Posted on 01/31/2005 6:15:41 PM PST by Klickitat
In case you missed a fabulous "Letter to the editor" in today's Sun Times..
Offensive and inaccurate
I strongly condemn Father Andrew Greeley's suggestion that many Americans would favor shooting illegal aliens as they cross the border [column, Jan. 14]. Greeley's outrageous statement deliberately distorts the facts and surpasses in its irresponsibility a comment made several years ago by Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Francis George, who said illegal immigrants are ''the hidden pistons that are driving our economy.'' Both are pure fiction.
Equally disturbing is Greeley's charge that a majority of Americans ''hate immigrants'' and are ''willing to deny them the most fundamental human rights.'' What a majority of Americans have told pollsters for years is that they want less legal immigration and stricter enforcement of immigration laws. For this they are supposed to be ashamed?
His church, like organized labor, cannot get enough of mass immigration because both have seen better days in terms of membership. But you won't see either using any of their money to help pay the escalating costs associated with illegal immigration, including free medical care and public school education.
Greeley says Catholics are the biggest hypocrites of all in terms of immigration, but I believe that blaming ordinary parishioners is an attempt to mask a more serious shortcoming that extends all the way to the Vatican.
How would he explain his church's support of an immigration policy that hurts most our own working poor? The church's hierarchy in this country, including the National Council of Catholic Bishops, is solidly behind a general amnesty for millions of illegals. Where is the church's compassion for the 14 million underemployed American citizens whose daily economic struggles are made increasingly difficult because they must compete with illegal aliens for the full-time jobs they once did at higher wages? Or do these religious leaders believe that today only the foreign-born, particularly illegal aliens, are entitled to ''search for a better life''?
As I see it, turning its back on millions of our own poor citizens shames the Catholic Church. Therein lies the problem
Dave Gorak,
executive director,
Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration,
Lombard
Looks like your definition of a 'good' employee is one who: will take cash for his wages (to bypass all those irritating state and fed'l payroll taxes.....also called TAX EVASION amigo!), won't demand health insurance (because he can run down to the taxpayer funded county hospital for free health care), won't mind living with 5-10 other guys in a house because a 'bad employee' might need a decent wage to live in one with a wife and kids, might well have several aliases so he can receive welfare services in multiple names whereas an honest American would never stoop so low, etc. Don't know what dreamworld you live in but this the reality of the situation......hope you don't get carjacked someday or catch TB or be an innocent victim of a driveby.
The best part I think is here:
What's so ironic about this particular argument is that if there's a recognition that it costs too much to hire a citizen, then those who support illegal immigration on this basis or make this argument should be at the forefront in reducing the impediments to hiring U.S. citizens, but they're not. Instead they're out there demanding increasing the minimum wage, increasing the Social Security tax, increasing health care costs to employers, all of which drive up the cost of hiring U.S. workers, which makes illegal immigrants far more attractive from a cost analysis even then. So this whole self-fulfilling prophecy becomes a cycle.
Thanks. Feel free to use it anytime. Counter the snobs with "what's your stake in it?" And let them know "Compassion begins at home."
Although I hate to admit it, old UT will not soon have a similar law. Too many UT Reps and Sinators are looking like amnesty advocates and that really irritates me. We now have a group that is fighting for a "toss the illegals" law, but they are few and have no real voice in the matter, at least not yet.
Listen, maybe a different moderator is on duty. I think you should try one more time to get it pulled.
Good employees make it a pleasure to get up early every morning to start work, bad employees make the day a living hell. And 90 percent of it is the employees' attitudes.
The people who don't know the difference between a good employee and a bad employee are the employees who can't figure out why they can't keep a job. Some are just sour on the whole world, others are the victims of labor union indoctrinations. Some are naturally contrary, insecure, defeatists, resentful and just plain lazy. Others only get a job because their spouse or parents force them to and they immediately start wrangling a way to get fired that doesn't look like it's their fault. Alcoholism, drug dependence, clinical depression and other conditions aggravate their attitude problems.
Bad employees will always find someone else to blame, blacks, Jews, catholics, Republicans or Mexicans.
You can send everyone with an Hispanic, Jewish, Irish and black surname out of the country and bad employees still wouldn't be able to keep a job.
That depends on the guest worker program, of course. I'm clearly older than you, so I remember the one we used to have. The way that worked was that companies who specialized in supplying labor brought seasonal workers to the US. Only the workers came, not their families, so "anchor babies" were rare.
The workers were legal, and had id that showed they were guest workers, but that didn't matter a lot, because the companies that hired them provided housing, transportation, etc. They also provided medical care.
We were assured that the workers would go back home after their jobs were over, because most of the companies withheld about half of their wages until they went back home.
We got rid of that program because Liberals thought it was heartless that we made the workers live here without their families for months; they lived in cabins Liberals thought were substandard; and if they needed any medical care that wasn't just routine, we sent them home.
BTW, we still have a guest worker program of sorts. We have European youth working at Atlantic Coast resorts for the summer. They come here, do the work, and go back home.
I am going to hold you to it! At least you don't look like the dwarf or "the elf." (Or as my daughter likes to say to her friends "you mean the fairy??"" LOL
Apparently you never learned how government works in this country. California can't set immigration policy.
Do you really think that we would limit the program to Mexican men and house them in cabins?
I wouldn't say that's the whole problem, but it is hypocritical. Mexico sees nothing cruel about maintaining its own borders but is indignant if we want to do it.
The issue has become complex. Maybe we can have some influence on getting Mexico to clean up its corrupt practices and develop its economy so that its citizens will want to stay home, but the only thing we have any real control over is what happens within our own boders.
Because of terrorist threats, I think our priority should be on controlling who comes across our borders. Then we can work on seriously monitoring and fining companies that hire illegals -- none of this token stuff. And if someone doesn't have the right papers, don't give them benefits. No papers, no welfare. If we eliminate the magnets that draw people here, that should help. I know, for example, that it would do me no good to go to Mexico illegally because I would get nowhere. I couldn't hold a job, get government support, own land, etc. I sure wouldn't want to spend my remaining years in a Mexican jail with corrupt jailors. As you said, there is no place for us to go if we allow our country to be bankrupted.
OK, you're being totally silly and closed minded now. Look up the guest worker programs we've had in the past (including the au pair programs, or the Irish lifeguards at Atlantic beaches), and if you've got any sense at all, you'd realize that smart management of guest worker programs is far better than ignoring the need for them.
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