Which of the following should illegal immigrants be entitled to

bank accounts (banks are private entities, so they should have the right to have anyone they want as a customer)

Driver's license (This is a state's rights issue. State governments issue driver licenses, not the federal government. Since immigration is a federal issue, states should have the right to hand out driver's licenses to whomever they want)

Deportation. If you're here illegally, thats sort of what you get. If they're one of the good ones (keeping a low profile, not committing crimes, paying taxes, making an effort to learn the language etc) then they can stay. Sort of like how you don't automatically go to jail if they catch you smoking weed or stealing a candy bar or something minor.

Education - elementary (K - 5), education - secondary (K - 12), since at least it would force them to learn English and at least be less likely to grow up to be criminals. This isn't just a right, its also a public good.

College education, provided they pay out-of-state fees and rely on private scholarships.

Health care - emergency. I am human first, libertarian second. Somehow just letting people die on the streets, unless they're repeat junkies, is not something I am ok with.

Other health care, provided they or their insurance pays for it, rather than the tax payers.

Housing, Identity theft insurance, Internet Access, Life insurance, etc. Again, these are private businesses. They should have the right to do business with whomever they please.

The same minimum wage that everyone else gets, as much as I am against increasing it.

A few other things listed here.


Free Transportation, since when is that a right for anyone?

Financial assistance, welfare, food stamps. Somehow I don't think offering tax dollar paid for benefits to people in a country illegally (who tend to be poorer anyway) is a good idea. Public assistance was meant to be a benefit for the people who are already legal residents, otherwise you're just running a charity with a huge free loader problem.

Voting in elections. That's just fudging plain retarded.

free tacos!

Nothing hell no

A ticket back home should suffice.

Education for minor children
Health care for critical and/or emergency
Legal representation

I have no problem with illegal immigrants having other things, as long as they pay for it themselves.

All except deportation. I think immigrants add positively to a country's diversity and I appreciate different cultures around me... I'd make it easier for people to become citizens, not harder.

I don't think the government should supplying people with things, so the only thing I'm seeing on this list that I think a government out to provide to anyone is 'privacy'. I also think countries should have free migration so the very concept of illegal immigrant is a bit broken right from the start.

> free tacos!
I love walking in to Taco Bell and buying tacos from real Mexicans.....

Nothing

Good Lord they come over here take the jobs we need and then laugh in our faces when we don,t understand their language and this survey is asking what we should give them /lol only deportation !!!!!!!!!!

All of these except deportation, free transportation, the various kinds of insurance, and the right to vote in elections in the country in which they are illegally residing. I think this is an immensely complicated issue, but a lot of these are things that it makes more sense to give illegal immigrants than to withhold. It's better to make sure that individuals in a vulnerable population are able to survive safely, as that helps keep them from endangering the rest of the population. They understand the risks of being here illegally, and will still risk deportation. I also think it should be much easier for them to obtain legal residency and then citizenship once they've been here for a little while (a couple of years, maybe). The fact is that we depend on illegal immigrants in this country, and it's disingenuous to say that they have no rights to any of these things when we are enjoying the benefits of their being here every time we go to the grocery store or eat a meal out or do one of a dozen other things that we do every day. We even let them serve in our military and die for our country, and yet we won't give them a driver's license?

If we tried to hide and work in France or Ireland illegally we would be deported. If we don't learn the language of a foreign country we will always be stuck with low-paying jobs not affording those things that are given freely to legal aliens and nationals. I have a soft spot for the Mexicans because we have a large population here in Oregon AND it doesn't serve them to not go through the hoops or learn English like the rest of the aliens do. If I lived in Greece I would love to learn Greek so to better myself. We just plain can't afford to pay for those who don't want to be a part of this country but make money from her and not pay their way. By the way, there are almost 60,000 illegal Irish people here in the states. I find that funny. Not sure why I do.

> All except deportation. I think immigrants add positively to a country's
> diversity and I appreciate different cultures around me... I'd make
> it easier for people to become citizens, not harder.

I agree with the diversity but this is about illegal immigrants. It's a tough one I know but this country's back is breaking.

What the rest of us get, no more, no less.

Yeah, well, I think outsourcing is a FAR worse practice than illegals. Illegals often will take jobs other people won't, like maidwork and hard labor. I like to put myself in these immigrants' place, often leaving a country where things are really so horrific we can hardly imagine the poverty they're coming from; they're, IMHO, frequently hard workers who just want a better life for their families. I'm just more inclined to make life easier for them and help them to assimilate and get jobs and health care for their kids and stuff.

I'm not really sure how many illegals there are compared to legals, or why there are so many. Is it that difficult to be here legally? Is there really that big of a difference between someone here legally and someone here illegally? I don't know enough about all that to be able to determine what anyone is entitled to. I suppose they are entitled to make 'legals' out of themselves.

Deportation or a bullet in the head, their choice.

What ever parts that include paying taxes and supporting the community they are in. Absolutely ought to be afforded the right to live here and I do believe that includes a test and citizenship or visas or something along the line of becoming legal and a contributing factor in the dream that all of us deserve.

emergency healthcare to prevent death, medical screening to determine whether they should be instantly deported, forced to apologize in writing to all the poeple who have immigrated the right way, nothing else.

> I agree with the diversity but this is about illegal immigrants. It's
> a tough one I know but this country's back is breaking.

Yeah, but that has almost nothing to do with immigrants, legal or otherwise. It mostly has to do with some very ill-conceived legislation over the past century regarding our monetary system.

Down with imigrants ergh

Totally illegal?

I'll answer as if I were a tourist somewhere then, with those features I think all nations should provide everyone:

Banking accounts
Driver's license (temporary)
Health care - critical care
Health care - emergency
Legal representation - criminal
Legal representation - criminal & civil

Now what should be the requirement for becoming a legal immigrant or a citizen is yet another matter, and I don't see that there should be many restrictions at all. Speaking the primary language of the nation would be good though, unless they are coming for emergency political asyllum reasons.

~

Something suddenly occurs to me - do we prevent Mexican tourists? What is to stop them from coming right through the border patrol. Why on earth is there all this hulla-balloo about sneaking across the border?

Again, I agree with you on the out-sourcing. It's criminal. And again, if I was going to live in France and make money there I would follow their laws, register, and learn French. I'm not saying the immigrants don't have a right to be here, I am saying, since we have such a large amount of Mexicans here where I live, that they need to give back into the system of our La Clinia, etc. They are working under the table and not paying back into all the services we give them (and I do have a soft spot for them and admire the way they take care of their families). Many have been here for years and still can't speak english so are always stuck in the low paying jobs which require assistance to get their needs met. I even agree with most of our signs having spanish explanations. Yes, they do take jobs that nobody wants. So while they're here they can join in with us all in keeping a strong community which means all put in the kitty so all can live. I would be sad if all of the Mexicans left. They are such colorful and polite. And they have a responsibility to help us to help them. The point: Become legal and reap the benefits. What is so bad about that?

> |> I agree with the diversity but this is about illegal immigrants.
> It's
> |> a tough one I know but this country's back is breaking.
>
> Yeah, but that has almost nothing to do with immigrants, legal or
> otherwise. It mostly has to do with some very ill-conceived legislation
> over the past century regarding our monetary system.

Yeah, howdy! We're all going to be one big global country anyway, if they don't blow us up first. Pretty soon an "illegal alien" will be someone from a different planet. :o)

> The point:
> Become legal and reap the benefits. What is so bad about that?



Has it occurred to you that they might perceive there are more detriments than benefits to becoming citizens? This is what happened in the declining days of the Roman Empire, when Roman citizens became wary of admitting that they were Roman citizens.

Mexicans are not the only immigrants of course -- here there are also lots of Chinese, especially. The Chinese here get a lot of assistance too -- with food, for instance. I think all groups have interesting cultures and I just like to give 'em the benefit of the doubt, usually-that most immigrants would like to become legal and learn the language, etc. -- but that it's harder for some people than it is for others to assimilate. I, for instance, have found it more difficult to learn a second language than other people I know. I love the idea of all these different neighborhoods where you can find the foods, etc. of other countries that you can't find in regular markets. It's fun to be able to walk around in big cities and go to different markets where you can check out all these ethnic stores. I would be so bored to live in a city where everyone was all the same ethnic group.

Nothing. None of the above, except a boot in the ass back where they came from.

What part of ILLEGAL DO YOU STUPID LEFT WING LIBERAL LOONS NOT UNDERSTAND??? The only thing the illegal aliens should get is a one way ticket home... For you idiot liberals who say the immigration law is wrong and therefore should be broken.... We cannot choose which laws we want to obey and which ones we do not like and can ignore. It is all or none... There are many laws I disagree with but I am forced to obey them... If I thought like a liberal loon, then I should be able to ignore all of them...and at the top of the list would be to off as many liberal idiots as I could... Some people are alive only because it is against the law to kill them....

There shouldn't be such a thing as an immigrant.

We are all equal, the countries on Earth should be assessible to all.

> Nothing

Very Christian of you!

Wicksy, as I've said before, we can't save the world. We can help little bit at a time, but in THEIR COUNTRY. It's only common sense. Teach them to help themselves in their countries. Otherwise, this country will become as the one they left....our country will be trashed, overpopulated, impoverished....in the end, no one wins.

You don't understand the poverty there, and maybe not poverty in general.
Obviously it's the poor, not the rich, coming here.

In general Mexico has been poor overall because there only resource is a bit of oil and a depleting supply of exotic rainforest woods.

As has been the increasing trend in the US decade after decade, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer - capitalism.

The poor can't afford education, so the only resource Mexicans really have is human labor. Labor is only a resource if someone will pay for it - namely us. The thing about labor is that it too is a form of capitalism. As long as they work for global car companies and such not locally owned, they only get poorer and poorer relative to those who 'control' the economy.

No amount of hard effort or intelligence could now pull Mexico out of it's relative desperation in the world.

There are only four ways they could dig themself out of this situation, two economic and two political:

Economically, they would either have to have something the world could not get elsewhere, and charge top dollar for it till they shared a place in 'controlling' the global economy, or, if they had a ton of money, they could leverage such a role. Neither of those are available to them.

Politically, if they wish to be on the par with us, two things need to happen: A) The border needs opened between them and countries which are better off. B) They need a socialism more like ours which taxes the rich, and doesn't create so great a poverty class.

As far as the money they send back from working here, it's .2% of 'their' GDP, and they have 1/3 our population, and their GDP is 12k vs our 47k, so basically it's as if we are giving them $80 for every $47k we make, or 0.17% of our income.

It's our industrialists who create their relative poverty, so I don't see that giving them 0.17% of our income 'which they work their asses off for' even remotely qualifies as a hardship or charity on our part. The part you whiners don't see is that our American global industrialists are making far more than this off their labor. Whether they work there or here, they are essentially in servitude to our economy, and that's a position they could never work their way out of, but they have no other options.

There is a fifth answer (which still requires that they become more socialist internally, so their poor have a relative chance), and that is closing their border. What you folks don't get is that in doing so, they would do better, and we would do worse.

The only reason I am for an open border is not so that they can work here, but so that they have the opportunity to rise through our economic control ranks, and so that they become part of our tax-payer socialism instead of being stuck in their more capitalist system which creates poverty for the working class.

~

It just dawns on me that that might be a misconception you have, that people can 'work to get ahead' - part of that pioneer ethos you have I suppose. Unfortunately it does quite the opposite in the long run, unless, as in the days of pioneers, everyone is self employed, not working for someone else. People don't hire unless they make more on the person's labor than the employee could make themself, and thus the employer's buying power is always increasing at a faster rate the employee's.

To summarize all this "the country they left....trashed, .., impoverished" has been caused by their capitalists, our capitalists, and their lack of the socialism we have here. If they had the same sort of socialist government we have here (and a bigger share of the global control), they'd have no reason to leave. You'd have more americans moving there instead.

The funniest thing in all this is that is that not only do you wish to get rid of them thinking, thinking that that would improve rather than harm our economy, but that you wish upon our government the same libertarian non-socialism that causes their impoverished in the first place. - You keep up on a lot of 'what' is going on, but you don't nearly as often get around to the more important question in determining a solution, which is asking 'why?'.

The problem is that they are living by either the corrupter or more sweetly ignorant aspects of century old American values, ones our labor unions put an end to here quite some time back.

Not surprisingly, there are strong communist uprisings there. If they were successful, you'd see less people needing to come here, and fewer american companies with mexican factories.

While I am sympathetic with the world's poor, is it our job to support the world? As I've said, we can teach people to help themselves, in their country. I wish we could STOP LEGAL AND ILLEGAL immigration. SHUT our borders.

Was everyone promised a house on a hill, a car, a million dollars in the bank, etc.... no! Our way of life might not be for someone else. I don't envy those that have more than I do. Nor would I want to see anyone live less than I. I do resent people trying to steal our country away from us. It is no different than someone committing a private home invasion. They're stealing. Perhaps some countries might consider birth control....or be taught birth control.

I don't like forced charity....taxation. I’d be willing to help a neighbor in need, but I don’t want the government stealing from me through taxation. The Americans have paid, and paid foreign aid to other countries....what happened? Is there any improvement? I think both management and the labor unions are corrupt. Too bad both couldn't come to the table and be fair. Labor is important. Labor and management can't do without each other. I perhaps don't know the poverty that many around the world know, but I did have tough times, after my divorce almost 50 years ago, but I would never steal or invade someone elses home. As long as we have a roof over our heads, food in our mouth, clothes on our back, we are to be satisfied. As the Bible says, be wary of letting others know what you have, because someone will try to steal it from you. This is what has happened. The Bible says there will always be the poor.. But, should we be measured by the kind of money we make? Money or degrees don't make the person.

My dad, every year donated to several worthwhile charities. I remember seeing him sit at the table and write out checks to wonderful charities. My dad worked, invented, wasn’t rich, but we always had a roof over our heads, food in our mouth, clothes on our backs. We were rich beyond what money could buy. My dad and mom didn’t have above an 8th grade education, but were intelligent. There wasn’t a thing my dad couldn’t do. They grew a garden for food. My dad was inquisitive, tried to learn. He could fix any car, invented a saxophone, helped others with projects, built a two story home, and a three car garage by himself. (took two years) Drew the blueprints himself. Why can’t other people do that?

I don’t want this country destroyed by those that don’t have the same values, and standards, poor or not. I just want to live in peace, and harmony.

It is our duty to break unjust laws.

You were lucky growing up. You can't plan a society on everyone being as intelligent and resourceful as your dad. Even if they were, your dad found a niche. Not everyone could what he did or it wouldn't work either.

Our taxes maintain the bottom level of society. People have fire, police, welfare medicine, don't starve, libraries, and get eduacation for at least our lower level jobs. People here may not have a fair chance, but at least they do have a chance. Contrast this with parts of mexico, where someone ends up owning the town, people have to pay for their own police protection, and most of all, the poor get in a desperate fix just to survive and can't afford to think about bettering their lives with education and such because they work at dirt rates for the rich, and pay top dollar for goods because there's not much consumer competiton for sellers to worry about, driving their prices down. - This would all change with some national taxation there (I say 'national' because entire geographic areas, especially those closest to us, are entirely in poverty). If it were Mexico City next to us, not farms which ran out of water half a centurry ago (because we used it all up), things would again be different. If we wanted to be truly charitable, we'd give them the Colorado River back, but then Los Angeles would have to evacuate, move there perhaps.

Sometimes you are too fixed in recycling your old views to listen, process, and develop your own more informed solutions, and today is such a case. You retort with your view on taxes and global charity, neither of which is in any way a solution to the causative problem I just described.

For nearly the last century weve lived in a society which taxes the rich or clamps down on employer abuse so that people like your dad are at least starting at a level where they can learn to read blueprints rather than immediately spend their lives concerned with buying flour for tortillas. The answer to me is clearly to make Mexico like that as well, while you wish to make us more like Mexico in that respect. People can't go making saxaphones when one guy in town controls the economy to such degree that others can't even afford pliers and hammers. We don't let that happen here.

It's not like there aren't people like your Dad there. Back in your day one of the thriving industries of No. Mexico were the Jalopies. People in the town of Jalopy would import broken american cars and rebuild them into hot-rods and econo-cars for return to the american public. Even today many Mexican descendants have inherited an impressive knack for repairing a car with a coat-hanger that an american mechanic would have considered a lost cause. Once again though it comes down to resources, no steel, no local consumer market for steel, again, all they had in jalopy was ingenuity, hand-me-down American resources, and an American market. At least the Jalopies were there own employment, and not working for an american repair garage (more like as would occur today), where there profits would all be siphoned here.

I get the feeling that you think the problem with Mexico is their lack of intelligence or industriousness or something (unless they're stealing our jobs). If you really wanted to give a fair chance, you would give them a share of our metals, our forests, our water, and give them a fair chance on the global market (aside from getting rid of the impoverishing libertarian political ideology that you want to encourage here).

Did Moses tell his people to stay slaves of the Egyptians? Not a chance. He told them to move somewhere where people had natural resources and a better system of political opportunity for the impoverished. Like all the ancient tribes, industrious people moved to where the resources were. That should continue to be the right of all God's people. Really, what would have been even more fair is that the Hebrews shared the bounty of the Nile, but Moses had his hands full just escaping rule by Pharoah.

You're a step better than Pharoah, not making slaves of the Mexicans, but you still don't want to share your Nile, somehow thinking that God endows rights to the locals, even though the Native Americans were here first. Even by your own account, you are the result of some lost wandering tribe who ultimately found resources here.

At least in So. America the European settlers intermingled with the locals instead of almost entirely wiping them out. That probably has much to do with why they are of the ideology that people of the earth migrate to wherever the resources of the earth currently are and share them, rather than the prevalent ideology here of fighting to the death to take over resources then defending them to the death. The former belief system is far more along the lines of all men are created equal, but unfortunately it's clear by every one of your ideologies that you don't really even believe in separate but equal.

..and yet at the same time you are against the overlords within our own culture like Monsanto and such.

That's where you are at your most hypocritical. You have no problem locking people economically/geographically into Mexico to maintain your relative privelege, but are adverse to folks like Monsanto who economically/socially lock down American (or anywhere) underclasses. What this makes you is one of two things, either someone too ignorant to see the big picture and the relatedness of things, or a selfish warrior with no interest in humanity, but rather just in rising to or maintaining a relative level of privelege, while trying to prevent others from climbing up, and trying to topple others above you. {..or some variant of the latter differing only in that you believe you have divine birthright to justify it.}

I have a feeling that both are true, but feel some slight reticent sense of desiring actual spiritual justice, thus I give you the benefit of the doubt and act as if you are merely suffering from ignorance of what your ideology implies.

I think you are grossly misinterpreting the 'we cant help others' scripture. As I understand it, it means: A) Take care of having your own spiritual life in good working order first. B) Life goes on, and do what you can do to improve upon it and be charitable within reason, without dysfunctional sacrifice. - This is something different than consider it a hopeless cause.

Nor is letting Mexicans work here a dysfunctional sacrifice. People are people, and any economic structure which can work with 300 million people, can work just as well with 400 million people. Look how much better off we are than we had 50 million people.

Here's a mental exercise for you. What would you say to the US annexing Mexico (like Hawaii or Alaska)?

As I see it, you are selfish because you live in pride and fear. You have a mistaken notion that what you experienced as a child is more holy than any working economic/social structure the world might come up with. You somehow justify this by relating it to some ancient lost tribe which has nearly nothing to with the politics, economy, social structure, geneaology, or even religious beliefs you grew up with. Your predicament is painful to observe. You are a good and competent person, but you have never questioned where your own values come from. To a large extent I think they come merely from continuing to share views with others who have comparable prides and fears, and your own comfort level in changing. While typical of how most anyone evolves, it's a really poor barometer of values, no more sound than others who let the same mechanism of change take them to depravity.

If you want to operate under the umbrella of spiritual justice rather than selfishness, pride, and fear, you need to come from a much deeper place than can be taught to you by any society currently or ever in existence. You need to forget everything you ever learned, contemplate a heaven on Earth, then open your eyes, see what exists, and how to get there. Preserving the sovereignty of America is not it; Nations and empires come and go; Applying values to the benefit of humanity at large does not (in whatever the current context).

If you really want to contemplate solutions, you need to forget the objective world (like borders or the economy) for awhile, and think about the subjective, how peolp should get along. If you can't do that, then for whatever solutions you do consider working on behalf of, ask yourself if you are merely coming from pride, fear, selfishness, or the limitations of your own habitual cultural upbringing.

I don't single you out out in any way. Everyone comes from these foundations to some degree. You are rather more indulged in most of these respects though. I must say that I have rather more respect for those whom embrace that they are coming from such limitations, but strive to overcome them. I don't think you even realize it though. You don't take responsibility for your motivating factors, and attribute them instead to some external precedent.

Breaking past this is extremely tough, because true divine wisdom is hard to come by. The average person who dismisses their pride, fears, selfishness, and habit, will find that they no longer have a rudder, and never really had a worthwhile one in the first place; that they were merely pawns to the circumstantial niche they were born in to.

I've been there a couple of times my self. I found I had to chose my own motivation, but at least I now know how arbitrary and ignorant my decisions are, no matter how idealistic I try to make them. It was tough to break past having any motive to live, because you will find if you break past those conventional motivators, that no where is the motivating purpose of life even firmly inscribed.

Strong as you are, you don't strike me as having the strength to become utterly lost to find the truth. Even if you don't though, it's useful to keep yourself in check, having some rough idea of the limitations of where you are coming from.

You are a pack animal coming from the sharing of John Birch values. Just keep in mind that your life is arbitrary and circumstantial, having no greater spiritual truth than that shared by immigrants crossing the border. It's a rare person who breaks beyond such illusions. I suggest it to you though if you have some time for your spiritual life and wish to break through to a new level of wisdom while you still have your intellectual faculties and emotional strength to handle such transitions. Otherwise, it will probably sink in as a last lucid moment of your passing away, what a silly illusion you lived in. Hard earned as such wisdom comes, it might be something you'd be happy to be alive to pass on to your children though.

~

To answer your question, why others can't do what your dad did is that like you, they live in their pride, selfishness, and mostly their fears and habitual cultural upbringing of the life circumstance niche they were born in to. It's neither a shortcoming of character nor something they had much choice in. If you can't escape the impressions of your own cultural circumstances, why would you think anyone else could? Like Generals of wars on opposite sides, if you can't escape your own programming, at least you can respect others for coming from their own programming.

You've spent your whole life fighting for your side. God didn't create sides, people did. No side is holier than another. The immigrants have just as many scriptures backing up their position as you have backing up yours. Such concerns are merely then socio-economic-political-ethical decisions, and as I said, a U.S. of 400 million including Mexico would probably work better for everyone on average than a seperate U.S. of 300M and Mexico of 100M, just because our socialist government system prevents the desperation they have there. You dont want unregulated/unredistributed capitalism forcing people into poverty, do you?

Even if everyone involved were compassionate Christians, unregulated/unredistributed capitalism, from it's purely mathematical basis, can do nothing but make the rich richer and the poor poorer, until it get to the point it has in Mexico, where the poor are too poor to stand on their own legs. The first Christian churches were highly cognizant of this, not only standing against money lending, but asking that everyone share their feast, and that economic status represent no privelege within church gatherings. The only sovereignty they allowed members to buy into was of a spiritual nature, quite unlike the geographical/cultural/economic sovereignty you propose the US have. Back this if you wish, but know that such is rooted in human war instincts, and is the antithesis of Christian values, though possibly in line with OT values.

> It is our duty to break unjust laws.

> |> The point:
> |> Become legal and reap the benefits. What is so bad about that?
>
>
>
> Has it occurred to you that they might perceive there are more detriments
> than benefits to becoming citizens? This is what happened in the
> declining days of the Roman Empire, when Roman citizens became wary
> of admitting that they were Roman citizens.

I am definitely one who likes to stay "out from under the radar" (being a mountain woman) so get that point. AND it just plain doesn't serve anyone to want to have the right to work yet not get involved with the very place that welcomes them and pays them to work. I know the evils countries can do... I know a man who was in the holocaust and he wasn't even Jewish. Just Polish. His story burns in my brain. Starving. Having to play their game to keep his life. Ashland, OR is a liberal place and they STILL think the mexicans need to meet us half way with learning to communicate and be a part of the community. I have a lot of Mexican friends who agree with me. So I can't be too far off.

Hey, this conversation is very healthy. Thanks for sharing. :o)

Boring, indeed. I brag that we have two Synagogues and a mosque in our little town of Ashland. A lot of San Frans here, too. They broke the "good old boy" hold that the good old boys had so I welcome all here who want to see progress as something to make better, not bigger.

> Hey, this conversation is very healthy. Thanks for sharing. :o)

Hey, always time for a good conversation. Generally, I am an open borders kind of guy though. I don't honestly think that immigrant workers pose any kind of threat to citizens or legal residents. The bigger threat, in my opinion, is various kinds of meddling in the marketplace, from a variety of sources, government and corporate. In a truly healthy economy, the biggest labor problem should be a shortage of workers, not a shortage of work.

> |> Hey, this conversation is very healthy. Thanks for sharing.
> :o)
>
> Hey, always time for a good conversation. Generally, I am an open
> borders kind of guy though. I don't honestly think that immigrant
> workers pose any kind of threat to citizens or legal residents. The
> bigger threat, in my opinion, is various kinds of meddling in the
> marketplace, from a variety of sources, government and corporate.
> In a truly healthy economy, the biggest labor problem should be a
> shortage of workers, not a shortage of work.

I am very open to open borders. It's seems to be working in the EU when I was there, but Ireland is having a hard time with the flooding of immigrants from the baltics and most of them don't speak English. I think in a nut shell, to round out this conversation, I am thinking of meeting the Mexicans half way here because, due to the unemp. probs (which I DON'T blame foreigners) I am getting into a nursing program and will learn Spanish, also so I can communicate and poss. work at La Clinica, then maybe south of the border with Drs. without Borders (huge here in Ashland, OR).
So, as one can see, it serves ME to learn a language so I can better myself. I wish that motivation for everyone.... and it isn't a requirement. Only that it would probably "serve" them to. How's that for diplomacy. :o). By the way, my dad's family is from Faulkner (or is it Faulks) County, VA. There are a lot of Sinclair's there.

There are Fairfax, Falls Church, Franklin and Fredericksburg Counties in Virginia. Those are all the counties that begin with 'F' in Virginia.

Oh good, someone who gets that jobs and businesses are proportional to consumers.

Healthcare (which is free for all in this country anyway), legal representation and the basics so they can live - human rights come before national ones. Ideally we'd all be able to go wherever we like and not have this 'us' against 'them' attitude - we're all part of the same planet. Having said that, I don't support the idea that illegal immigrants come and settle here - aside from the fact that they are mostly exploited and are overworked for little pay, I believe that people have a valid point when they say they don't want to support them out of their taxes - so if they have been denied residency, they should be deported.