Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

The far right seeks control over everyone they don’t know, American or alien. The only appropriate response is to secure our borders, let in those we choose, and deny access to all others, leaving Americans here at home to move, travel, work and play FREELY as they have for centuries without body and baggage checks, national ID’s, and surveillance cameras observing where we go and what we do from the time we leave our homes.

The far right doesn’t just fear aliens, they fear all other Americans who are not on the far right with them, and that makes them as dangerous as a cornered badger or wolverine when given access to the power of government.

Has anyone else been reading about the
McCain/Kennedy immigration bill ?

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N12680660.htm

Lots of pork in there once you dig into the real wording of the bill.

It also would give illegals more rights than Americans in some cases.

Immigration is mostly a good thing, as is diversity. But the receiving country has the right and the duty to regulate it. And those who come to the new country have an obligation to fit in with the existing society. Presumably they leave home to seek a better situation, so it is a tautology to say that the new country is better than the old in their own judgment.

U.S. immigration policy is a mess. Who gets into the U.S. is largely determined by those trying to get into the U.S. The only bright spots are H visas, which go to people who actually have useful skills (and often manage to stay if they want to), and the diversity lottery program. Otherwise we have a system that encourages people to sneak in and is auto correlated to bring in more (relatives) of those who recently got here by whatever means.

Australia has a better system. Immigrants get points for bringing various skills or attributes Australia needs. We should do something like that. We can still take in similar numbers, but improve the quality.

David,

I’m pretty right of center. I don’t care if there are cameras in subways. I’m not a criminal and I don’t pick my nose so I really don’t see the problem. I would carry a national ID if I had to. I carry a drivers license so what’s the big deal? If having my bag searched means that the illegal crap found in someone else’s bag is found, no problem. Nothing I own is illegal or that embarrassing (the sexy underwear goes in the checked bags). Don’t most countries in Europe require people to carry and present “papers”? Isn’t that what a passport is? My grandparents came here legally. If someone can’t get in legally, maybe there is a reason? Like a criminal record? I personally think we have enough criminals. People who are here illegally should be sent back to thier own countries. I live in a rural area that uses migrants. Many come from Texas with Texas plates, drivers’ licences, etc… As far as I know they are legals. I have no proof otherwise. But if they’re not, they should be deported.

Jennifer, we agree entirely. You missed my point however. If we did deport illegals, and close our borders tight to those we choose not to admit, we would not need to spend all these tax dollars and efforts on baggage and body searches, national ID’s, and more importantly, we would not need to fear mistaken identity or the growing threat of false implication.

Have you considered how easy it would be in this growing police state for a personal enemy of yours to set you up for a bust with little more than email or a planted piece of paper with a carefully drafted set of words?

That flimsy evidence today, under the Patriot Act can constitute sufficient evidence for a secret judge to order secret surveillance of you wherever you go and with whomever you speak, and you would never know you were being surveilled. And if you are busted, even if you are acquitted, do you have any idea how much money it would cost you to get yourself acquitted?

Think about it. If you think only the guilty are going to suffer, read todays headlines about the innocent Brazilian electrician who was shot dead in Great Britain - OOOPS!, so sorry…

The Patriot Act is not right wing. It is “neo-conservative” which is just liberals in Republicans clothing. I am a right winger, not republican though. Any government control is more left wing than right wing. The Patriot Act should be removed.

Also, many right wing parties favor citizens having guns - unlike left wing parties. I feel more comfortable with this.

Mike, you wrote,

“Also, many right wing parties favor citizens having guns - unlike left wing parties. I feel more comfortable with this.”

From that statement its unclear how you feel about gun ownership?

I take it as you agree with the 2nd amendment, some might be confused however?

Immigration is a tough issue in todays time of terriorism.

Most people would agree that most of the illegals are from Mexico, mainly looking for work and a better life for their family.
Most also agree that looking at the rules to make it easier for the honest,non criminal element of that country can add benifit to our own country.

The real problem comes (IMHO) that its next to impossible to re-write laws to make access easier for that to happen legaly, without apearing ethnicly or religousy biased in todays “PC” world.

Does anyone really want a guest worker program that gives the same weight to the statis of someone from Mexico AND Lebanon ?

I don’t think the threat is equal. How the hell do we deal with that in a “PC” world?

Fear based on fact. What fact? This seems like a broad, generalized opinion to me: immigrants are bad. It’s xenophobia, not security, to treat every immigrant as suspect. Also, as I’ve said before, paranoia is a waste of good suspicion. We should be following leads, not profiles in determining who the threats are to our country. Either way, we won’t catch 100% of the aliens or the terrorists, but at least if we’re not profiling, we won’t be doing injustice to those who have committed no crime, and do not seek to commit one.

Fact is, both illegal immigration here and migration there are the product of one thing: poverty in the homelands of these people. These people are looking for prosperity above all things, in their forays into our world. If we want to stop the flood in there, we will do our best as Western countries to foster broad-based prosperity and limit corruption in the countries of origin of these people.

Also, let’s stop being cheap. Pay citizens here the fair market price for their labor. I’d say the attempt to squeeze every dime out of the consumer and out of the payrolls has contributed much to the downturns in our economy. What people don’t get in a paycheck, they can’t spend, and what they can’t spend can’t flow through the economy.

Vicente Fox made a comment that Mexican Illegals do the jobs Blacks won’t do. For those of you who wonder who picks up the garbage and do the other sleazy jobs every society has, who will take their place?

Beagle -

Yes I strongly support the 2nd Amendment =)

Stephen Daugherty -

I was pointing out how ludacris it is for the media to constantly claim the right wing politicians are cheaply capitalizing on fears propounded by multiculturalism and illegal immigration. Because this is a fear based on fact. Illegal aliens are hiking up the crime rates and leeching off of many social services that they should not be entitled to. Not once did I mention that we need to treat every immigrant as a suspect. Multiculturalism is undermining our society as whole (just look at 7/7). When separate societies coexist in the same country a clash will inevitably happen.

Aldous,

Vicente Fox used a poor choice of words in his statement, easy for the PC crowd to attack that as racist.
I don’t think he’s a racist, he just made a dumb statement.
My best guess is he was talking about farm workers picking veggies and fruit, in that context he is correct, damn few Americans of any skin-tone wish to sign up for those jobs.

He is at fault for trying to sell the idea that those are the only type of jobs that illegal Mexicans are taking, many work in construction, which are high paying jobs.

I think sanitation workers also get paid quite well in most areas, and the workers cover every ethnic background.
I don’t think calling those jobs “sleazy” is fair, when they WORK hard for a living, and bathe after work.

Oilfield workers get dirty, and it also smells, is that a sleazy job also?

Mike T.
You make the argument that this is a fear based on fact. Fine. Present the facts, the statistics and conditions that present the problem in turn. Otherwise, you are making a broad unsupported claim that people should fear immigrants.

In principle I agree that social services should be reserved for those who are citizens, except where such removal of services would create a greater problem, as with health services. You don’t want a pool of people who aren’t going to doctors when they get sick. That’s both an epidemiological threat and a security threat in terms of bioterrorism.

What we should fear are holes in our security big enough to bring terrorists over our borders. We have the problem of having two of the longest uninterrupted borders in the world with our neighbors.

What I would propose is this: One time amnesty for adult illegal immigrants, encouraging them to come forward and make themselves known, along with a permanent process of provisional citizenship for those illegal aliens brought over as children, whose status is no fault of their own. At the same time, tighten borders and enforce labor regulations strictly There will be folks who complain about that, but the fact is, people don’t need to be breaking the law to get out of dealing with market-maintained wages for work. No Guest-Worker Program. That’s asking for a permanent underclass of low wage workers, and that’s what part of Europe’s problem is.

Economic sense cannot alone run our society. We should be willing to pay a little more and work a little harder ourselves in order to do these kinds of jobs. If people from outside this country want to do that work, they can immigrate legally, and enjoy the benefits of a citizen’s wage. We should not suffer another terrorist attack because we want to be needlessly cheap on our labor.

Beagle-
You know, Adam Smith commented that market forces tended to elevate the wages of those who do dirty, dangerous or disreputable work. It’s a notion our cheapskate business culture has too much of a problem with.

We shouldn’t be looking for ways to get out of dealing with market realities like wages and costs. We can search out low wage competition forever, or we can we improve the business practices so that everybody gets better value for their money.

Mike T. - I’d have to agree it is fear based on fact. Crime rates are rising in towns where there are illegal aliens. If I fear this, it is based on fact… Not a “right wing” cheapskate ploy to garner votes en masse. Liberals usually offer some “rainbow society” solution which makes me feel as if they are ignoring the problem altogether.

Stephen,

The so called “cheapskate” business’s will pay whatever the going rate is for those jobs, and pass the costs on to consumers.

Some jobs are hard to automate, like picking tomatos and other easily damaged fruit.

I want those workers to be both legal and respected, even if they’re only guest workers here for a short time.

Unless you know of a large group of people willing to pick those tomatos, how can evil business owners be supressing wages for those jobs?

James Chappelear-
Is it illegal immigration that encourages such crime, or merely the lax security which the illegal aliens take advantage of as well? Question is, if there weren’t so many powerful business interests bending the ears of the politicians on the matter, would our borders be so loose?

Beagle-
The first question is, what makes the going wage the going wage? An illegal alien, being undocumented, does not have the protection of a minimum wage or the recourse of other labor laws. The question is do we want to make them part of a permanent underclass of quasi-legitimate citizens who can be kicked back to Mexico at anytime?

The fact is, we’re simply being cheap, and for that, we get a socioeconomically deprived underclass with less of a loyalty to our country. That doesn’t sound like it makes much sense in economic or counterterrorism terms.

We don’t need half participants in this game, simply because the affluent don’t want to pay as much per worker as the market demands they do. It’s economic colonialism.

Beagle, Stephen is right. Adam Smith, revered by Republicans and most business people of any political ilk, made the point that if there are insufficient numbers of folks willing to do a job, the pay for that job is insufficient to create demand for that job. The wisdom of Adam Smith is inescapeable, here.

The problem is both illegal immigration which underbids the pay rate for many kinds of jobs from American workers, and our caste system which is beginning to look more like India’s in the 1930’s, in which “untouchable” jobs were relegated to the starving and unwashed, keeping those people starving and unwashed by unbelieveably low pay rates, only slightly higher than they could receive in their hometowns if they could find any work there at all.

There is no such thing as work folks refuse to do. If you pay septic tank cleaners $100 per hour, you will have no shortage of septic tank cleaners. And in fact, septic tanks are so indispensebale, and faulty workmanship has such foul results, that in fact, septic tank cleaners DO recieve as much as $100 per hour.

Stop illegal employment and immigration, and the market forces will elevate the pay scale for any and all jobs to the point at which supply and demand achieve equalibrium and all such jobs are filled by legal American workers.

Here is one more reason for illegal aliens to be dealt with in a fast proactive way to get them back home.

Recently in Phoenix a young man shot and killed 3 members of a family. He then kidnapped 2 small children and fled back to Mexico with a stolen car. Around July 19, 2005 Mexican authorities apprehended the man accused of the above crimes in Puerto Vallarta. The mother was reunited with her 2 small children. Here is the wacker in this series of events.
Mother says, “what he did to my parents and the kidnapping of my children that’s unforgivable by GOD.”
Mother also says,”I am so proud of my country. What the authorities of the United States couln’t do, they succeeded in doing here. This is my Mexico!”
My reply is, Stay there and don’t come back. Accusing our authorities of not doing anything is really grateful.
She is planning to return to this terrible country of ours. She is an illegial alien. She should be deported immediately upon here return to this country.

Stephen,

I wasn’t talking about anyone being illegal.

I was talking about the going rate for people willing to pick them. Sure, you can say tomato pickers in America should get $100 a day for picking 1-2 Bushels a day, many will line up for that job.

The end result is that the American worker is out of a job, and the American farm is shut down.

We import the freaking tomato and everyone is happy now?
There is a limit to the amount people will pay for tomato on their salad, or a BLT.

Wishing that every job paid the same, or hoping for socialism to catch on, wont change reality.

tom, there are plenty of arrogant and ungrateful Americans overseas too. It is a false argument to debate social groups on the back of one or a few individual incidents. There are all kinds of good and bad in any group of people you wish to define.

Every family has secrets regardless of how righteous, loyal or patriotic. Making decisions for who sub populations of people based on what a few do is the worst kind leadership, worst kind of debate, and frankly is counterproductive. It does not address the real issues and causes.

Tom-
If that woman was an American, the crime was committed in Mexico, and the fleeing criminal was caught here, would you bat an eye at her saying the equivalent here? She’s a Mexican. That’s her home country. If she comes over illegally again, by all means send her back. But don’t act like everybody in the world has to take America’s side of the argument. Much as we’d like that, it’s not exactly the way things work.

Beagle-
Look, we don’t need corporations taking the easy out in the labor market on all levels and paying foreign nationals el cheapo rates to the work Americans are perfectly willing to do for the right price. We don’t need an economically impoverished underclass of people who won’t put down roots. We need people who take up our nation as their own. If the price of the social justice, security, and law and order that brings to us, is refusing the economic windfalls of that, so be it. Money isn’t everything. I’m sick and tired of our country and our corporations sacrificing what’s decent and important in this country so a privileged few can profit. That’s not me being Socialist, that’s me being a moralist. We need more integrity in our lives than that.

Australia has a better system.

Australia is an island. They don’t have people tunneling under the South China Sea to get in.

You want to stem the flow of immigrants: Tighten up border security and crack down on businesses that hire illegals. Why are Republicans in Congress so reluctant to do that? Oh, yeah. Business thrives on cheap labor.

If you want to protest illegal immigration, protest everything about illegal immigration. When the local diner offers a $5.99 gut-buster breakfast, a price made possible by the Mexican busboy in front and the Mexican cook in back, slap down a $20 and say “No! Enough! I will pay $12 for this breakfast and I insist you pay a decent wage to a legal resident to cook it for me!” ? then you’ll have my support.

Republicans are for big business and cheap labor.

Close the borders and secure them.
Hire only Americans.
Force those using Social Services to do the labor others do not want to do, not illegal aliens.
That is the solution.

Andre-
I don’t think the social services approach works either. It’s still an permanent economic underclass, and worse, it’s indentured servitude, because the work is not taken on willingly. We need productive citizens whose wages are determined by market pressures both up and down, not folks who are being forced to work by their government.

Andre,

“Close the borders and secure them.
Hire only Americans.
Force those using Social Services to do the labor others do not want to do, not illegal aliens.
That is the solution.”

Careful now, some Rep.’s would agree with you.

A better Idea might be to have those non-violent prisoners in fed prison do the migarant labor work.
The farms can pay min. wage to the gov. for their services.
Marta Stewart always loved puttering around in the garden, she could have picked tomatos for 6 months.
The guy that got 25-life for fraud, his next degree could be in veggie picking.
The things they could be doing are limitless.
Scraping up roadkill off the highways comes to mind.
I’ll bet Judith Miller of the NYT would rat-out her sourse afer a few days of that.

“Think about it. If you think only the guilty are going to suffer, read todays headlines about the innocent Brazilian electrician who was shot dead in Great Britain - OOOPS!, so sorry..”

David, if he was so innocent why was he running? In the world as we know it today and especially after what has happened recently there, when an official tells you to stop and you run, you have put yourself in the risk of what may happen.

So yeah David……SORRY!

Stephen,

I agree with you on some of your points, I’m pro American products and workers.

Its just hard to inflate the wage of a job without inflating the price of a product beyond what the public is willing to pay.
In a world market the product would just be imported. Especially with nafta. Tomatos will grow in Mexico as well as Calif.

I don’t think you’re a socialist, but inflating a wage for a service, without controling the price of the produced product doesnt work. If both are done to reach the goal, it becomes socialism.

Aldous wrote….

“Vicente Fox made a comment that Mexican Illegals do the jobs Blacks won’t do. For those of you who wonder who picks up the garbage and do the other sleazy jobs every society has, who will take their place”

Funny you should ask Aldous. I think I may have a solution. Why not take a few million of the able bodied men and women who are collecting welfare checks and actually infringe on their rights to be lazy and ask them to work and earn their handouts. You can send a Lawyer and ACLU rep with them to make sure they are being treated properly.

Beagle-
The market is supposed to inflate wages, especially when the cost of living is as high in this country as it is. Workers can’t be productive if they can’t eat, pay the bills, or keep healthy. All we’re doing with illegal immigrants is creating a situation in which we’re subsidizing another country’s economy at our own expense, while denying people here the jobs. The Market is too complex to assume that just because you pay people less in wages, there’s more money to go around.

Stephen,

Nowhere have I endorsed or implyed a need for illegals to work here doing anything.

If you check into it you will find that even the farm workers here illegaly are making more than min. wage. They just don’t pay taxes.
I agree, hire, knowingly, illegals..go to prison.

Secure the borders, deport illegals, and if jobs cant be filled by market based wage workers, look into a guest worker program.

Beagle says, “It also would give illegals more rights than Americans in some cases.” Ha, ha, ha, ha. I guess they’re exempted from the Patriot Act!

Mike T

The left and right wings meet if you extend them out far enough. They are equally distrustful of government and other authority and have the need to control others. Nazism in practice was very similar to the practice of Communism in the Soviet Union and in Maoist China. The words were very different but the behavior ultimately indistinguishable.

Oh, and Mike T., I noticed you didn’t point to Eric Rudolph as one of the dangers, because his parents immigrated here to the US.

Mental Wimp -

I blogged my thoughts on this issue primarily to point out that the RIGHT WING is not capitalizing as cheaply as the LEFT WING makes them out to be when it comes to immigration and Islamic terrorism

I find it interestering that the left is just now starting to say what I’ve been saying for the last 20 years or so.
Tighen border security and immigration policies.
Where were they when Clinton gave legal status to all the illegals then made them citizens just before the 2000 election.

WHAT VACUUS PRADLE!?! See I can use big words too. Is our culture not derived from the integration of other cultures? I find your degredation of immigration offensive and racially biast. Buying something made in Mexico is under the same context as buying something made by a Mexican. All the immigrants want is a better life for themselves and their families just like the immigrants who came through places like Ellis island. You shouldn’t be so ungreatful for the important impact that immigrants have played in the American culture as a whole.

I’m back…..
David,
You’re right, for once we agree. Close the borders, deport illegals, etc… BUT… What about the home grown terrorists (such as in London)? How do we protect ourselves against them? Ideas?

I just skimmed some of the other posts, but I’m amazed at the one post that compared the immigrants that came through Ellis Island with the illegals comming over the border under cover of darkness. That’s comparing apples and oranges. I am decended from allumi of Ellis Island and I am proud of that fact. No one in my family came here illegally. Yours?

David:

If we did deport illegals, and close our borders tight to those we choose not to admit, we would not need to spend all these tax dollars and efforts on baggage and body searches,

Really? I was under the impression that all of the 9-11 hijackers were here legally. Some even had their visas renewed after the attacks, if I recall correctly.

It really seems like we should be focusing more on making our infrastructure secure and defensible from any threat, foreign or domestic, than on worrying so much about who can get near it. The former presumes that anyone can be a threat, the latter assumes we will always know who is a threat in advance. Experience dictates that the latter attitude has little basis in reality. It’s not like we haven’t encountered home-grown terrorists before.

Beagle,

I will never claim to be a Democrat or a Republican because on certain issues I am conservative.
This happens to be one of them. You claim that the people who are on public assistance are victims of society. That I do not agree with. I have seen third generation welfare families all raised to reach the age that they too become eligable for assistance so that they may follow the family tradition of “Cranking out children and supporting them utilizing welfare.” If a person depends on public assistance they should be offered two options. 1) Return to school with whatever assistance you need to be successful(Child care, Transportation etc.)or 2)Work locally, where the government finds work for you(That is safe and meaningful to the people doing the job and most importantly, the taxpaying people who are supporting them. They should not be allowed to have more children unless they can prove they are capable of supporting them.
I am all for public assistance but not enabling. The system today makes those who need it dependant on it.

Mike T.,

Bush used fear based on fiction to win reelection and attack another country.
Write about that.

Andre,

You stated that I wrote the following..

” You claim that the people who are on public assistance are victims of society.”

I sure can’t remember writing that anywhere, ever?

I do feel that some on public aid have little choice in the matter, disabled ect.
I agree that many are just to lazy to work and should be cut from the rolls.

I suggested useing prison labor to replace illegals.
The illegals should be sent home, and those that employ them should go to prison for that.

It would go full circle, they would be prisoners forced to do the work that they employed illegals to do, which is why they went to prison.
Ya gotta love that plan ?