Tom Tancredo's Wall [turn(S) the United States into the world's largest gated community.]

Wall Street Journal ^ | 12/29/05 | Review & Outlook

[harpu]

"We have a supply and a demand problem. The supply problem is coming across the border. We are in this bill doing something very specific about that with the inclusion of the amendment, with the passage of the amendment, to build some barrier along at least 700 miles of our southern border. I hope we continue with that, by the way, along the entire border, to the extent it is feasible, and the northern border we could start next." -- Rep. Tom Tancredo (R., Colo.)

So there you have it. Tom Tancredo has done everyone a favor by stating plainly the immigration rejectionists' end-game -- turn the United States into the world's largest gated community. The House took a step in that direction this month by passing another immigration "reform" bill heavy with border control and business harassment and light on anything that will work in the real world.

For the past two decades, border enforcement has been the main focus of immigration policy; by any measure, the results are pitiful. According to the Migration Policy Institute, "The number of unauthorized migrants in the United States has risen to almost 11 million from about four million over the past 20 years, despite a 519% increase in funding and a 221% increase in staffing for border patrol programs."

Given that record, it's hard to see the House Republican bill as much more than preening about illegal immigration. The legislation is aimed at placating a small but vocal constituency that wants the borders somehow sealed, come what may to the economy, American traditions of liberty or the Republican Party's relationship with the increasingly important Latino vote.

-big giant snip-

...At some point, the president of the United States will have to get behind the Statue of Liberty or Tom Tancredo's wall.

[chronic_loser]

No let's do it your way. Let's reward companies who are willing to break the law. That way we will be more like Mexico.

Nawwwww, no reason to do something like that. Instead, lets just put up MORE idiotic regulatory hurdles. That way we can drive all of the truly noble patriots like the freeper crowd out of business. It will then be much easier to isolate the less-than-pure business right only the sleaze merchants who actually pay attention to labor costs will be left to operate. That way it will be so easy to spot the "corrupt" businesses. We can just arrest or fine them all, and then we can just raise those wages as high as we want. Isn't economics fun?

[Leatherneck_MT]

Yep small but vocal...

80% of the American Population is small? Wonder what constitutes large to these people.

[Dan Evans]

I am really sick of the crap I hear from freepers claiming that there are lots and lots of good, qualified hard working Americans who would happily do the jobs of illegals.

If you can't run your business without hiring illegals, then shut it down. Your services are no longer required.

The law says you can't hire illegal aliens. It is your responsibility to use your best judgment to ensure the people you hire are in the country legally. If you can't do that, then a court will decide your fate. A judge or a jury will hear the evidence and they will decide if you should have known if the people you hired were illegal.

If they decide against you, then you may lose your business or go to jail.

[Dan Evans]

Instead, lets just put up MORE idiotic regulatory hurdles.

Don't try to obfuscate. Don't try to muddy the waters by hiding your argument behind the issue of business regulation. You know that most freepers don't support our regulatory bureaucracy.

Controlling immigration and controlling the borders is a necessary function of government and has been for centuries. It is written in the Constitution as opposed to the real "idiotic regulatory hurdles" that we have been saddled with.

Every time you post here, I wonder what you are up to. I wonder what kind of dirt you have under your fingernails. If you are hiring illegals, you are helping to putting your honest competitors out business. You are creating another Mexico and you are no good to your country.

[SC33]

Look at the polls. Those of us who want immigration laws enforced are in the majority among Republicans, and the entire country. Call us knuckledraggers if you will, but I'll take that over greedy, corporate shills desirous of slave labor anyday.

[chronic_loser]

Every time you post here, I wonder what you are up to. I wonder what kind of dirt you have under your fingernails. If you are hiring illegals, you are helping to putting your honest competitors out business. You are creating another Mexico and you are no good to your country. I would hate to see you wondering, so I will tell you. I own a financial services firm. I have insurance, mortgage and money management services. I have 4 employees, all of whom are US citizens. Also I despise the invariable brainless accusations that I am profiting somehow from these people being here. I support the causes I support because I think them MORAL (first) and ECONOMICALLY SOUND (second). On both counts, many freepers are myopic (all they see is the word "Illegal" and they quit processing data after that), statist, hypocritical, hateful, bigoted and dishonest in the whole way they approach this issue. It reminds me of being at a damn PEROT FOR PRESIDENT rally. Same bunch of nitwits who think they can wrap a flag around statist doctrine and call it conservatism. Same ignorant braying about the "corporatists" who are out to screw over the little guy. Finally, the same bunch of lying insinuations that anyone who disagees with their xenophobic bigotry is somehow profiting from illegals. Dishonest, ignorant, hateful, statist, and stupid. What a package! Makes me just want to put up a pic of Pat Buchanan in my office.

[axes_of_weezles]

So you are profiting from the Illegals loans and mortgages, right?

[SC33]

Your greed and want for cheap, slave labor is very evident. Just come out and say it. You want open-borders. If you believe it, have the guts to say it. You accuse the rest of us of being venomous, but you spew the most hatred here. You are dead wrong on this issue, and the only people who agree whith you are corporate shills, extreme leftists, and racist groups like La Raza. You are in good company, exactly where you belong.

[chronic_loser]

So you are profiting from the Illegals loans and mortgages, right? Actually, no. We don't put paper with Banco Popular, which is the only one I know of who processes illegal immigrant loans.

May I further invite you to perform an anatomical impossibility on yourself?

[SC33]

You might be interested in this thread

[axes_of_weezles]

You ought to do a bit of research before you paint folks with a broad brush.

AMEX,CHASE,Wells Fargo,Bank of America all give loans to illegals and mortgages for housing too.

You are part of the problem and in the minority, if you care to do some research on the issue.

[tropical]

You beat me to it! LOL!

[SC33]

1.) Enforce immigration law, starting with heavier border security.
2.) If we truly need it, create a TEMPORARY guest worker program, and allow those already here illegally to be a part of it. This plan should pay reasonable wages, but include no path to citizenship.
3.) Once guestworker plan is in place, strictly enforce interior immigration laws and prosecute those who knowingly hire illegals not part of program.
4.) Reject amnesty and enforce rules of TEMPORARY worker plan.

[dalereed]

When they passes the banking law (since repealed) that a bank couldn't cross the state line it was aimed specificly at BofA (Bank of Italy), they should have put that error prone corrupt, and probably the worst bank in the country out of business.

[SC33]

Everybody should take a look at this page. It provides extensive public opinion research polls on the subject.

http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/publicop.html

[SC33]

Go ahead and try and shove an amnesty down the throats of Americans. See how that works out.

http://abcnews.go.com/images/pdf/883a41Immigration.pdf

[BlueStateDepression]

Yes we require them to provide LEGIT papers. The employer has to play their part in confirming them as valid and should have the tools to do so.

Employers DO knowiling hire Illegals. The fact the speak no English is a pretty good tip don't you think? Responsibility for the buck is simply being passed around.

The government cannot micromanange each and every business. Therefor they do bear that very burden. Unless of course you want to see the government form a new division that will go from business to business doing the checks????

You can say it is alie that people want to work if you want to. You have every right to offer whatever wage you want to for any given job, but you make mistake when you claim that get to cry about it and then go hire Illegals. If you cry about that then you indeed care nothing about a free market where employers get to ick their own wages and employees get to pick their own wages that they will commit labor for. This has to work both ways, you do not get to cut and run in the middle changing the rules so they suit you and seek out illegal workers just because noone wants to work for the wage you offer.

A social security was never meant to be a way to track you sir. It was only meant as a means of tracking income tax. This number is used improperly today in a way that it was not designed to be used. I take it from this area of your post that you would support a national ID standard that would solve alot of these issues? Would I be correct in that assumption? Somehow I fell you will respond otherwise.

I will agree that the govenrment up to thispoint has been far less than serious about dealing with this issue. I will however offer to you that simply pointing the finger at them and claiming it is all their responsibility is nothing more than shirking your own part in this issue that clearly has to be a team effort to solve. Absolving businesses from their part is no better than the government absolving themselves from their part.
<
Why is it so unreasonable to ask an employer to verify the documents they attain from a person that doesn't even speak English?

[chronic_loser]

Your greed and want for cheap, slave labor is very evident.

You have no clue as to my "greed" nor what percentage of our income we gave away last year, nor where my wife chooses to work, with whom, and at what pay to support our "greed." In fact, you know NOTHING about me, except that I hate the sanctimonious and unctious crap on Free Republic that hides behind border control (which I support), fence erection (which I also support), and national sovereignty (no borders = no country) to advocate some of the most hateful and xenophobic garbage I have ever seen. Not that it stops you or the rest of your frothing at the mouth crew here of accusing me of being: 1) A closet du plant (till they check how long I have been posting here 2)a "corporate shill" ( I don't even own a corp, my business is a sole proprietorship) 3) a "spic" "beaner" "wetback" or "mex" - scotch irish, sorry 4) a "liberal" - I was arguing for the free market and quoting von Mises before most of you here were even an ache in your father's crotch -- or some other idiocy.

I have genuine respect for many of the denizens of these threads, but they are oft shouted down by the pitchfork brigade, which I utterly despise. You can tell a pitchforker (if he puts down the flaming torch and stops storming the castle long enough to wipe the spittle off his chin) by the following:

1) he comprehends TWO words as a possible solution to the problem with illegals a) "Illegal" and b)"Deport"

2) the idea that relaxing immigration quotas might take the pressure off the border is a totally foreign concept to him

3) if you try to hint that the market might supply a stasis of labor and jobs, you are immediately branded a "corporate shill" who is out to "exploit" with the "slave labor" that illegals provide. the fact that we have probably close to 20 million illegals in the country and our unemployment rate is below 5% is considered to be "meaningless statistics" designed to hide the clear and obvious facts that the illegals are stealing American jobs.

4)If you hint that there MAY be other ways to punish border hoppers (fines and penalties), and that many of these people have established businesses, homes, connections, etc, so that it MIGHT be in our and their best interest to seek to allow someone a track to gain legal status, the witchdoctor in the crowd shrieks "AMNESTY ALERT!" and his eyes glaze over while he begins to chant in unison with the rest of the natives "ILLEGAL, DEPORT (uhnhh, uhnhh)"

5) If you ever mock a pitchforker, be prepared for the most innocent of rejoinders ("Who? ME? Racist?...., well, you know...., liberals call people racist."), with explanations that they are all just red white and blue patriots who love our dear country and that they are SHOCKED! SHOCKED I SAY! that you would insinuate that their motives are less than pure as freshly driven snow. Of course, your own motives are clear to all. You are clearly an exploiter of labor, a greedy bastard, a MECHA volunteer, a closet nephew of Vincente Fox, and more. The idea that you might actually support liberalization of the border because it is GOOD for us is so uncomprehendible to a pitchforker that they simply cannot grasp the concept.

It MUST be because of some ulterior motive, and if they just throw out enough asshat accusations, they think maybe they will hit on it and you will slink away in disgrace.

[Dan Evans]

You complain about idiotic regulations in the same breath that tries to justify open borders. These people that you want in our country are voting for Democrats, the party of bureaucracy, the party of regulation. Don't you see the logical disconnect? Are you incapable of thinking long term? Or don't you care about what happens to this country after we have another 20 million people voting for corrupt politicians who will be making rules for the rest of us?

Don't try to wrap yourself in an anti-statist flag. Don't try to pretend you are a conservative. You are not fooling anyone.