Republicans Believe Illegal Immigration 'Should be a Crime'

[Feuer Frei!]

Heaven's forbid that a crime should be called a crime!

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D.-Fla.), chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, denounced Republicans last week for believing illegal immigration “should in fact be a crime.” “I think the president was clearly articulating that his position--the Democratic position--is that we need comprehensive immigration reform,” said Wasserman Schultz at a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast on May 26.
“We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of our economy and this is not only a reality but a necessity," she said. "And that it would be harmful--the Republican solution that I’ve seen in the last three years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries and that in fact it should be a crime and we should arrested them all.”

The comment has drawn attention among conservative commentators and bloggers. During the comments, the chairwoman referred to legislation in 2006 by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) that would increase border enforcement and make illegal immigration a criminal offense instead of a civil matter.
However, the Senate bill immunized illegal aliens from being prosecuted for document fraud, a felony, and did not stop the practice of allowing illegal aliens eventually granted legal residency to go back and claim credit with the Social Security Administration for work they did as an illegal. These provisions were in sections 601 and 614 of the McCain-Kennedy comprehensive immigration reform bill.


The new chairwoman has made a number of attention grabbing comments. In an April 6 interview on MSNBC, Wasserman Shultz voiced her opposition to the proposal by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to reduce the deficit by $6 trillion in 10 years.
Last week she said on MSNBC, that the passage of the health care law has strengthened Medicare.
“In fact, we added 12 years of solvency to Medicare and ensure that it would be better for senior,” she said on Andrea Mitchell Reports on May 25.


SOURCE

[mookiemookie]

I'm really conflicted about the whole situation. I used to be in the hardcore "kick them all out" camp. I've done a bit of research and reading and found that the economics of illegal immigration make that position shaky. In a pure supply and demand sense, imagine if you took away a large amount of the supply of labor - the remaining labor would become more expensive. While it's true we have a lot of people out of work in this country, a lot of the people out of work are highly skilled and highly educated and they would not be a one for one replacement of the supply of cheap illegal labor. Cheap labor costs keep the cost of many goods and services in this country low. If the cost of labor inputs increase, firms will be forced to increase the cost to the end consumer.

As I said, I'm not sure how I feel about it. If you bring the illegals into the system and move away from under the table pay, then we've just increased our tax base substantially. That's got to be a positive.

I think we need a two pronged approach - something that both political parties seem to lack. We should identify the places where our immigration laws need streamlining in addition to stricter enforcement of immigration laws and border control. Reliance on cheap labor is a reality in this country, and any solution needs to recognize that.

It's late, I'm sleepy and rambling. Carry on.

[CaptainMattJ.]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I'm really conflicted about the whole situation. I used to be in the hardcore "kick them all out" camp. I've done a bit of research and reading and found that the economics of illegal immigration make that position shaky. In a pure supply and demand sense, imagine if you took away a large amount of the supply of labor - the remaining labor would become more expensive. While it's true we have a lot of people out of work in this country, a lot of the people out of work are highly skilled and highly educated and they would not be a one for one replacement of the supply of cheap illegal labor. Cheap labor costs keep the cost of many goods and services in this country low. If the cost of labor inputs increase, firms will be forced to increase the cost to the end consumer.

As I said, I'm not sure how I feel about it. If you bring the illegals into the system and move away from under the table pay, then we've just increased our tax base substantially. That's got to be a positive.

I think we need a two pronged approach - something that both political parties seem to lack. We should identify the places where our immigration laws need streamlining in addition to stricter enforcement of immigration laws and border control. Reliance on cheap labor is a reality in this country, and any solution needs to recognize that.

It's late, I'm sleepy and rambling. Carry on.

We dont need cheap labor from illegals. there are PLENTY of teenagers who need money to pay for the INTENSE increase of tuition.

Illegals are sucking this country. In a monetary sense, they are a parasite. They are PLENTY of illegals getting free health care, free taxes, fake drivers licenses, and some getting FREE tuition.

And BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS is SHIPPED BACK TO MEXICO AND OTHER COUNTRIES. The mexican government and other latin countries are basically teaching illegals how to get passed our borders and live a free life here so they can send back billions of dollars to their governments. Resorts even advertise labor vacations so they can have a baby here while their pregnant and get a free ticket to citizenship.


They need to GO. RIGHT now. No dam amnesty. let our teenagers get the jobs so they can pay for their tuition. Let american CITIZENS get the jobs so they can drive the unemployment down again.

I admire why there here. They want a piece of the american dream too. Their countries are poverty stricken. It sucks to live there. But dragging this country down with them is not acceptable and they need to GO.

Its not like any other country in the world allows anywhere NEAR the amnesty we do on a daily basis. Remember those hikers? No amnesty for them. The mexican government wont give any mercy to illegals living there.

so why should we not do the same? because our politicians are bought and paid for and are afraid of being called racists because the illegals have nothing to fall back on. NO argument. so they pull out the race card and all goes well. look how arizona got harrassed because it was TIRED of the ridiculous illegal immigration problem.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by CaptainMattJ.

We dont need cheap labor from illegals. there are PLENTY of teenagers who need money to pay for the INTENSE increase of tuition.

Just try to find one. I literally could not pay any of the teenagers in my neighbourhood to mow my lawn. I was offering up to $50.00 to mow what grass I have left on my puny 1/3 acre lot (House takes up about 2/3rds of that). No interest.


Perhaps it is different where you live, but in North Virginia, teenagers don't do manual labour. The closest they will ever get is working the back warehouse at Safeway and even then the turn-over at the Safeway where I live is measured in weeks.

I am just not buying the myth that undocumented aliens are taking jobs away from good ole Americans. I just don't see Americans, these days, doing that sort of work.

And as an American, I really don't want to pay the salaries that Americans would expect for manual labour.

My solution has always been to make it easier for them to become citizens. Anyone who wants to come to my country and work hard, I am welcoming them with open arms.

[Morts]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Just try to find one. I literally could not pay any of the teenagers in my neighbourhood to mow my lawn. I was offering up to $50.00 to mow what grass I have left on my puny 1/3 acre lot (House takes up about 2/3rds of that). No interest.


Perhaps it is different where you live, but in North Virginia, teenagers don't do manual labour. The closest they will ever get is working the back warehouse at Safeway and even then the turn-over at the Safeway where I live is measured in weeks.

I am just not buying the myth that undocumented aliens are taking jobs away from good ole Americans. I just don't see Americans, these days, doing that sort of work.

And as an American, I really don't want to pay the salaries that Americans would expect for manual labour.

My solution has always been to make it easier for them to become citizens. Anyone who wants to come to my country and work hard, I am welcoming them with open arms.

$50 !?
holy crap, what the hell is wrong with these kids?
i would have jumped at the chance to earn $50 that easily

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Morts

$50 !?
holy crap, what the hell is wrong with these kids?
i would have jumped at the chance to earn $50 that easily

For $50.00 I would mow my neighbours lawn!! And I hate mowing lawns, but I like $50.00 more.

And just try to get any American Teenager to shovel snow! It is like you are asking them to give up a kidney and not get an Ipod2.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by CaptainMattJ.

We dont need cheap labor from illegals. there are PLENTY of teenagers who need money to pay for the INTENSE increase of tuition.

Have you ever spent time in an agricultural field? Do you know what's involved in doing that sort of work? I wouldn't wish that torture on my children.

from January to June, California farmers posted ads for 1,160 farmworker positions open to U.S. citizens and legal residents. But only 233 people in those categories applied after learning of the jobs through unemployment offices in California, Texas, Nevada and Arizona.

One grower brought on 36. No one else hired any.

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2010/0...want-farm-work

Doesn't sound like kids, or anyone else for that matter, are lining up for illegal immigrant jobs.

Originally Posted by CaptainMattJ.

Resorts even advertise labor vacations so they can have a baby here while their pregnant and get a free ticket to citizenship.

Link please? Since having a baby on U.S. soil is no insurance against deportation, I'd love to see these advertisements. A child born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents has to be 21 before they can sponsor citizenship for the parents, AND the parent has to show that they have not been in the country illegally for more than a year. That ticket to citizenship isn't as free as you make it out to be.

[CCIP]

I don't think this is a question of belief at all.

The bigger issue is how you deal with it, whether you choose to prosecute it, or whether there is amnesty to be considered for those who previously did it. But debating whether or not it's a crime is just stupid and distracts from the main issues at hand. Cause "Illegal non-crime" or "Legal crime" are kind of oxymorons...

[Sailor Steve]

Argue about the technicalities all you like (and I'm not saying we shouldn't), but the point here is that we have someone in a position of power who takes others to task because they wrongly believe that something "illegal" should be a crime? Maybe she needs a dictionary for her birthday.

[Penguin]

@Steve: there are also infractions and felonies

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I'm really conflicted about the whole situation. I used to be in the hardcore "kick them all out" camp. I've done a bit of research and reading and found that the economics of illegal immigration make that position shaky. In a pure supply and demand sense, imagine if you took away a large amount of the supply of labor - the remaining labor would become more expensive. While it's true we have a lot of people out of work in this country, a lot of the people out of work are highly skilled and highly educated and they would not be a one for one replacement of the supply of cheap illegal labor. Cheap labor costs keep the cost of many goods and services in this country low. If the cost of labor inputs increase, firms will be forced to increase the cost to the end consumer.

Well, if there is a demand for cheap, unskilled labour, why not hand out work visas or raise the number of legal immigrants, if they are really the "backbone of the economy" like the article states. Don't wonder however if you folks will encounter some problems if you let masses of uneducated and unskilled people into your country.
Germany did this in the 60s/70s and many problems we have today root from there. One former chancellor stated some years ago, that this encouragement of unskilled immigration was to keep domestic wages low - and, in hindsight, regards this as a mistake.

The demand is there for cheaper than cheap labour. People who are too cheap to pay normal wages have this demand - the demand of the consumer is always to have a product to the lowest costs.
However it is shortsighted if you only look at the price of products or services. Indirectly you pay higher taxes for federal/state services that these people use, for people who get umemployed because they can't compete with this cheap labour and anopther interesting aspect, that Armistead mentioned, are also enviromental costs. He mentioned it in an example, that illegal workers often dump their waste from their work just into the nature - it's the same here.
As I see it is that by all this this the taxpayer subsides these employers who are too cheap to pay minimum wage and taxes - and it is a slap in the face of the millions of legal immigrants who often went through considerable efforts to immigrate into the country.

@Steve: there are also infractions and felonies

And crimes against nature

[Betonov]

How can a workforce that doesn't pay taxes and it's employer doesn't pay taxes be a backbone of the economy. OK, sure, more profit more sales tax, but still. More work visas. We built our highways on work visas

[Bakkels]

Originally Posted by Penguin

Germany did this in the 60s/70s and many problems we have today root from there. One former chancellor stated some years ago, that this encouragement of unskilled immigration was to keep domestic wages low - and, in hindsight, regards this as a mistake.

The same goes for us over here Penguin. Also a lot of unskilled and low-education immigrants came here in the 60's / 70's. But at least they are legal... There's more of a cultural problem than an economical. Not that that problem is smaller, it's just different. One advantage of them being legal, is at least they pay taxes and they have registered places of residence.

Originally Posted by Penguin

The demand is there for cheaper than cheap labour. People who are too cheap to pay normal wages have this demand - the demand of the consumer is always to have a product to the lowest costs.
However it is shortsighted if you only look at the price of products or services. Indirectly you pay higher taxes for federal/state services that these people use, for people who get umemployed because they can't compete with this cheap labour and anopther interesting aspect, that Armistead mentioned, are also enviromental costs. He mentioned it in an example, that illegal workers often dump their waste from their work just into the nature - it's the same here.
As I see it is that by all this this the taxpayer subsides these employers who are too cheap to pay minimum wage and taxes - and it is a slap in the face of the millions of legal immigrants who often went through considerable efforts to immigrate into the country.

Well spoken and very true, but the fact of the matter is; we demand low prices. And we were -at the time- all shortsighted; the governments, the companies, but us consumers as well.
Besides, had those immigrants not come here back then, both our countries would have lost a lot of export revenues. Without those immigrants, we couldn't have kept competitive prices. We should however have foreseen these problems (yeah well easy in hindsight, I know), and maybe only give them temporary visas.

My point is -to get more back on topic- how will it help you throwing them in jail? That'll only cost you that much more. Have them returned to their countries. Yeah, perhaps they'll keep trying to get back, but the time they spend in their own country doesn't cost the US taxpayers money to feed them while they're in a US jail. Plus, do you have any idea how much time, effort and money it takes to find an illegal, find out if someone is illegal, than prosecute them? I don't, but I bet it's a hefty sum.

The ideal solution would imo be to really close up the borders, and come down hard on companies that employ illegal immigrants. The second part isn't that hard. The first part however... well you guys know more about that than I do. Clearly, it's very difficult. Complex problem this one

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Argue about the technicalities all you like (and I'm not saying we shouldn't), but the point here is that we have someone in a position of power who takes others to task because they wrongly believe that something "illegal" should be a crime? Maybe she needs a dictionary for her birthday.

This is really hard for people to understand and I deal with this often in my work, but the fact is that not everything illegal is a crime. There is a difference between a violation of the law and a CRIMINAL violation of the law.

In my home state of Wisconsin, for instance, there's been an ongoing debate regarding criminalizing first offense drunk driving.

A "crime" is an illegal action that violates a CRIMINAL CODE. An action that is illegal is far more broad.

The recent labor controversy in Wisconsin is an excellent example of this distinction. The Democrat senators that left the state to avoid a quorum did so illegally. However, it was NOT a criminal action.

Another great example are laws concerning conspiracy. There are many actions one can take that are illegal but NOT criminal except when speciifcally planned with willful intent to violate law.

The bottom line: illegal and criminal are terms meaning very different things.

[Aramike]

As far as the actual subject matter is concerned, I personally believe that it is silly to address the question of what to do with the millions of people here illegally until we can effectively prevent any more from entering the country. Prudence suggests that it is unlikely that even a concerted effort and deportation would be effective considering the influx of illegal immigrants.

In my opinion it would be wise to seal the border tight and THEN find a way to integrate illegals into our society. Our problem is simple: it's too damned easy to get in illegally, and too damned hard to do it the proper way.