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Posted on 11/10/2006 1:29:10 AM PST by xtinct
It's not just one county, it's entire states...even entire regions. What was it the other side of the political coin likes to parrot? It's the ECONOMY, stupid! Our economy is about to tank and in large part the reasons can be traced to this issue. Even if the effects aren't directly national, in a cumulative effect, the repercussions will be national.
As far as the issues on where they work, I can only judge by the coverage given to the recent rallies held across the nation. You remember, the ones all that drew marchers by the hundreds of thousands....each chanting that we stole their land and they were taking it back? Well the crops still got picked during those demonstrations, however across the country it was the construction industry that ground to a standstill. Here in Miami, FL our construction sites were 85% closed on the day of the rally. The Mexican population in Miami is still substantial but is "melted" into the huge latino poulations already present in the area both legal and illegal.
Neither, but I admire Bill Kristol a lot. He's one of my heros.
Good grief, who do you get your info from? Mike Savage?
There were more American flags at every one of those rallies then there were Mexican ones.
And even if you were right, that's meaningless, anacdotal evidence.
For what it's worth, I didn't support the rallies, I think they were counterproductive and arrogant. I don't think those that broke laws have the right to 'demand' anything. But that doesn't mean that I don't understand that the vast majority of them came here for a better future for themselves and their families, and that if we allowed for more legal immigration, both of us would be better off.
OH PLEASE!!!
We have historically low unemployment, high productivity, the stock market is through the roof, etc.
Maybe you don't get your talking points from Mike Savage, maybe you get them from Nancy Pelosi. She's been running around saying how bad the economy is too.
Alan Greenspan has said repeatedly that immigration is one of the things that has made us so prosperous in the 15 or so years.
The ONLY way you can say it's bad for the economy is, just like I said before, if you equate local government revenues with how good the economy is doing.
And there are people who do that. They are called liberal Democrats who believe Government is the ultimate good.
I agree with you on this one, especially seeming as how Chafee probably would have switched parties.
But right now, I'd gladly throw out Lieberman for another Collins or Specter. Joe's defense of the Iraq War is good, but it doesn't keep the Senate in our hands.
Even the occasional bad egg, like any other bad egg, isn't the same thing as an Al-Quada member, and if you are too stupid to know that, this conversation is hardly worth having.
Please, stop humiliating yourself. There are good arguements on your side of the issue, but you aren't making them.
Libs try to exploit things like that too. And it's equally meaningless.
Assuming Reid isn't ousted because of his mafia-related tax fraud, oops, I mean, his unusual real estate transaction.
Well, that's a good point. But it could be so much BETTER without illegal aliens driving down wages doing the jobs "American's won't do" like the legit jobs in construction and the unlawful acts of rape, robbery and murder. Of course those fields DO keep American citizens gainfully employed in law enforcement and corrections as well as construction to build more prisons...so maybe that balances out.
Look, I think we have too many lawful AND unlawful immigrants and we need a moratorium to absorb those we have before resuming lawful immigration. This has to do with education, health care and housing. What do you propose to do about those illegals who can be identified and located? Deport or grant "amnesty?"
Alan Greenspan has said repeatedly that immigration is one of the things that has made us so prosperous in the 15 or so years.
This is the same Alan Greenspan who fought like a TIGER against the Federal Reserve in the 1950's and 1960's until the banks bought his soul and he turned into a force for righteousness in the almighty FED? That the guy?
Speaking of big government versus free market forces, the Federal Reserve is the biggest example of intrusive government that ever existed. They have even admitted culpability in the great stockmarket crash of 1929 and offered a humble apology, recently. What's his basis for making such a statement? Sounds like he got HIS talking points from Al Franken. For that matter, so do you.
Actually, any pretty much economist will tell you this is flat out wrong. They do jobs cheaper then Americans, which drives down costs, increases productivity, leads to cheaper goods, leads to greater overall demand, leads to the creation of new (better) jobs to fill the now increased aggragate demand, which leads to lower unemployment.
What you are doing is arguing for classic economic protectionism.
Do you think it's any different buying cheap goods from abroad and importing them then importing workers to build goods cheaply? It's not different, it's exactly the same thing in terms of the economy. In the long run, free trade of all sorts is good for the economy. Competition isn't just good for Americans, contrary to protectionists beliefs.
You are sounding more and more like Buchannan every day. Maybe now you understand why his sister runs Tancredo's PAC. They are two peas in a pod.
I just find it hilarious that you have the gull to say I'm the one making liberal arguements when you are buying the Sharrod Brown/Bernie Sanders/Richard Gephard anti-trade arguements hook, line and sinker.
Look, I think we have too many lawful AND unlawful immigrants and we need a moratorium to absorb those we have before resuming lawful immigration.
Yes, like I said, the Tancredo crowd isn't really against illegal immigration, they are against immigration period. Legal as well as illegal.
And they wonder why they are called xenophobes.
And you are still living in that fantasy land where you can ignore supply and demand. If we used your logic during prohibition, you'd be arguing, "I think we need to end all illegal alcohol sales and consumption. THEN we can consider making it legal again if we want to."
The end result of that? We still have prohibition. We still have basically good folks breaking the law and buying illegal alcohol, we still have all the violence that surrounds illegal alcohol for no good reason, etc.
Same thing here.
Agree 100%.
THE PROBLEM:
... illegal immigration is out of control, especially across the US border with Mexico.
Estimates of illegal immigrants living in the United States:
Up to 20,000,000 (Bear Stearns Report, January 2005)
10,000,000 to 12,000,000 (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 2005)
11,000,000 (Pew Hispanic Research Center, 2005)
10,000,000 (Center for immigration Studies, 2004)
The rate of illegal immigration is increasing
1990's: 700,000 to 800,000 annually
2000 - 2004: over 1,000,000 annually, and climbing (CIS)
The number of illegal immigrants in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia increased almost 70% from an estimated 300,000 in 2000 to 500,000 in 2004 (PHRC)
"Other Than Mexican" illegal immigrants pose a national security risk to the U.S.
The serious national security threat posed by "Other Than Mexicans" is not widely understood. Approximately 100,000 illegal immigrants entering the United States from Mexico each year are not Mexicans. The Border Patrol refers to these persons as "OTM's" - "Other Than Mexicans" Within the last year, over 450 OTM's have been apprehended illegally entering the United States from such officially-designated "special interest" countries as:
Afghanistan
Angola
Jordan
Qatar
Pakistan
Yemen
Two border state governors have declared "states of emergency" over illegal immigration.
Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico
Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona
Illegal immigration is expensive - forcing citizens' taxes higher
In California alone, the annual estimated cost burden of providing education, health care and incarceration for illegal immigrants is over $10 billion:
Education. Californians spend approximately $7.7 billion annually on education for illegal immigrant children. Nearly 15 percent of the K-12 public school students in California are children of illegal aliens.
Health care. Uncompensated medical outlays for health care provided to the state's illegal alien population amount to about $1.4 billion a year.
Incarceration. The cost of incarcerating illegal aliens in California's prisons and jails amounts to about $1.4 billion a year (not including related law enforcement and judicial expenditures or the monetary costs of the crimes that led to their incarceration).
THE SOLUTION:
Berlin Wall was an inappropriate description. Here is something better.
An effective border security fence is not a Berlin-type wall. The Berlin wall was designed to keep people prisoners in their own nation, not from illegally entering another nation.
The Israeli West Bank security fence is a better example of the state-of-the-art in border security. Many people have seen photographs and television images showing it to be a concrete wall. Those pictures are deceptive. The concrete wall portion of the barrier is roughly four percent of its overall length. Most of it is a fifty yard wide multi-layered composite obstacle comprised of several elements:
A ditch
Coils of barbed wire
Two tall, sturdy wire fences, with sensors to warn of any incursion.
A patrol path for vehicles between the fences
A smoothed strip of sand that runs parallel to the fence, to detect footprints.
Yes I am a classic protectionist and proud of it. I'm basically an isolationist as well. The Founding Fathers warned of foreign entanglements in the Federalist Papers. That strategy worked great for over 100 years until the first World War. Democrat Woodrow Wilson got us into that one as a part of his vision for the NWO. His most trusted advisor, COL Edward Mandell House, was a founder of the Council on Foreign Relations. From there, things get really bad. But I would advise you to read this book: The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin. It's perhaps the only book I've ever found on economics that reads like a novel. But the bibliography is about six pages long at a #ten font size. Well documented.
Thanks for finally admitting you are an anti-free-trade, anti-war dinosaur.
Have fun hanging out with the person I always suspected you are ideologically in tune with:
Those terrorists will be terrified of a strong power asserting jewish figurehead like Joe Lieberman, just the mere sound of his voice as he declares a level orange alert in that depressing half asleep voice will strike fear into their black shrunken hearts ! [/sarc]
I'll agree with the first but don't you think that just maybe my screen name might give you a hint that I'm not anti-war? You might have gotten a better idea of where I stand had you taken a look at my about page. I put it all out there. You don't... for whatever reason. Lots of freepers have been around like me since the late 90's (well I got here in about 97 or 98 but I had a change of "handle" so it only reflects the most recent iteration) and don't have an about page. I don't care. I am what I am. For me to be anti-war would be tantamount to PI$$ING on the graves of eight of my closest buddies. That's the reason I make my students stand for the Pledge of Allegience. That's the reason I refuse to own an AK-47. Great gun, fairly accurate and utterly reliable. But it's WARSAW Pact (communist) and I simply refuse.
Have you ever watched a buddy die a violent death and been helpless to intervene? I have. Several times. I have also been held "responsible" for combat deaths that I could not affect. I got my platoon medic into the Rangers (connections at the S1) and he went down to Granada and got killed. Only 12 folks died down there and I knew three of them. His girlfriend came up to me at the funeral and slapped my face in front of everybody screaming that I had "killed" him. Well, IMHO he died doing what he loved and if I could do it again (help him become a Ranger), I would. But I couldn't say a word, then. FWIW, EVERYBODY present assured me that it was not the case. It didn't make me feel any better. Only a very long night at the officer's club with my buddies helped that feeling. Sorry I'm rambling.
So not anti-war. But definitely anti-free trade. Very anti NAFTA & GATT. Very anti- NWO. I would presume that if you favor these positions, you also favor a globalist world view which is to say an eventual "one world" government. You're in favor then of this trans Texas highway? Of the eventual merge of Mexico, Canada and the USA? You must be for this entire argument we've had to take place! I think you've just "outed" yourself as a California Liberal. So be it.
Then you aren't an isolationist.
Your arguements on trade are straight out of Gephart's playbook, not worth responding to.
I think we should pull our troops out of Europe & Korea and bring them home to do the job assigned to them in the US Constitution: Defend the borders. But that also means having the ability to respond if attacked (as in 911) or to act pre-emptively to forestall an attack. OR to respond in kind to an attack on a loyal ally. Key word: LOYAL! That rules out our neighbors to the north and south as well as all of the European continent but not the UK.
We need to drill ANWR and all along our shoreline for the oil that is there. We should drill it like a $10 Hooker. There is enough in those places to provide the USA with enough fuel to last 250 years. Then we really could tell OPEC and the other oil cartels to go PI$$ up a rope. But it will never happen. Too many weak spines in gov't and too many strong agendas attached to fat wallets.
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