Bush “pledges” to Mexicans: I’ll work hard to keep the borders open

Here is what we have to look forward to with our new batch of citizens and their children. Here is where they stand educationally (even four generations later), they also have an almost 50% (and growing) rate of illegitimacy (because family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande), they are at least three times more likely to be incarcerated for most classes of crime than whites are, and they are about three times more likely to be on welfare. At least they are exceptionally patriotic. Not.

LagunaDave,

Immigration reform is necessary, and the President is being courageous in trying to actually address the problem rather than posturing and demagoguery.

Not taking our national sovereignty seriously and rewarding lawbreakers: the new definition of courage.

Tightening enforcement is part of the plan, but anyone who thinks it is realistic to forcibly find and deport millions of people who are already here is completely nuts.

Really? ’cause the Third World country of Malaysia had no trouble deporting a similar number of illegals (per capita) a while back. Besides, that is pure dishonesty. We don’t need to deport them all. We need to deport enough of them to convince the rest to leave of their own volition.

tommy1 on March 13, 2007 at 8:37 PM

hire a hispanic, they are there 10 mins early and stay 10 mins late and work there butts off while there and do not complain.

If they are legal then great. If they are illegal, I have to ask:

Are you footing their medical bills or are we all?

Are you, all by yourself, going to pay extra in taxes to educate those Hispanics kids or are we all going to have to foot the bill? How about the extra welfare costs for their kids? How about costs of any ESL classes their children will be taking?

Will you pay any restitution if they should commit crimes? Can you guarantee your children be the only ones victimized by their crimes? Are you willing to be held partially responsible if they commit a murder or a rape or kill someone in a drunk driving accident? Will you pay the yearly prison costs for such an employee if they wind up in a state or federal institution?

tommy1 on March 13, 2007 at 8:52 PM

kara26,

you have a tressure trove of links, don’t you. are you emotionally link to this is some way?

Lol. This is, as far as I’m concerned, the issue of the day.

thanks for the link, hey wheres the site that list all the unsolved and solved murders, dui, rape and other crimes commited by Americans.

Hispanics have an estimated 3-4 times the rate of crime that whites do. They also are responsible for a disproportionate share of DUIs. Still, aside from that, there is little that anyone can do about crimes committed by citizens of all races. They are here legally. There is no reason why anyone should have to be a victim of a crime committed by somebody who had no business being here in the first place.

(BTW, most state and federal statistics on crime, excepting the Bureau of Prisons incarceration rate, actually overestimate white crime and thus underestimate the differences in crime rates among ethnic groups. This is because “Hispanic” is considered a category of “linguistic origin” rather than a race. Most Hispanics wind up being classified as “whites” racially when it comes to crime stats.)

tommy1 on March 13, 2007 at 9:16 PM

Here is another one by Dean Baker:

To prove this case, the article quotes Stephen P. Gennett, president of the Carolinas chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America (a builders’ trade group), “we have a problem here, a people shortage.”

While Mr. Gennett is undoubtedly knowledgeable about the state of the labor market for construction workers, he also represents an organization that has a clear interest in this issue, they want cheap labor. Ordinarily, the claim that there is a people shortage would imply that wages are rising at an extraordinary rate. (This is the way economists ordinarily think about markets – shortages mean higher prices.) This means that there is a quick way to verify Mr. Gennett’s claims about a people shortage: see if wages in construction have been rising at an extraordinary rate.

A quick trip to the Get Detailed Statistics section of the Bureau of Labor Statistics website tells us that inflation adjusted wages for construction workers have actually fallen about 5 percent since 1980, a period in which productivity has increased by more than 70 percent. So, we have wages falling in spite of a labor shortage – not where I learned my economics.

The real question is “why can a left-wing economist grasp such an elementary economic fact that so many conservatives and libertarians seem to have difficulty with?”

tommy1 on March 13, 2007 at 9:37 PM

By the way who build what ever structure you live in, who picked your food, who works the produce yard for your local grocrey store, where do you eat out, who mows you grass, or you grass at work, who works in your local dry cleaner (oh wrong imagrants) where do you live. depending on where you live hispanics touch a lot of lifes in a positive way. Don’t through them all off the boat because of a few bad ones.

Having lived in different parts of the country, some with few illegals (western Washington) and some with many (Texas), all of these jobs still get done, regardless of the illegal immigrant population. Houses get built, lawns get mowed, landscaping gets done, and dry cleaners operate. Capitalism finds a way.

Ain’t it a shame?

tommy1 on March 13, 2007 at 9:40 PM

If it makes you feel any better, Gregor, I also favor deporting other groups:

Deport the Irish!

tommy1 on March 13, 2007 at 10:01 PM