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Post by millring on Nov 23, 2014 13:15:44 GMT -5
What do you suppose the percentage is of Americans who actually want unlimited immigration? What do you suppose the percentage is of Americans who actually want no immigration? What do you suppose the percentage is of Americans who (as the President has presented in his speech -- highlighted in the facebook meme copied below) take issue with the president using an executive order to "fix" immigration because they don't want immigration, rather than that they resent the overstep of power?
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Post by Doug on Nov 23, 2014 14:31:50 GMT -5
Weren't no welcome when we got here in 1717, weren't no country. I would say less than 5% for #1 I would say less than 10% for #2 And I'd say 99% for #3 But I mostly can't see a way for the new congress to fix what Obama is doing. That's one of the problems with omnibus spending bills. If things were voted one one at a time congress could cut off funding to certain things. But with the modern system you get it all thrown in and if you don't spend how Obama/Bush/Clinton etc wants they veto and you get gov shutdown and they said/he said blame games.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2014 15:07:04 GMT -5
We were all strangers once. When the proto-humans wandered in over the Bering crossing, nobody lived here. When Europeans first started coming here in the 15th century, the population was small enough that there was still "plenty of space and plenty of resources" to expand into. Ditto during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Now? We are more resource constrained that we were then. Add to that, we have instituted government financial programs that mean you no longer arrive, and then sink or swim without help. Like it or not, that has also put strain in resources in the form of money.
The sum of all this in my mind is that it is intellectual laziness to point to the past immigration patterns as a model for future policy. The President isn't alone in this, as Bush also used that line of thought.
I'm not anti-immigration, but I'm not for unregulated immigration either. I've promised myself to get more familiar with Australian policy, for instance, where you have to show some proof of economic viability before being allowed in.
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Post by millring on Nov 23, 2014 15:14:04 GMT -5
That's pretty much how I feel about it. But I really resented the president boiling it down to we either welcome everyone or we're hateful, stingy bigots, when that: 1. oversimplifies the immigration issue beyond recognition, and 2. ignores that what he's doing isn't constitutional and that just might bother a few of us who care about executive branch overstep -- and have cared about that for quite some time.
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Post by fauxmaha on Nov 23, 2014 15:23:28 GMT -5
There is a strong (but minority) strain of political thought in this country that everyone in the world has a human right to live in America.
That baffles me.
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Post by millring on Nov 23, 2014 16:55:41 GMT -5
There is a strong (but minority) strain of political thought in this country that everyone in the world has a human right to live in America. That baffles me. My friend, Doug, posted on his status update: I don't discuss politics on facebook, but I'm dying to ask him if he thinks there should be any restrictions on immigration. He was mightily cheered by all his friends for his magnanimous post.
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Post by theevan on Nov 23, 2014 17:05:24 GMT -5
Wasn't there a nonpartisan/bipartisan panel that brought forth suggested legislation? As I remember it, it struck the ideal balance between security, streamlining immigration, and a path to citizenship. What happened?
We need immigration for our well-being. And we need border security for our well-being. Both could and should go hand-in-hand.
So far it seems the various positions are embarrassingly political.
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Post by RickW on Nov 23, 2014 17:14:40 GMT -5
To be honest, Obama has been tarred recently from both sides of the political fence. The latest campaign was one long, nasty smear campaign. And the left has said he has not done a quarter of what he said he would do when he started, which is the truth. He probably should not have promised to reinvent the political universe. So, this was one of the things he said he'd do something about, cooperation and discussion have not achieved much of anything, he's lost the house, so he's saying up yours, its going through. I don't agree or disagree with what he's done, I'm not American and have no skin in the game, but this is what the next two years will be, if I'm not mistaken.
I understand the humanitarian problem. I also understand that he's just basically said, "keep coming, don't follow the process, you'll be first in line."
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Post by millring on Nov 23, 2014 18:19:25 GMT -5
I also understand that he's just basically said, "keep coming, don't follow the process, you'll be first in line." That, and "you're a bad person if you disagree with open borders."
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Post by jdd2 on Nov 23, 2014 18:20:39 GMT -5
An opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal:
The President Is Right on Immigration By Stephen Legomsky Nov. 23, 2014 5:02 p.m. ET
President Obama announced Thursday a temporary reprieve from deportation, and offered temporary permission to work, for several million undocumented longtime residents with close family members in the U.S. The executive order, he said, was not an amnesty and federal authorities would focus on deporting “felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.”
Predictably, his critics have accused him of acting illegally. The accusations are baseless.
The president’s legal authority is clear. First, the prosecutorial discretion that the president has exercised is a well-established, vital law-enforcement tool. When resources don’t permit 100% enforcement, agencies are forced to set priorities. Year after year, Congress has knowingly given the administration only enough resources to take legal action against some 400,000 of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.—less than 4% of that population. Sensibly, the administration believes that removing those who threaten public safety and those who entered recently is a higher priority than breaking up families and upending the lives of productive long-term residents—especially those brought here as children.
OK, some say, I get prosecutorial discretion. But where is the legal authority to grant deferred action—the program that provides temporary reprieves—and work permits? The answer is simple. The immigration statute expressly recognizes deferred action by name, expressly authorizes the administration to grant work permits, and places no limitations on either. The formal agency regulations, in place since 1987, specifically authorize the grant of work permits to recipients of deferred action. And a long line of court decisions expressly recognize deferred action, again without limitation.
Second, there is no constitutional impediment. Critics sometimes charge that executive action on the scale he outlined Thursday would violate the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The president will continue to uphold that constitutional obligation. His actions will still leave millions of undocumented immigrants to pursue, with resources that still will make barely a dent in that remaining population. Nothing the president is doing will prevent him from continuing to deport as many undocumented immigrants as his limited resources permit. He is therefore “taking care that the laws be faithfully executed” to the full extent that the resources Congress has appropriated will allow. Two months ago, 138 law professors who specialize in immigration wrote to the president, confirming his legal authority to use deferred action for large groups of undocumented immigrants.
Third, almost all of our recent presidents—men as politically diverse as Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush —have taken similar large-scale actions, for humanitarian and foreign-policy reasons. For example, after Congress provided legalization to certain undocumented immigrants but consciously declined to do so for their family members, President Reagan unilaterally extended legalization to the children. The first President Bush then further extended it to the spouses and granted them work permits. These executive actions were projected to reach 1.5 million family members—almost half of the then-undocumented population. None of these presidents’ actions elicited howls of protest, cries of “illegal,” and threats of impeachment—until President Obama announced he would do something similar.
Fourth, the president is not creating a new path to permanent residence. He recognizes that only Congress can do that. His decision will be only a temporary measure, one that settled law and layers of executive precedents clearly permit.
Finally, consider the practicalities. Deferred action gets people out of the shadows and into the open. Right now, we don’t know their names. We don’t know where they live. We don’t know their histories. To receive deferred action, they will have to provide all this information and more. The government will perform background checks for any criminal histories or other concerns.
This population is not about to leave. They have stuck it out even through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But because they have not been authorized to work, unscrupulous employers know they can hire them at shockingly low wages. This not only gives employers an incentive to hire them over U.S. job seekers, it also depresses the market wages for all workers. By permitting these individuals to work legally, the president’s actions take away both of those perverse incentives. That’s good news for them and all U.S. workers.
Republican congressional leaders say these actions destroy any prospects for legislative reform. But the House has made abundantly clear that it had no intention of passing comprehensive immigration reform. Despite years of debate, and 17 months after the Senate passed its bipartisan bill, the House has not passed—or, for that matter, brought to a vote—even the piecemeal legislation that it claims to prefer. Going from “we won’t pass a bill” to “now we really won’t pass a bill” is not a credible threat.
It is also not a rational threat. If the president’s congressional critics are truly unhappy with his temporary solutions, there is an easy remedy: Pass a bill that permanently fixes what all seem to agree is a broken immigration system.
Mr. Legomsky, a law professor at Washington University and former chief counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security (2011-13), is the author, with Cristina Rodriguez, of “Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy” (Foundation Press, 2009).
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Post by theevan on Nov 23, 2014 18:36:32 GMT -5
Considering Mr. Legomsky's depth of experience, he ought to know.
I get that this is temporary. We really need good legislation, if such a thing is even remotely possible. And funding to match the legislation. I have no problem with Obama's work-around, so far as I know. I have no patience with those shouting "NO AMNESTY!".
Meanwhile, it's still hard as hell for talented, educated, motivated foreign national to go through the process legally. We're getting the from-the-bottom immigrants (and we need them), but we desperately need the top talent.
BTW, Japan really needs to liberalize their immigration policy. I understand it's a cultural thing, but man, they're in crisis.
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Post by brucemacneill on Nov 23, 2014 18:42:33 GMT -5
Mr. Legomsky's was part of Obama's transition team so he's not exactly non-partisan. The WSJ doesn't censor leftist views. It's an op-ed not an editorial. Obama promised to destroy the United States as we knew it (Fundamentally Change) and he's doing a fine job. Mr. Legomsky's is one of his lawyers.
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Post by Doug on Nov 23, 2014 18:59:04 GMT -5
The southern border isn't a case of immigration legal or illegal it's a case of invasion and should be handled my the Army.
Let the Army do what it is meant to do, defend the US against foreign invaders. Not go messing around in stuff that is none of our business so some politicians can gain from murdering US troops.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2014 19:08:53 GMT -5
Some context. Obama's pre election 2008 comments "Now, Mizzou, I just have two words for you tonight: five days. Five days. After decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that's taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. "In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor." www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/feb/06/what-barack-obama-has-said-about-fundamentally-tra/
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Post by Kramster on Nov 23, 2014 19:48:41 GMT -5
I just figure we have the laws in place already. Enforce them.
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Post by jdd2 on Nov 23, 2014 20:12:05 GMT -5
Considering Mr. Legomsky's depth of experience, he ought to know. ... I thought he presented a clearly argued opinion. ... BTW, Japan really needs to liberalize their immigration policy. I understand it's a cultural thing, but man, they're in crisis. Yes, predicted population collapse, not just some moderate decline. My small uni does have several hundred chinese exchange students,** only a drop in the overall bucket Most do their junior/senior years here, but some do all four. No hard numbers but a big chunk go on to grad school (most here, remaining to oz/nz, the US seems very closed to these people). Another big group returns to china. Those in the smallest group (20%?) find work here, but they're good people to have--college-educated, fluent in two languages and probably english, too, and also young, hungry, and often with big ideas/dreams. (unlike most of my japanese students) **This program has pretty much rescued my school. If we had to make do with a shrinking portion of the declining japanese student population, school finances would be quite different. Besides their tuition payments, the japanese government adds some grants to schools that are doing this.
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Post by Marshall on Nov 23, 2014 20:34:01 GMT -5
To the original question; I would agree with Doug on the first two. Maybe 10% & 10%. The last one is harder to assess. I think there's a 3rd option. People don't like Laws that shouldn't be broken. I'd say it's about 1/3 don't want immigration (from brown countries), 1/3 don't want lawlessness to be rewarded, and 1/3 that resent overstepping of power. But the 1/3 of the that is the resent group is just political bullshit. Because if it was their guy doing the overstepping they'd be silent on the subject. And probably 1/3 of the lawlessness people would also be silent as well if their guy was making the deal, even though they'd squirm a little about the particulars. But the 2/3 of the (lawless group) are sincere in their desire for the rule of law to be respected. You could argue on the percentages; and probably should (and will ). But, barring more scientific evidence, I'll go with my sweeping response. In recap Don't want any immigration: 10%Want open Immigration: 10%"resenters" Don't want hardly any immigration from poor countries: 26.67%Don't want criminal activity to be rewarded no matter who says it's OK: 17.78%Don't want criminal activity to be rewarded but would shut up if it was their guy: 8.89%Those whose resentment was just political bullshit: 26.67%
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Post by Doug on Nov 23, 2014 20:57:37 GMT -5
I could go with your numbers except your groups don't have a place for the ones that "don't have a guy" and that group seems to be getting bigger each day.
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Post by Marshall on Nov 23, 2014 21:09:32 GMT -5
Nobody has a guy. Negative political ads work because you just want the populace to hate the other candidate more than your party's candidate. Nobody votes FOR someone. Everybody votes AGAINST somebody else.
But still when the guy in your party does something questionable, you're more apt to sit on your hands. Whereas EVERYTHING the other party's guy does is a CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. Knee jerk response.
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Post by theevan on Nov 23, 2014 21:10:17 GMT -5
I just figure we have the laws in place already. Enforce them. That might be part of the problem. There are complex reasons why the laws on the books aren't being enforced. Many, maybe most, are political. But the laws themselves don't fit the situation. We desperately need new laws. The surest way to slow the flood is to make the process for legal entry a better option than illegal. That requires two basic things: Make it harder to enter illegally, and make it easier (cheaper, faster) to enter legally. We don't need new laws for the first part. It is supposed to be a sovereign imperative. But it will likely never happen until the varied interests know that a ready supply of workers can be had through the legal channels.
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