hearby

I hereby propose a preview function on the comments!

I’m talking to you, Mr. President.

He’s not listening.

Good Lt on June 1, 2007 at 7:45 PM

Kind of the whole point, you see. I hearby propose a protest: The Bird-In.

Everybody assembles in LaFayette Park, faces the White House, and holds on high the single-finger salute.

It could be a bipartisan event — a uniter, not a divider, so to speak. Everybody’s that’s P.O.’d at Bush, for whatever reason, get together and flip him off.

Question: What can we do to combat this betrayal by Bush and our representatives besides write them?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265

repvoter on June 1, 2007 at 9:25 PM

Wow. That is a shocking must-see for every American.

That was pretty good fusionaddict. One quibble: I think you meant that the cat who killed the Porky’s producer had a BAC of 0.24, not .024.

HerrMorgenholz on June 2, 2007 at 10:10 AM

Oh, bloody hell, you’re right. ’swhat I get for using print media as my source. I just reprinted a typo.

As a matter of fact, there are some jobs that illegal immigrants will do that American citizens usually will not.

Such as bank inventory reduction, experimental pharmaceutical shipping, and radical population management.

inanimate carbon rod vlog #1 : “Río del Engaño (River of Deceit)”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI3BepefTkw

That is the calmest and most shocking information about immigration I have seen. “Immigration by the Numbers” looks like it was put together years before this current crisis with illegals.

The best part starts about the middle.

Studies have shown that immigrants add some $10 billion annually in net economic output.

Do the math. While I believe that number to be low, if it is correct and there are 10M “immigrants”, that’s a per capita output of $1000, compared to about $43,000 per capita for the US overall. That means massive numbers of non-productive people sucking up resources, and an overall very low employment rate. $10B is not even a drop in the bucket of our $13 TRILLION annual economy. The economic argument is pure, unadulterated cow-flop.

Regarding the illegals currently residing in the US:

* Economic arguments regarding benefits of illegals “doing the jobs that Americans won’t do” ignore the transfer of fiscal responsibility from the goods and services base to the tax base: employing illegals who are paid sub-minimum wages and have no payroll taxes collected (likely almost always) contribute nothing towards services provided by their local communities, meaning that the rest of us have to carry their tax burdens.

* Illegals who earn sub-minimum wages are much more likely to utilize hospital emergency rooms as their primary point of medical care – flooding hospitals with unnecessary patients who presumably don’t pay for services rendered. For proof of this scenario, look up any major hospital located within 50 miles of the border, and check their financial health over the last decade. In a word, it ain’t pretty.

* Others much more politically astute than am I have demonstrated that due to cultural and economic issues, illegals who are granted amnesty are much more likely to vote as Democrats, which (if true) explains Teddy’s (D-Chivas) dog in the hunt. For Bush and the illegal immigration RINOs, though, I simply don’t get what’s in it for them.

On the topic of porous borders:

* Amnesty measures currently before Congress don’t address the lack of control across the approximately 3,000 mile southern border.

* Customs agents can’t even keep out one man who was known to be carrying a highly contagious pathogen recently. How do the “open borders” crowd plan to keep out people from around the world that really do want to wreak havoc on the country?

Forget dirty bombs or terrorist nukes. I am waiting for one person to pop off a MANPAD against a 747 flying out of LAX with 400 people on board. How will Chertoff and Teddy deal with that?

At least secure the border, idjits…someday your life may depend on it.

Yep.

Deporting illegal aliens, when we catch them, seems to be one of those jobs Americans won’t do. Building a border fence and strengthing border security is a job that Americans elected to Congress won’t do, either.

As to the your other points….nonsense.

To apply Greshmam’s law to employment, illegal aliens ARE lowering the wages for all of us because they WILL accept lower wages, even those below the official minimum wage. This unfair competition (unfair because it is illegal) drives down the price of the one commodity that we all possess and are willing to offer: Our labor in exchange for money.

In your “full employment” fantasy, the one where there is a labor shortage that only the illegal aliens can fill, the absense of their competition would cause all salaries to rise because of supply and demand, not remain static with respect to inflation — which is simply an artifact of the competition caused by people who SHOULD NOT BE IN America in the first place competing for jobs that Americans WOULD fulfill.

In other words: if those 12 million jobs you claim that illegal aliens are filling were to go unfilled, THE COMPENSATION TO DO THOSE JOBS WOULD INCREASE because of the law of supply and demand. This is called THE FREE MARKET and is the basis of capitalism.

You do understand that our economic system is Capitalism, don’t you? That it is market and supply/demand driven?

One final poiny:

Since WWII, the key to our accumulation of national wealth has been PRODUCTIVITY. The strength of our economy has been our PRODUCTIVITY. The continued growth of our economy depends upon improved PRODUCTIVITY.

The key to productivity is NOT illegal aliens working at below market wages, but depends upon the creativity and talent and inventiveness of Americans to find better and more economical ways to do things that, in doing so, create higher paying jobs for all of us.

Take out the illegal immigrants. What happens? Twelve million jobs don’t get performed.”
Yes, and twelve to twenty million people won’t need food, shelter, medicine, education, transportation, utilities, traffic court, prison, politicians, etc., to be provided by this economy.

Twelve million construction workers, field hands and lanscapers, folks often of little skill and/or education, can only produce as much here as they could in Mexico. Painters don’t come here to design rockets, they come to paint. However, these jobs pay more here than in Mexico, allowing money to be sent back home to family. And while participating in this economy, one gets access to education for your children and medical for the family that is better than in Mexico, and would not be obtainable in Mexico with wages earned in Mexico to the extent they are here. Thus, unskilled workers cost the economy more in the USA than in Mexico for producing the same work.

And that’s before factoring in the unemployed here who need food, shelter, etc. Here in Tennessee it is said that the unemployed/underemployed/”done stopped looking” population is about the same as the illegal immigrant population – about 200,000 each. If the law compelled folks to find employment as a condition for public assistance, they would of necessity go out and claim the jobs from employers that are held by illegals. Until then, there will be around 400,000 folks in TN who are, in total, putting the labor of about 160,000 lowish-skilled people into our economy (assuming 20% unemployment among illegals)while requiring sustainance for 400,000 out of the economy.

Politics has confused the debate so much that it’s become nearly as boring as talking about Iraq and, in much the same way, nobody in the Bush administration is listening to outsiders like us.

Therein lies the danger – the ‘illustrious’ leaders are hoping that we’d all get bored about it and in a few weeks they can do whatever they want. Senators are already counting on that. If the bill is to change then the pressure needs to stay on.

We want people to DO RIGHT! follow the rules! play fair! etc. We defend corps when attacks on them are baseless and counter-productive, but give me a chance and I will happily slap down any one of them that is breaking the law or EXPLOITING their employees.

P.S.: It’s (not) funny how acutely the lefties have a knack for always picking the wrong side of the issue. It’s almost like they look for the wrong position on an issue and embrace it.

P.P.S.: Post preview please. (Alliteration–and assonance–unintended.)

You clearly have not done any research on this. Here we go:

1. In areas of high illegal immigration, unemployment for people who are high school grads or less is TWICE the local average. Assuming the local average were 4.5%, lower educated Americans in that area would have 9% unemployment.

2. After prolonged unemployment, 10% of these lower educated Americans fall off the unemployment/employment records (to go on welfare, become part of a single income family, maybe work under the table). Net = 19% of these workers without jobs between #1 & #2.

3. Teens and young adults used to hold many lower income jobs to get job experience. They are now losing these jobs to illegal immigrants. Result = 20%+ unemployment for male teens and young adults in these areas of high illegal immigration, 30%+ unemployment for black male teens and young adults.

4. Union and construction jobs used to be held by typical blue collar workers who were could raise their families on the income. Now, these families are losing this livelihood to illegal immigrants.

So, you do the math. We will always have people who do not choose to go on to college, so we will always have Americans who need lower tier jobs. With unemployment + giving up accounting for close to 20% of this market (or more if you happen to be a black male young adult), there are plenty of people who would gladly take the jobs and (as many others have pointed out) employers would have to pay fair wages, overtime & payroll taxes, or these legal citizens would have legal recourse.

It’s time for Atlas to shrug.

Coyote D. on June 1, 2007 at 8:27 PM

It’s not time just yet. But. We will know when it is.

He’s not listening.

Good Lt on June 1, 2007 at 7:45 PM

He doesn’t care.

Many of the real culprits, the real problems, the ones that are deliberately aiding the illegal alien at the expense of the nation, are the Ferengi who value short term profits above the welfare of the nation.

The problem with this assumption is in overlooking the issue of compensation. With regard to the U.S., we can’t compare a legal resident that pays a significant amount of income taxes and lives comfortably off the economy, with illegal aliens (or foreigners) that effectively don’t pay taxes and are willing to live at well below poverty level for what would otherwise be considered slave wages.

So, it’s really not that nationals won’t do the jobs foreigners will do. It’s that nationals won’t/can’t do the jobs for slave wages, while the foreigners can and will.

We do our immigrants absolutely no service by allowing them to immigrate here and then allowing (if not forcing) them to live in squalor when we refuse to enforce our work/employment rules and immigration laws.

As we can see, the problem isn’t just about illegals, but also the people willing to hire them at less than equitable wages. Add on the government allowing us to do so, by selective border enforcement, effectively translating into the U.S. importing what is effectively becoming the trafficking of a neo-slave class of people.

The only solution is to close the borders and enforce immigration and existing guest worker laws. If businesses lose their access to this illegal neo-slave culture, they will be forced to hire legal citizens (at a fair wage) to get the work done. The economy will balance out as long as the government quits monkeying around with it.

I went to Colorado the entire week to see my sister graduate from the USAFA.

PRCalDude on June 1, 2007 at 8:20 PM

Cool. Send my regards and congratulations to your sister.

It is simplistic arguments presented by this type of sorry individual that we are expected to buy into. The reality is that there is NOT full employment in the United States, that the jobs of the illegal aliens WOULD READILY by filled by willing and able Americans, and that the motivation of those who advocate the presence of the illegal alien are either from the Left who have visions of political power, or from the right who are Ferengi and wish short term profits at the nation’s expense.

Twelve million illegal aliens deported, sent home not to return, would provide jobs for Americans who really need them, increase the wage paid, better the treatment of the workers in the United States, encourage employers to take more of an interest in those that work for them, and rid the United States of the cost of supporting the illegal alien and their kin.

But there are 300,000,000 Americans who can clean their own houses and work in their own yards, and pay a little more for food and labor.

ome will say that agricultrual work needs to be done at a minimum cost to keep food costs down. I do not think any American, except the Ferengi among us (yes, they do exist), would mind paying more for agricultural products that were increased in price because of using American labor. The system would adjust, automation would be applied, as it has so many times before (combine, etc.). The Illegal Alien is actually doing us a terrible mis-service by being paid lower wages by agricultural intersts, it removes the need for automated solutions that would otherwise reduce costs far below what we would pay otherwise – not even counting the cost of caring for their retirement, health care, and the educational costs of their children.

Don’t forget that every American would gladly pay $5 a head of lettuce if it meant saving 21K in taxpayer subsidies to uneducated illegals (and that includes Mexicans, Ms. Chavez!)

Baphomet

Where do you really come up with the idea that it is bad if there are more jobs then people to do them? This seems to be a recent philosophical economic invention of those who want to lower wages at all costs to society. It has always been a measure of economic success to have as low an unemployment rate as possible. Every civilization on earth should have more desire to try and get things done (jobs)then is actually possible with its given amount of resources (including labor). The places where that isnt the case are poverty striken with more people then jobs. The idea there is a certain fixed number of jobs that need to be filled or the economy will break is a bogus myth to which there arent any examples in all of history of a civilization having that problem.