Legislation to Criminalize Undocumented Immigrants

Illegal immigration has been in the news in a big way lately largely due to the bill passed in the House of Representatives that would criminalize undocumented immigrants and anyone helping them or hiring them. Here in California, we're the leader in illegal immigrants, so it's a pretty big local issue as the huge marches in Los Angeles showed. What do you think of the bill or of our illegal immigration situation?

Can you imagine arresting all the immigrants and charging them with a felony any other time in our history. This is ridiculous. Is it a felony for an american to be illegally in any other country. What nerve the anti mexican contingent has. I guess next we will return to the days where we shoot them on site like we did with the indians. Nearly wiping them out. Many Mexican families, like mine, and the Japanese during WW2 had their land taken from them immorally. The blacks and chinese were forced to come here in chains and now we want to say "stay out" we don't want anymore. This country is made up of immigrants. I don't know too many true North Americans besides my extended family. Everyone came from somewhere else and usually not LEGALLY. They were absorbed. But it all comes down to money. It is okay to pay for welfare families but hard working immigrants who are doing jobs none of us want, are going to be felons.

I know of workers, students and visa violators who have stayed beyond their allowed time. We want to jam the courts, run up legal fees and make them felons?

Dumb law, dumb, dumb law. Lets fight corruption, illegal government subsidies, corporations who shield their income to avoid American taxes if we are so hard up for revenue to pay for social services. Lets try not to run up a $400 billion dollar deficit so we can pay for what we are already committed for. There are lots of places to improve our country, but picking on the poorest and least represented is always the easiest alternative.

Joe

They've been covering illegal immigration a lot on NPR lately. Mostly, the coverage was all stuff I've heard before with one end of the spectrum being the "Just about all of us are immigrants, so what's the problem?" side and the other end being the "We believe in fairness, and the rule of law" side. That's a debate that can go on forever. I think both sides have very valid points there, but there was one segment on summarizing some research into the economic impact of illegal immigration which was far more interesting to me.

If that story is correct, then the end result is a essentially a push. Wages do get depressed for a percentage of low-skill workers, but by less than 10%. For everyone else, the saying that they do jobs that American's won't take is basically true. There is an added drain on social services as well. On the other side though, they find that they decrease the cost of goods for all Americans and provide enough tax basis and consumer activity to offset money spent on social services. The end result of this analysis was that Americans on average are just less than 1% richer as a result of illegal immigration.

I think illegal immigration is something that does need to be addressed more openly, but I find the latest bill to be a bunch of political BS. Prisons are overflowing and the FBI complains that some agents don't have e-mail accounts. I suppose we can have a huge bake sale to build that wall they want.

It seems to me that this issue is being used similar to the way the Danish cartoons were being used in radical Islamic countries, as a red herring to other issues affecting the society. It has the potential to incite xenophobia and racism... not what this country needs right now.

Immigrants are part of the American fabric. As Americans we have always relied on the labor immigrants provide, and those immigrants have added to America. At the same time, those Americans here when the immigrants arrived have treated immigrants as scapegoats. It didn’t matter whether they were Chinese, Italian, Irish, Africans or whatever. The same is the case now with Latin American immigrants. The opinion of the uninformed is that they are what’s wrong with America.

Those Americans that say that the immigrants are taking jobs from Americans are wrong. Those Americans benefit from immigrant labor more than it costs us. Would you agree to pay 25% more for food? If the undocumented or illegals weren’t working in a restaurant, than that Big Mac would be priced out of the reach of the American who complain the most.

Illegals pay taxes! The government gets it both ways. The IRS issues ITN numbers so these people can pay taxes, but if the INS catches them they are deported. The government gets their taxes, and then treats them as a criminal for working and earning a wage and paying them taxes. The illegals also can’t collect public assistance, because they don’t have documents. A check on their SS# would result in deportation! So, they work hard, stay out of trouble, pay taxes, buy cars, have bank accounts, insurance, like American citizens; but without protection of US laws.

We need to find a way to incorporate those hard working people into legal society. These workers need protection from corrupt employers that take advantage of these workers. We need to get rid of or reduce the underground economy that thrives and bring it into the daylight and benefit from it. What America needs is hard working people like these immigrants, and a way for them to become Americans.

As a nation of laws, it is very disconcerting to see millions of lawbreakers jump ahead in the citizenship queue over law abiding immigrants.

Until the race to the bottom is finished, the US will continue its march to third world nation status. Of course, those in the haves camp will not suffer from the mass illegal immigration effect.

Ellis Island is a great place to visit. Note that the last huge wave of immigration preceded the Great Depression. Doesn't mean that we are headed to another one, but it sure gives pause for thought and reminders of the days of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

With regards to the "nation of immigrants" mantra: there was a good report on this myth that I lost the link to. Maybe you can google it up. Unfortunately, this statement is now an accepted truth even if it is wrong. Perhaps the mantra could be amended to be a nation of LEGAL immigrants.