just want to stay here without asking. They're selfishly cutting in line in front of their peers in a dog eat dog fashion. That's wrong, and I think that they should be punished.

Otherwise, just don't keep population stats, and let people come and go as they please. LOL. I know how absurd that is. Or just merge Canada, USA, and Mexico into one superstate....No thanks.

[LuciaOne]

There are people who are trying to move into this country legally and the illegal immigration slows down the process. We need to stop giving these people a drive or flight back to where they came from where they can just TRY AGAIN and just shoot a few of them. It's cheap and it'll lead to a lot of people thinking twice about sneaking in.

I bet we'd have a lot less people pulling that crap if we'd just shoot about 10 of them in their faces.

I think ignorant bigots should be shot in the face.

[ilovemyguitar]

I think ignorant bigots should be shot in the face.

Yeah... this.

The process of immigrating to the US is insane. It takes years, it's subject to a lot of bureaucratic red tape, and it's expensive. We need immigration reform not so that we can keep foreigners out, but so that we can give honest immigrants a realistic way to become citizens without our government wasting untold riches on lawyers, social workers, etc. As it stands the process of becoming a citizen is so unnecessarily complex and difficult that for many immigrants who would prefer to become citizens legitimately, simply staying here illegally or getting a green card through a sham marriage is the only option.

I used to have a very good friend who moved here from South Africa to go to school. He intended to stay here after graduating, but it wasn't possible for him to complete the immigration process before he was finished with school (and thus no longer had a visa to stay in the US) and he was forced with the choice of either being deported or having a sham marriage. He couldn't even legitimately marry his boyfriend because gay marriage isn't legalized in Florida. So he ended up getting married to a female friend, which necessitated him having to live with her for a while so it looked real. But heaven help everyone involved if she ever decides she wants to get married for real, or if the two of them ever have a falling out, because it's all an ugly mess waiting to happen.

He did everything he could to become a citizen through legitimate means. He did the paperwork, went to the hearings, paid the fees (not easy since he couldn't legally get a job), everything, and they couldn't finish the process within several years. That is nuts.

[Werefrog]

I think ignorant bigots should be shot in the face.

B_G is just trolling. I doubt he believes his post. He just wants to get a reaction from people by saying something controversial.

[ilovemyguitar]

Yeah, I get that he probably is. There seems to be a lot of that on the board right now, to mixed effect.

But there are people who sincerely believe what he's said, and it's people like that who make my friend's life so incredibly difficult. Immigrants are no different from anyone else; nobody wants to be a criminal. But if they're not offered viable avenues to become regular tax-paying citizens, they're forced to go through more unsavory methods.

[LuciaOne]

;D I figured that, but I wanted to give him what he was looking for...

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

I think ignorant bigots should be shot in the face.

B_G is just trolling. I doubt he believes his post. He just wants to get a reaction from people by saying something controversial.

I absolutely believe what I've said on this, teen parenthood, suicide AND using the catholic excuse to dodge guilt for raising children in a substandard environment. I put my child's life on that sentence.

Yeah, I get that he probably is. There seems to be a lot of that on the board right now, to mixed effect.

But there are people who sincerely believe what he's said, and it's people like that who make my friend's life so incredibly difficult. Immigrants are no different from anyone else; nobody wants to be a criminal. But if they're not offered viable avenues to become regular tax-paying citizens, they're forced to go through more unsavory methods.

Nobody said immigrants aren't people like the rest of us, but they need to be legal and accounted for. The process is what the process is. You can't justify just sneaking in and living here illegally.

LuciaOne, giving me what I want would be you stating why I'm wrong. Since I'm an ignorant bigot, you shouldn't have a hard time with that.

[Alunissage]

My great-grandfather was an illegal immigrant from Britain, having first come here on a student visa in the 20s. This was discovered during WWII when his employer (Pan Am, I think) wanted to put him in a more sensitive position and discovered he not only wasn't a citizen, he wasn't even in the country legally. He was naturalized posthaste, with some high-up people pushing for it; I daresay having been married for a couple of decades to an American citizen helped.

That's not really relevant to anything going on today, of course. It was just kind of funny to find out, as I did a few years ago.

[Ruby]

Even though I know this post is a troll, I have insomnia today, so, huzzah, opinions from me.

In all seriousness what is so special about someone coming here "legally"? As has been previously pointed out the legal immigration process is currently designed to be lengthy, we're talking over a decade here, and expensive, to the tune of thousands of dollars total, and I'm just thinking of people coming from Australia, a nation that has preferential treatment to entry into this country. In short: it's designed to keep people out of this nation, not to let them in. It would be literally impossible for the vast majority of illegal immigrants to immigrate to this country legally. What's so great about someone coming here legally anyway? Is it just because it's legal? What's so good about following a broken law? Does it give you some sort of warm and fuzzy feeling that someone is willing to bend over backwards jumping through hoops for no reason?

And why the heck does it matter what side of some arbitrary line they were born on that they shouldn't be able to move here and start a life for themselves? What do you have against them coming here? The percentage of immigrants to "native" population is much less than it has been in the past. Just compare it to the mass migrations from 1850 to 1914 with a largely eastern european, culturally different, non-english speaking population moved here. The country didn't break apart then, it's not going to break apart now. If anything things will improve. I don't know about you, but I've become quite fond of the benefits of that big migration, pizza in particular topping the list.

The only really cohesive argument I've ever heard against immigration is that they'll exhaust welfare resources like health care, schools, government supplied infrastructure, etc. without paying into the system. Now of course my answer to that is to get rid of all that welfare, but assuming your view is that you want that sort of thing, if they weren't always in fear of being deported and it was a simple mater of registering to come into the country, heck you could include a few days of quarantine, infectious disease exam, and background check to make you feel better about it, just about all of them would, and then would pay into the system. Why? Because doing that is much easier than dodging the INS and living in fear that you're going to be caught at a police checkpoint someplace.

Also, if people are willingly going through a checkpoint to come into the country, and they generally will if the process is reasonable and allows them entry which is something we know to be historically true, then it makes it easier to catch people people who are trying to come here for criminal purposes, as they'll generally be the only ones trying to cross the border outside the registration station, rather crossing hiding amongst groups of honest hard-working people.

Fun family history fact: My Grandmother came to this country during the great depression from Quebec only knowing French and not speaking a single word of English. Her first job was at a textile mill where they had a large group of people looking for work and they asked "Does anyone have experience." and she raised her hand even though she hadn't a clue what the supervisor had asked. Why is this interesting? If I didn't tell you that you probably wouldn't have a clue. About the only word of French I can speak are, "Mon francais est mauvais." and that's after three years of trying to learn it in high school. Generally once you reach the third generation born in this country the children are mostly assimilated anyway. Another generation and the children might not even realize what country they came form unless their parents make sure to teach them.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

The process may be long and dumb in some ways, but those are still the rules. Someone can try to change it. *shrug*

It still doesn't justify just sneaking in and living here unaccounted for.

[Aaron]

Part of the reason someone comes in "legally" is for census reasons (growth projection), another part of it really to just try to turn a foreigner into an American. To think and act American. That's why we have a citizenship test.

I'm kinda with you on this. Why bother keeping track at all, especially in today's world. Where multiculturalism is king. There is no more room for the individual anymore, its all about community.

[ilovemyguitar]

The process may be long and dumb in some ways, but those are still the rules. Someone can try to change it. *shrug*

It still doesn't justify just sneaking in and living here unaccounted for.

Yeah, rules are rules, even though they're stupid and they criminalize honest people! Screw those foreigners!

My South African friend didn't "sneak in." He came here on a student visa, and had every intention of doing what's necessary to become a bona fide tax-paying American, but the mammoth amounts of insane red tape prevented him from doing that in a legitimate fashion.

And as for people who do go through the "sneaking in" process, they only do that because they don't have a more straightforward way to come into the country. As I said, nobody wants to be a criminal, and if they had a way to come into the country legally they would do so. But they don't have a legal way of coming into the country. As it stands right now becoming a US citizen costs thousands of dollars and takes years, and our current system is set up to prevent these people from being able to come up with the means to facilitate the process, chief among these unfair practices being that a person here on a Visa can't legally get a job, but they're expected to remain here for years and pay thousands of dollars to undergo the naturalization process. It isn't just a "long and dumb" process, it's a corrupt one that prevents honest people from becoming citizens.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

So basically it's "I get to stay here anyway because the legal way has stupid rules." If they just come in, they certainly don't mind being a criminal to some extent.

And something like that had to be said back when he had a much lower national population. Now the attitude has changed.

[ilovemyguitar]

So basically it's "I get to stay here anyway because the legal way has stupid rules." If they just come in, they certainly don't mind being a criminal to some extent.

They're just trying to better their lives. Every person has (or should have) the right to pursue a better life. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and all that. Instead of demonizing and criminalizing these people we should be looking for ways to help them become more functional and productive citizens. By getting these people on the books we make them able to pay taxes, which is definitely a good thing for everyone in this country no matter how you slice it. (More tax-payers = more money for our government = a better life for you.)

And something like that had to be said back when he had a much lower national population. Now the attitude has changed.

Wait... what? Now the issue is over-crowding? This country does not lack for space by any means. In fact, it could be argued that our wide expanses of land are our greatest resource. We are in no danger of over-crowding, nor will we be in our lifetime, our children's lifetimes, or our great-grandchildren's lifetimes and beyond.