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Post by theevan on Nov 23, 2014 21:11:49 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. Coming from the generation that wrung its hands over the population explosion it's weird to accept that population decline can be a big problem. But it is.
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Post by millring on Nov 23, 2014 21:31:28 GMT -5
Marshall makes the best argument because he had the good sense to make up some statistics. And he made up good, believable ones like 26.67%. You can't argue against good, hard numbers like that.
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Post by Village Idiot on Nov 23, 2014 22:52:51 GMT -5
I don't have a problem with what Obama did. The way I understand it, he's not welcoming everyone in, but putting a focus on the people we should keep out.
As it is now, immigration is like a little kid soccer game in the United States. Anyone in this country ever watched one of those? The ball is there, so everyone runs over there. The ball is kicked here, so everyone comes running over here. Then it's kicked to that corner, so everyone comes running to that corner. It's cute at first, then kind of funny, but as the kids get older people decide to teach them how to actually play.
I see Obama's move as learning how to actually play the game. Instead of a Walmart worker swinging a net around in an aquarium trying to catch any fish despite the fact that the customer wants a certain one, the employee learns how to net the specific fish. In this case, it's learning how to catch the fish that needs to go. We need to protect out borders, but we don't need a reason to re-write "Deportees":
Now please allow me to duck my head when I ask if the immigrants were from Germany or England if our thoughts would be the same.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2014 23:01:24 GMT -5
If the immigrants from England and Germany were here illegally and had nothing to offer vis a vis skills, they are welcome to go back home. Sheesh.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2014 23:01:59 GMT -5
I'd post more, but I'm late for my White Power rally.
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Post by Village Idiot on Nov 23, 2014 23:39:11 GMT -5
If the immigrants from England and Germany were here illegally and had nothing to offer vis a vis skills, they are welcome to go back home. Sheesh. I understand that, Paul. It's been my experience, however, that if you need a roof or a pole building or something like that, they can do it and do it well. We hired Amish to roof our house after a big storm, and two years later half of the shingles blew away. The neighbors who hired people from south of the border are in good shape, and they continue to hire them for many things. The dilemma is that the children of the hard-working folks who have come here don't aspire to be in the labor industry. They want to be educated toward white-collar careers. I understand that that is an issue. But in the meantime, I do believe that our focus needs to be on the criminals, the drug traffickers and the outlaws. We've got a lot of people to chase around, so we need to prioritize.
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Post by patrick on Nov 23, 2014 23:46:25 GMT -5
Apparently support for this is uniformly over 60%, in both states Obama won and lost. The system is broken, ineffective, and damaging to America. This is a sensible limited response to the problem.
Congress don't like it? Pass the legislation sitting on Boehner's desk.
I see this as very much like the war on drugs, enforcement is doing more harm than good.
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Post by lar on Nov 23, 2014 23:47:21 GMT -5
I am old enough that I should no longer be surprised or amazed when partisan politics renders our government incapable of addressing, much less solving, problems. How many times must the immigration issue, particularly as it involves immigrants from Mexcico, come to the fore only to be set aside because this nation’s legislators are unable and unwilling to set aside their differences for the good of the country?
Honest political debate ought to be the order of the day. It is not. Our elected leaders are doing things because they can, not because they ought to be done. The President’s executive action takes advantage of what has been described as a long standing practice among presidents. Perhaps it’s a practice that should have been stopped the first time it was tried. I’m a proponent of separation of powers and to me this smacks of an action that is supposed to be reserved for the Congress. No, the President has not made law. Nonetheless what he has done has much the same effect. And there was no debate about this and no vote. I am enough of a cynic to believe that this is not a practice to be encouraged by Presidents of either party.
On the other hand, Obama may not have decided that his announcement was necessary if Congress had acted to pass an immigration reform bill. The House Republicans, in all of their wisdom, decided not to even bring the Senate bill to a vote. Nor did they bring their own bill to a vote. Why? Because the President wanted immigration reform. It had nothing to do with the merits of either bill. It was simply a case of, “We don’t have to cooperate with this president so we won’t.”
That’s what this country’s government has come to. A president who takes an action because he thinks he can get away with it and members of the House, who are from the other party, who refuse to do important work because they can get away with it too. What kind of childish crap is that from our elected officials?
I haven’t spent so much time paying attention the immigration issue that I consider myself particularly knowledgeable. But things both sides are saying make no sense to me.
The Legomsky op-ed piece makes the point that we don’t know who the illegal immigrants are. Is that true? According the the Reuters website, the State of California will join 9 other states and will start issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants in January. State officials expect 1.7 million illegal immigrants to apply for a driver’s license over the next 3 years. That’s better than half of the estimated 2.6 million illegal immigrants in California and more than 10% of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants that Legomsky cites. 9 other states are doing this as well. Some illegal immigrants are also receiving government subsidies of one sort or another. If we know they are illegal, because they are receiving some type of subsidy or because a driver’s license has been issued because they are illegal, then I think it’s fair to say we know who a significant portion of the illegal immigrants are. Is this so hard to comprehend?
Then there are the folks over on the right. The small government, tax cutting, budget balancing bunch. They seem to think that our government can afford the cost of tracking down, prosecuting, and getting rid of 11 million illegal immigrants. I’m not saying they are wrong based on the principle of enforcing laws that have been broken. I’m just saying that from a financial standpoint it’s not practical.
Perhaps the debate ought to be about education. Does anyone but me wonder how so many people who can’t do simple math managed to get elected to public office? And it’s not only the elected officials. It’s their staffers and advisors too.
I won’t pretend to have too many answers to this problem. But I do think that by simply applying some rational thought a few things are clear. Total amnesty is probably a bad idea. It’s just poor public policy. But if one measures the cost of trying to deport 11 million people against the idea of requiring them to “earn” their citizenship the latter seems to have some merit. Then there is the issue of why illegal immigrants come to this country in the first place. We’re spending billions of dollars annually to support the governments of the countries they come from. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to put some heavy political pressure on those countries to reduce the reasons people are leaving? Let’s face it. The people who are making it aren’t leaving those countries. Those countries are simply exporting their problems here.
Our porous borders are an issue too. I’m not certain a fence is the answer. But I don’t have a better suggestion. There are lots of problems with a fence. The first is the enormous cost of building it. Then there is the cost of maintaining it. In addition to that, by most accounts I’ve seen, there seems to be a shortage of manpower to patrol the fence/border. It’s not so much that people can’t be hired. It’s a budget issue. Congress is good about passing laws. But sometimes they are not so good about allocating funds to pay for what they’ve authorized.
Legomsky does make one very good point. The government does not have the means to prosecute everyone. Even setting aside the 4 million or so people who won’t be subject to prosecution, for now at least, that still leaves 7 million who are subject to prosecution. The government doesn’t have the means to prosecute all 7 million. It seems to me that the INS should have been able to figure out on their own that some cases probably ought to be sent to the back of the line. Or maybe that kind of thought process is uncommon to government agencies.
At the end of the day, Obama’s announcement doesn’t really constitute substantive change. He shouldn’t be awarded another Nobel prize as the result. And the army of elected officials, staffers, advisors, hangers-on, and donors who can’t put politics aside for the sake of meaningful reform shouldn’t be awarded any prizes either. At the very least they ought to be turned-out and replaced with people who understand the value of working together to solve problems.
Otherwise it’s just politics as usual.
Guess which of the two we’re most likely to see.
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Post by Marshall on Nov 23, 2014 23:58:55 GMT -5
Marshall makes the best argument because he had the good sense to make up some statistics. And he made up good, believable ones like 26.67%. You can't argue against good, hard numbers like that. Well it's just a spread sheet. When i was saying 1/3 of the remaining percentage (100-10-10=80) I was getting confused. A nice spreadsheet will solve all mathematical equations. . . . , You can also save all your various passwords in one.
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