Posted on 12/14/2004 6:02:37 AM PST by OESY
...Think about the Kerik example: The man and his wife have two small kids.... A nanny offers that help, and she seems both nice enough and gets along with kids. Whether or not she's "legal" seems less important to most American parents than whether she's trustworthy and hard-working.
As for the nanny, she's traveled hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from home to make some money and get ahead. Her primary concern isn't running some Immigration Service gantlet but is to find a good family that pays decently and treats her well. Are we really supposed to believe that this kind of transaction between consenting adults jeopardizes our national security?
...Congress made some progress on the so-called nanny tax issue back in 1994, raising the threshold for complying and simplifying the process by which employers file taxes for their domestic help.
...Most Americans calculate the costs -- in time, legal advice and hassle -- of filling out all the forms, and they simply pay cash instead. The wage threshold should long ago have been raised far higher.
As for immigration law, the Bush Administration is headed down the right path with its guest-worker program. That proposal acknowledges that immigrants fill vital jobs, that movement across borders is inevitable as long as there is the lure of opportunity, and that merely adding more border guards won't stop migrants in any case.
The Bush plan would provide a legal means -- a three-year work visa -- for new immigrants to enter the country and take jobs Americans don't want. Some of them could even be nannies. That system would make it easier to track all foreigners, freeing up our homeland security forces to concentrate on terror threats, rather than rounding up the usual nanny suspects....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Sorry, I don't hable espanol.
Babelfish says if I think more about the situation, I'll come to see that you are right.
I'm sorry, but I cannot agree with you. In my opinion and experience, you are putting the cart before the horse. You cannot offer the carrot of legalization and expect the flood of illegals to ebb. It just isn't going to happen now matter how long you sit and wish it to be so.
I don't necessarily disagree with your idea of putting illegal immigrants on the tax rolls as long as we weed out the criminal element among them. But as long as the borders remain porous and the potential for truly evil people to cross unnoticed exists, no amount of legalization will help us. In fact, it hurts us.
Control of the border must absolutely come first. I will not budge from that position, and neither should the US as a matter of policy. After that, we can consider implementing your ideas.
Why don't you stop your ad hominem attacks and instead take me on concerning the merits of my argument?
And also, since when is it wrong to be proud of one's academic accomplishments. We are a world of titles.
"Vaya al carrajo, cono.
"
Interesting. You just called him a "cone." At least he used the proper accents and spelling in his Spanish phrase. I know what you meant to call him, but you misspelled it and called him a "cone." I guess his Freshman Spanish is superior to yours.
"I only regret that I used piensa. I should have used the future tense "piensará." "
That's OK. He called you a "cone." Pretty humorous, considering what he intended to call you, eh?
Where did I say that? I said that people WHO DO hire illegals include the above mentioned group, not just rich republicans.
As right as you may be, this really p*sses me off - the same folks that threw the doors open and allowed the mob in now point to the mob as the reason we have to accept permanent change in our society.
I'm inclined to say f**k that. I LIKE our laws the way they were - you let em in, you get em out.
Hence, why not make them illegal and begin collecting taxes on their labor. That is the better political and economic position.
More bad analysis. Those aren't the only two options.
The reason we can't legalize illegal aliens is because it rewards lawbreakers while penalizing the law-abiding. Not surprisingly, every time we've legalized illegals, we've ended up with more illegal aliens.
Your solution is no solution at all, it would be an escalation of the problem.
A better solution is to remove the rewards for illegal aliens and encourage them to leave on their own, while also creating a guest worker program that only admits applicants from their home countries.
I see your point. In fact, on second thought, your position makes more sense.
1. Control the border.
2. Then, legalize what we have here.
This would work.
What will not happen, like some on this board would want, is to kick out the illegals out. Weeding out the bad ones and keeping the good ones is more workable.
Thank you.
Sure, the WSJ is all broken up about this nanny's living conditions.
The WSJ could give a rats behind about the welfare or aspirations of any third world denizen. To the WSJ, she exists only to decrease U.S. labor costs, so as to increase the return on capital. Were she not to serve to increase ocrporate profit, the WSJ couldn't care less if she were happily ensconsed here as a nanny, or buried under a Central American mudslide.
But if they hire an illegal alien to do their physical labor they might squeeze in more time at the gym.
This would work.
It would fail. It failed under Reagan, it failed under Clinton, and it would fail again under Bush.
Oh wait, you're recommending blanket amnesty. No politician in their right mind is suggesting that. LOL! You've got it all figured out.
Federal agents arrested 25 foreign nationals yesterday as suspected sexual predators in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx, N.Y., as part of a continuing law-enforcement investigation known as "Operation Predator," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia, who heads ICE, said that among those arrested were a 38-year-old Honduran man convicted of rape, sodomy and five counts of sexual abuse on a 14-year-old, and a 44-year-old Guyanese man convicted of sexual abuse of his daughter and another underage girl.
"Sexual predators, particularly those who prey on our nation's children, will continue to be a top priority in our immigration-enforcement efforts," said Mr. Garcia. "We are a nation of opportunity, but also of laws. These convicted criminals have forfeited their chance at opportunity by violating our laws.
"ICE plans to remove them from the United States as quickly as possible," he said.
Martin F. Horn, commissioner of the New York City Department of Probation, said New York has "no tolerance for those who endanger our citizens," adding that city officials "appreciate the work of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in supporting our efforts to keep New York the safest big city in the United States."
Operation Predator is a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from criminal alien sex offenders, child sex tourists, Internet child pornographers and human traffickers.
Mr. Garcia described those arrested as foreign-born sex offenders who have been convicted of charges that include rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, sexual misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child. He said they are now eligible for removal from the United States.
Raid targets are from 17 countries including Antigua, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Liberia, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, Russia, St. Kitts, Togo, and Trinidad and Tobago.
ICE's New York Office of Detention and Removal participated in the processing transfer and detention of the predators.
Since Operation Predator began in July 2003, ICE has arrested more than 4,500 child predators nationwide, about 85 percent of whom have been identified as foreign national sex offenders — about 40 percent of which have been illegal aliens.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041201-114748-4461r.htm
This probably isn't a good analogy, but there used to be a veryi different manicurist industry than we have now. It was a respectable, good job for many of our citizens. The people who have taken over the industry, most all from Viet Nam or Cambodia, are no doubt legal, but have cut prices and often have unlicensed people working in their shops.
I'd be glad to pay more for the way it used to be, but the industry has changed so much that it's probably too late to go back. Sanitation can be a problem when a shop cuts corners, but the state inspectors don't want to alienate "the community", and they are too few to help. People were seduced by cheap prices (as with the nannies) and took the options away from the rest of us who would have gladly continued to pay more; an entire industry has been radically changed and made user-unfriendly in many cases, at least in my area.
Yup!
Using some FReepers logic, as well as the pro-ILLEGAL INFILTRATORS logic...I guess I can just ignore the laws "that other Americans (and "Undocumented Americans" all over the world) don't want to obey!"....right?
Hmmm...not a bad idea...might be a wedge issue to get the JBT's off our throats!
It would work if we work to secure the border.
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