What is the TRUE reason for our immigration problem?

Hadenough

Cost to Country and People is complaint here.

Poor life and wanting more and Bad Goverment there.

PANCHA

One started it all.The rumor that America's streets are paved in gold.

strong_beautifulqueen

Well one legitimate argument I have heard against "illegal immigration" is that schools are overcrowded enough without "illegal immigrant children" into "our" schools. We need more schools and more tax dollars generated in order to compensate for the already inadequate school systems of America.
I use quotes because i usually dont use words like illegal to describe human beings, and I certainly make no claims to this land (America) as my possession exclusively.

Everybody has an opinion on it and those opinions are based on stereotypes and are usually not accurate. I'm not saying I know the root of the problem either but so long as I can live in peace and raise and protect my family, I will not worry about things like that.

Greed and mismanagement by southern American countries. If they gave a crap about their people they will do better providing for them. An example several countries offered money to keep the illegals to the U.S.

If they did their job they would not have had to offer

politicallypuzzeled

CHEAP LABOR !!!!

narneumqueen

the true reason is ignorance!
a lot of immigrants come here to work (or make easy money) because they grew up hearing that this country is a tree of money, that everything is easy here, and that you can sue any and everybody.
a lot of americans want to kick immigrants out because they are not like them and because they are taking "our jobs".
they are both wrong.
it takes hard work to make it here ( or a rich daddy or mommy) and they are not taking your jobs, they are doing the work you dont want do do.
i bet the same people that complaint are the same people that choose to hire the contractor that charged them a couple of thousand dollars less to do a repair in their homes. think about it, why are you paying less?

bunt

The law has changed too much and people today can't come to US unless they win the Green Card Lottery. If your ancestors had to win a lottery, none of YOU would be here now.
But back then the borders were open, anyone could just show up and get citizenship.
Citizens of many countries(like Mexico or Russia) cannot participate in the GC lottery. So Mexicans are forced to pay $2,500 a smuggler to be able to work for at least $1,000, which they make for 5 months in Mexico.

O, tempora, o , mores!

The reality is that we don't have an "Illegal Immigration" problem in America. We have an "Illegal Employer" problem.

Yet it's almost never mentioned in the mainstream media, because to point it out could slightly reduce the profits and CEO salaries of many of America's largest multi-state and multinational corporations - who both own the media and contribute heavily to conservative politicians. Republicans would prefer that the "criminals" covered in the press are working people, and that corporate and CEO criminals not get discussed.

Encouraging a rapid increase in the workforce by encouraging companies to hire non-citizens is one of the three most potent tools conservatives since Ronald Reagan have used to convert the American middle class into the American working poor. (The other two are destroying the governmental protections that keep labor unions viable, and ending tariffs while promoting trade deals like NAFTA/WTO/GATT that export manufacturing jobs.)

For example, when Nike began manufacturing shoes in Third World countries with labor costs below US labor costs, it didn't lead to $15 Nikes - their price held, and even increased, because the market would bear it. Instead, that reduction in labor costs led to Nike CEO Phil Knight becoming a multi-billionaire.)

Republicans understand this very, very well, although they never talk about it.

The fact is that we had an open border with Mexico for several centuries, and "illegal immigration" was never a serious problem. Before Reagan's presidency, an estimated million or so people a year came into the US from Mexico - and the same number, more or less, left the US for Mexico at the end of the agricultural harvest season. Very few stayed, because there weren't jobs for them.

Non-citizens didn't have access to the non-agricultural US job market, in large part because of the power of US labor unions (before Reagan 25% of the workforce was unionized; today the private workforce is about 7% unionized), and because companies were unwilling to risk having non-tax-deductible labor expenses on their books by hiring undocumented workers without valid Social Security numbers.

But Reagan put an end to that. His 1986 amnesty program, combined with his aggressive war on organized labor (begun in 1981), in effect told both employers and non-citizens that there would be few penalties and many rewards to increasing the US labor pool (and thus driving down wages) with undocumented immigrants. A million people a year continued to come across our southern border, but they stopped returning to Latin America every fall because instead of seasonal work they were able to find permanent jobs.

The magnet drawing them? Illegal Employers.

Yet in the American media, Illegal Employers are almost never mentioned.

Lou Dobbs, the most visible media champion of this issue, always starts his discussion of the issue with a basic syllogism - 1. Our border is porous. 2. People are coming across our porous border and diluting our labor markets, driving down US wages. 3. Therefore we must make the border less porous.

Lou's syllogism, however, ignores the real problem, the magnet drawing people to risk life and limb to illegally enter this country - Illegal Employers. Our borders have always been porous (and even with a "fence" will still allow through "tourists" by the millions), but we've never had a problem like this before.

And it's not just because poverty has increased in Mexico - today, about half of Mexico lives on less than $2 a day, but 50 years ago half of Mexico also lived on the equivalent of $2 today. Our trade and agricultural policies are harmful to Mexican farmers (and must be changed!), but we were nearly as predatory fifty years ago (remember the rubber and fruit companies, particularly in Central America?).

Yet fifty years ago we didn't have an "illegal immigration" problem, because back then we didn't have a conservative "Illegal Employer" problem

The hiring crimes of Illegal Employers are being ignored by the law, and rewarded by the economic systems of the nation.

Proof that this simple reality is ignored in our media (much to the delight of Republicans) is everywhere you look. For example, check out a series of national polls on illegal immigration done over the past year at
http://www.pollingreport.com/immigration.htm

Only the CNN poll asked the question: "Would you favor increasing penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants?" Two-thirds of Americans, of all party affiliations, said, "Yes," but it went virtually unreported in mainstream media coverage.

"Illegal Immigration" is really about "Illegal Employers." As long as Democrats argue it on the basis of "illegal immigration" they'll lose, even when they're right. Instead, they need to be talking about "Illegal Employers."

Politically, it's not a civil rights issue, it's a jobs issue, as working Americans keep telling pollsters over and over again.

"Mass deportations" and "Fences" are hysterics and false choices. Start penalizing "Illegal Employers"
and non-citizens without a Social Security number will leave the country on their own.
And they won't have to confront death trying to cross the desert back into Mexico - Mexican citizens can simply walk back into Mexico across the border at any legal border crossing (as about a million did every year for over a century).

Easy, simple, cheap, painless. No fence required. No mass deportations necessary. No need for Homeland Security to get involved. When jobs are not available, most undocumented workers will simply leave the country (as they always did before), or begin the normal process to obtain citizenship that millions go through each year.

Now even Bush is talking like the Republicans in the House of Representatives - time to "get tough" and give Halliburton a few hundred billion to build a fence.

But still nobody is talking about the real problem here - the Illegal Employers.

Daisy

JD sure has this one! He has all the info and he knows for what he is talking about! All we would have to do is hit all the employers of illegal immigrants hard enough to make it not worthwhile financially for them to continue hiring illegal immigrants, and the illegals would take themselves on back out of the USA and without any deportation costs borne by the citizens.

The TRUE reason for our ILLEGAL immigration problem (we don't have a LEGAL immigration problem), is the EMPLOYERS of illegal immigrants! Plain and simple. Secondary, I would say is the lack of education of the illegal immigrants - they are mostly uneducated and ignorant and so don't know enough to know how to do things right and in their own countries.

Tyrus

I firmly believe that via our corruptament, as I call it, the push to establish the NWO, "New World Order" of which is a massive government that will control all nations as one, is gaining ground via many sources such as our most elite members of the past, and current administrations, the house and senate, and a huge list of extremely rich industrialists, corporate heads, and globalists throughout the world, thus the invasion of outlaws into our country is yet another means to weaken and divide our nation by catering to the outlaws via welfare, free medical care, and anything else they stick their miserable cowardly we're so helpless hands out for.

yars232c

In the days of Jimmy Carter when he actively stopped with no explaination or reason stopped deporting illegals because he was a wuss President. That was built upon the first action in 1965 when Ted convinced everyone to go off the quota system and onto the merit system - to have an unlimited amount of people come here illegally - then in 1986 Reagan announced we lost control of our border and Congress couldn't care less so he made 3 million citizens - and the hits just keep on coming!!!

Now the Senate Bill with Ted will be the first of a number of laws and policies to extinguish the American citizen as you know it. It cannot be permitted to happen. Our country is scheduled to start taking orders from foreign nationals in 2010 - Oh, Bush didn't tell you? Well niether did he tell Congress.

TOM TANCREDO FOR PRESIDENT!!

DAR

I think the biggest reason is that we have universal education and our next door neighbor doesn't. How many parents move for better school districts much less for subsidized education altogether?

If there were a smaller number of them, and when it was a smaller number it wasn't as big a problem. However, education is failing for our own children now in border states, with the huge drain on our overcrowded, underfunded schools.

The second biggest reason is that big business and Bush like letting cheap labor in and don't care about the impact on the schools. As a result, the immigration laws we have are not being enforced.

elperro

No immigration problem. Illegal hiring problem.

Peach Godiva

because they want to come over for a better life.

and it's too hard to get in legally, so they sneak into the borders.

they want to get rich or die trying.

The Killer Tomato

The true reason? Depends on what your viewpoint is...

I think the "true reason" is that there is not enough done by the Mexican government to build their own govnerment and infrastructure to support the economy. Mexico has the potential to have a huge low wage labor force that can at least take some of what China has been doing.

Additionally, the policy in the US is either you are one of us or you aren't. It would be very wise to have a large guest worker program. This way the guest workers would have a legal position if injured or sick. Additionally, they would not have to worry about illegallly crossing the border. The employeers could guarantee that many of the same reliable workers would return and keep production high. Further, there would be payroll taxes and other benefits that would legitimize those who cross the border illegally...and the coyotes would largely be put out of business.

Politics

Chuck H

Why did you make the word true in uppercase?

First Lady

I think it's a problem because the government won't do anything about it. They come over here for a better life which you can't blame them for doing. However, if these businesses wouldn't hire them, they wouldn't have much of a reason for coming. They hire them because they can pay them cheap wages and get away with it.

poodie

because people live in a bleeding heart country....us picks and chooses the laws they enforce

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