Joined: 26 Aug 2005
Posts: 1457
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 2:12 pm Post subject: | |||||
Why not? I quote my newspaper often. As well as weekly or monthly publications that I read. Kick me if you want to, but I do not question most references to these things. I guess it's a question of integrity and trust. Some people have it - some don't. |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 2:30 pm Post subject: | |
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To me a reference is a reference. Why would a National publication be expected to have more integrity than a local one? Are we supposed to have only a world view?
It was a multitude of little articles in the local papers and other media that let us in on what was happening at KMart back in January. Firing ten people in Podunk doesn't even get noticed by the national media but it's big news in Podunk and the Podunk Gazette can be a lot more straight up about it than those who have chosent to toss puffballs and glorify Eddie Lampert. Those three communities here that lost their hospitals here damned well thought it was a big deal and they were just three of hundreds of smaller community hospitals across the country forced to close their doors back then but I'll bet you that unless you were living in one of those communities or otherwise directly invlolved in the situation, you never read or heard a word about it. One again, the root cause of these problems can be traced to corporate greed and malignant neglect by the government agencies charged with keeping these situations under control. Illegal immigration is a symptom, not the illness itself. That does not mean that the symptoms don't need to be treated, but sooner or later you have to cure and go about preventing the disease itself. |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 2:34 pm Post subject: sleK | |
| Edit: DP | |
Joined: 26 Aug 2005
Posts: 1457
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 2:49 pm Post subject: | |||||
Agree 100%. Root cause. But there is one more root.... I cannot agree completely on this.
My point being is... do illegals know that they are entering illegally? Even with someone standing just over the border waving money at them... do they not understand that it is illegal to enter without going through the proper channels? Is it fair to assume they do? That's why I cannot sympathize too heavily with the illegals that are now crying foul. |
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Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 4:08 pm Post subject: | |||||||||||
Policies require enforcement. Your governments failure and/or refusal to enforce its laws and policies indicate a de facto approval of the immigration situation. In other words, they may as well be flying a banner at the border as the effect would be exactly the same. Blaming the immigrants for your governments failures is completely ass-backwards. You can scream and yell about the cost to society all that you want but nothing is going to change until your goverment gets its collective head out of the sand and starts looking out for the interests of its natural citizens rather than its corporate citizens. Illegal immigration is profitable. It provides a net benefit to american employers and some say a small positive effect to the entire american economy. Finger pointing at the immigrants isn't going to change that. Pressure on your government will.
That's not even a remotely accurate analogy. Your borders are not secure, thus the house in your analogy isn't locked and the gate is wide open. As no political authority is enforcing the immigration laws in any meaningful way, the "rules" in your analogy don't exist. That doesn't mean that the theft in your analogy is "fair" or "right". But you could hardly blame a man for taking the opportunity to raid your fridge to feed his starving family. Illegal immigrants have no moral obligation to deny themselves the opportunity to advance their station in life with the tacit approval of the american government simply because american citizens are too lazy and/or inept to hold their government accountable.
Verifiability.
Precisely. |
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Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 4:25 pm Post subject: | |||||||
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Here's a couple of links I came across in my travels. None terribly pertinent to any particular position but still interesting.
Immigration by George J. Borjas Pforzheimer Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Immigration offers the nation a net benefit; but it comes with strings
Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts 9. Public Opinion about Immigration
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Joined: 26 Aug 2005
Posts: 1457
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 5:03 pm Post subject: | |||||||
So, now the US is responsible for the economic problems in Mexico, too? There are Big Problems in Mexico... (which is another root of the problem.) but, dare I ask... what is our neighbor to the north doing about it? (Besides pointing the finger south and telling us to get our act together?) |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 6:22 pm Post subject: | |
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slek, why do you insist on making this an immigration issue when It seems to have been made abundantly clear that it is, for MOST of the people commenting here, a problem in regard to ILLEGAL immigrants?
If anything, the LEGAL immigrants to this country are hurt even more by the illegal situation than the citizens are because they also require a living wage in order to pay their fair share of the burden and have enough to live on afterwards. Since immigrants have traditionally always started at the bottom of the food chain and then worked their way up, they're the ones finding themselves displaced first by those who don't share the burden fully. I don't have any sources I can site but I could introduce you to a lot of first, second and third generation immigrant families who might be able to explain it better than I can, Tyson (my favorite example, yeah) isn't about to pay a living wage in those sweatshop plants as long as he can simply pay some twit to unload a couple of truckloads of bodies at the front gate every morning. They don't even have to be the same bodies as long as they can wield a sledge hammer or toss a dead chicken ionto a conveyor belt. We may no longer have outright slavery in this country but as long as it's being run by people who are willing to push that envelope as close as they possibly can to it, we'll at least have what amounts to indentured servitude and this is the role the illegal immigrants fill right now. And the fact that legal immigrants and citizens account for the major portion of the excessive health care costs in the country? So what? Does that mean that other contributing factors such as the impact of illegal immigrants on a system that they pay little or nothing into should simply be ignored? This whole thing is such a no brainer, I'm amazed that we've amassed the number of pages we have in this discussion |
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Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 12:59 am Post subject: | |||||||||||||
I said no such thing. My position is that:
Doing about what? We don't have an immigration problem, at least not anything like the one the US is facing. ***
Because it is an immigration issue. More specifically an immigration policy issue.
It refutes the false rhetoric of the finger-pointers who'd rather criticize the symptom than actually solve the problem.
Not at all and I've never suggested such. However, the notion that they "pay little or nothing into" the system is demonstrably false. 75% pay payroll taxes. 100% pay sales taxes. 40% more than last year filed income tax returns. Again, it's clearly NOT ideal. Illegal immigrants should be obligated to carry the same burden as citizens and legal immigrants. That they don't, however, is solely the fault of failed policy and lax enforcement.
Is it? What would your solution be? |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 1:52 am Post subject: | |||
First:
And that's how many again? 40% more than what? In a few cases I've heard of locally here, a lot of people making less than 20k a year who file income tax returns or actually, their jefe files them for them based on illegal documentation that the worker himself might not even be aware of. They the contractors and/or scam artists then get refunds based on things like the renter's credit or the Earned income credit and the worker himself remains unaware that any money has ever exchanged hands in his name and various government agencies pump out figures like those above in order to support maintenance of the status quo. One of the things our state AG is looking into as we speak. My solution? My solution(s) is/are exactly what I've been saying since this whole discussion started. Cut off the source of the funds that finance not only the entire problem in the first place but also allows these people to be thoroughly exploited by the labor contractors and other groups who have come into being solely to get a share of what has become a very large pie. Make the employer who is exploiting and abusing these people ultimately responsible for the exploitation and abuse. If he has undocumented workers in his place of business, fine his ass. Right now, the workers themselves are the only ones who actually PAY anything. Another case: We had a case right here in my county not long ago where one of the big table grape growers and a couple of different labor contractors were exposed as having run a scam wherein the contractor would deliver a crew, the crew would work for a couple-three weeks and then when payday rolled around, in some cases call Immigration to raid his own camp. The workers wound up deported or scattered to the winds without their paycheck and the contractor would have a brand new crew in the fields and in their cabins within a day or two. Put a stop to THAT kind of crap. If workers are needed to fill jobs that "Americans won't do", make the company or corporation actually responsible for making sure that the worker has established the right to work in this country by legal means, whether it be through some resurrection of the old Bracero program or by whatever means it takes to insure that some form of control over the situation can be maintained, not only for the public's sake but for the sake of the workers themselves. Eliminate the situation in which labor camp slumlords and contractors pocket between 50 and 70% of what these people make and actually leave them enough to live on and send home to their families. To summarize: Establish some form of regulation to insure that companies and corporations adhere to the same laws, rules and regulations when hiring foreign nationals that apply to citizens and legal immigrants. If there were no profit to to the employer in exploiting these people, and if the labor contractor industry was thoroughly regulated to prevent contractors and scammers from ripping these people off for more than the workers themselves get to keep to live and support their families on, the exploitation would stop. THAT's the no-brainer. |
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Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 238
Location: Your mom's house.
| Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 2:27 am Post subject: | |||||||
Unless this discussion has gone off topic, changing the national anthem to a language other than english is not a problem regarding illegal immigration. That is unless you can justify calling the topic a problem at all and if you think the majority of spanish speakers in this country are illegal.
So is your issue with near slavery/indentured servitude? Because that is one of the reasons for the rally on May 1st. I know it's weird, but even illegal immigrants don't like being treated like slaves. Who would have thought? But were you for or against that protest? Do you believe it's only wrong to be used like one if you are legal?
If the entire system is broken why do you want to focus only on one particular part of it? Not only one particular part of it but you focus on the part that is furthest from the major issue of health care. That isn't even what accounts for the majority of the taxes being spent on illegal immigration anyway. It seems as though your disdain has less to do with health care issues and more to do with how much money you have to fork out in taxes am I right? If so why don't we go there instead? The first step to do that of course is finding out what the majority of your tax money (the increased deficit) in regards to illegal immigration is really paying for. Wouldn't you agree? |
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Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 2:35 am Post subject: | |||||||
The total was 1.4 million in 2005. Thus 40% more than the 840,000 in 2004. Considering the scale and scope of the issue today, I would expect 2006's numbers to be even more dramatic.
In other words, policy and enforcement. 
***
WAY off topic. But that's cool as the translation is pretty much a non-issue anyways. |
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Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 12:43 am Post subject: | |
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Here's a GAO report: Undocumented Aliens: Questions Persist about Their Impact on Hospitals' Uncompensated Care Costs.
Their conclusion is basically "we can't be sure what the costs are because there is no procedure for documenting and reporting treatments rendered". |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 12:59 am Post subject: | |
| Yep. No ID, no SS card no record of the person's existence... How ya gonna count 'em when you can't even establish that they exist? | |
Administrator
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 1010
Location: over yonder
| Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 1:49 am Post subject: | |||||
Well, they are in the hospital thus...
However, as GAO the report notes, such a method could over or underestimate the the effect of undocumented aliens on total uncompensated care costs. All in all it just serves to further illustrate how the powers that be haven't been terribly concerned with the issue. |
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Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Posts: 5007
| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 4:50 pm Post subject: I 'si' but they do not | |
| One of the most frustrating things I've observed when dealing with 'immigrants' is that they always seem to ask for an interpretor rather than even trying to muddle through bad English-nor do these immigrants have any patience with English speaking citizens trying to work their way through with a little bit of poor Spanish-in other words they're DEMANDING we speak their language.How am I or anyone else who wants to learn that language going to learn or practice if not given the chance they seek. | |
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject: | |
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I once had a customer wanting a computer system ask, through one of his kids, for a Spanish speaking associate and since there weren't any in my depatment at the moment I asked Charlie Rodriguez from appliances if he would take care of the customer and turned the sale over to him.
He got the sale and after the customer left, he came over to me and said, "You know that bastard speaks perfect English and in fact we conducted the entire transaction in English. By the way, I rang the sale under your number.". I got the sale, the MA and the commission. Which proves that assholes come in all sizes shapes, colors and ethnicities, but then so do good people. |
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