I don't want to turn this into a brawl and I know this is a sensitive question to some but....

I really don't understand why there is so much drama about immigration . I have two sisters in law ( from Chile and the Philippines), they both came here and became naturalized citizens.

Why are there so many folks ( mostly Mexican , it seems) That don't seem to want to become US citizens. They seem to want to stay here . A lot of them seem like good people. Why don't they want to become legal citizens?

I must be missing some aspect of this issue. I know that this might sound like I'm being rhetorical , but I'd really appreciate some insights.

Moderators , if this topic is too inflammatory , please just delete it. It's not my intention to start a fight. Nothing is gained by a fight. Thanks, mike

Watch the video linked in the nearby post: "Are Some Cultures Better Than Others?"

Pretty much sums it up for me.

Bottom Line: We can't have un-checked thousands upon thousands of people coming here who have ZERO desire to assimilate to our Western Cultural norms.

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quote:

Why are there so many folks ( mostly Mexican , it seems) That don't seem to want to become US citizens. They seem to want to stay here . A lot of them seem like good people. Why don't they want to become legal citizens?

They come for the money > only.
Not interested in anything else.
If their shithole of a country would allow them to prosper we wouldn't be seeing them.
Further complicated by Dems wanting votes and Reps wanting cheap labor.
Hence, the kicking the can down the road ensues.

The process is slow and information lacking especially for those who cannot read.

When your family is below the poverty (as opposed to in it), and work is readily available (with medical benefits) a few hundred miles north - what would you do?

The problem is, IMO, our goobermint (both sides of the aisle) have refused to rigidly support deportation efforts up to and including holding employers accountable. This is mostly because when you pay someone less than minimum wage costs are set where they should be, as opposed to artificially high.

Re: the "Dreamers"....they sound like they are very "Americanized". Some have never been to Mexico....They readily protest against the repeal of DACA ( ? SP ). They state they don't want to be deported, they are going to college , so they can't be illiterate ....but they don't seem to want to become citizens... ???
Doesn't makes sense to me.

quote:

Originally posted by mike28w:
Re: the "Dreamers"....they sound like they are very "Americanized". Some have never been to Mexico....They readily protest against the repeal of DACA ( ? SP ). They state they don't want to be deported, they are going to college , so they can't be illiterate ....but they don't seem to want to become citizens... ???
Doesn't makes sense to me.

That is a situation where, IMO, they are blaming the goobermint for their woes instead of their parent(s).

If citizenship is so important to them, have them pay all the back taxes (state and federal) from the time they arrived to the time they began paying said taxes. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

I think the original question is a little specious. I've never heard that legal immigrants from Mexico are any less inclined to become US citizen than immigrants from anywhere else.

What is a issues is that we have a large cadre of ILLEGAL immigrants from Mexico. They would probably love to get on a track to legal immigrant status that could get them to a path to citizenship. But given their illegal status that isn't happening. Also we could never accommodate the number of Mexicans would would want to legally immigrate to the US.

Most are just surviving, with varying degrees of work ethics. Some work hard, do shit work for low wages, go home, sleep, etc., repeat, and others want a free ride, too. Most aren't particularly educated, many come from abject poverty and even here aren't doing much better, but they aren't getting beheaded, there are Emergency Rooms aplenty, etc.

Not that I think any of that makes it OK to just waltz in and skip the whole process. I'd bounce them out in an instant if I had those powers. But I understand it pretty well. Most that are here aren't the sort that would legally emigrate anyway. I bet 70% of the illegals here are below the threshold of who we'd let in and who would even make the effort to try.

They just don't care, and don't think how we do, and probably don't even understand why we care and why we think being an American is special, and they are basically doing whatever it takes to survive and better themselves (or get free shit, or a mix of both, as is the case for many). So expecting them to think and act like we would is fairly pointless.

We need to literally expel, permanently, the vast majority of them, start with a clean-ish slate and, I suppose, carefully evaluate exceptions on a case by case basis. The cream of the crop, those who already work and live and behave like Americans, those who want to be Americans for the right reasons, those who already contribute...

...they're welcome to stay and *start* the process like anyone else, and if they follow through and pass all the steps, welcome... and if they don't, in the normal time frame and under the normal rules we use for others who'd like to emigrate, bounce their asses the fuck out of here, and - equally importantly - secure the freaking borders, too. Must do both.

Because most (my guess is 70%) of the illegals here would never follow through or we wouldn't want them and the only way they'll ever become Americans is via some amnesty that let's them skip the whole process. And *that's* the group that's sucking up the resources and committing most of the crimes, etc. I understand them, but don't care. Out...

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:


What is a issues is that we have a large cadre of ILLEGAL immigrants from Mexico. They would probably love to get on a track to legal immigrant status that could get them to a path to citizenship. But given their illegal status that isn't happening. Also we could never accommodate the number of Mexicans would would want to legally immigrate to the US.

So , you're saying that if they are illegally in the US , they are not allowed to apply for citizenship ?? I didn't realize that.
Since they are already here, wouldn't it be simpler to find a way for these folks to become citizens rather than spend all of the money that we are spending to catch them and deport them. We could then concentrate on deporting the ones that don't become citizens ?? Am I too naive ?
Fwiw...I don't have any problems with limiting the number of folks who get citizenship. The US has a long history of immigration limits. I also have no trouble with a wall or enthusiastic border protection.

quote:

If citizenship is so important to them, have them pay all the back taxes (state and federal) from the time they arrived to the time they began paying said taxes. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

When Obama set DACA up, he stated:
"Now, let's be clear -- this is not amnesty, this is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It's not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure that lets us focus our resources wisely while giving a degree of relief and hope to talented, driven, patriotic young people."
His reason was:
"the absence of any immigration action from Congress to fix our broken immigration system"

Turns out, not all dreamers were brought here.
"That’s because many undocumented immigrants overstay a visa, rather than illegally cross the border. In 2015 alone, more than 400,000 foreign visitors stayed in the United States beyond their visa, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Robert Warren, a demographer and senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies, estimates that about 50 percent of the 1.258 million people eligible for DACA are visa overstays."

Then dreamers can get green cards. They first forget advance parole, then travel out of the country:
"By using advance parole, a DACA recipient may travel abroad and return to the U.S. When the advance parole traveler returns, he or she is “paroled” into the U.S. This is considered a lawful entry.

The lawful entry is an essential requirement to adjust status to a permanent resident."

"So far, 40,000 DACA illegals have been approved to get Green Cards. Many have received the cards, and 2,181 have subsequently applied for citizenship."

Here are the ways to get a green card:
"Even before the DAPA and expanded DACA decision, there were several possible paths for undocumented immigrants to become green card holders. Although not everyone will qualify for these paths, they are worth learning about:

Green Card through Marriage to a U.S. Citizen or LPR
DREAMers Green Card through Employment with LIFE Act Protection
Asylum Status
U Visa for Victims of Crime"
https://citizenpath.com/paths-...status-undocumented/

Based on this, most DACA qualified people simply need to fix their overdue visas. Others need to do the paperwork to leave, then legally return. Last is various humanization reasons.
To date of the 787,580 dreamers (since 2012) some 40,000 have gotten green cards. What's that? 5%?

What hasn't been considered are those that arrived after the DACA dates. I'm waiting for the media to do a sob story on someone (photogenic) that doesn't qualify.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.43d510a872f5
https://citizenpath.com/daca-g...card-advance-parole/
http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...ards-45000-illegals/

I am sure that many Mexicans and Central Americans would love to be legal residents and citizens. But they can't get visas to get in and work here. It isn't that they don't want to be legal, we won't let them in in the first place.

So they sneak in. And once here illegally, it is about impossible to get legal status.

Whether our immigration policies are too restrictive is the essential debate.

So you want to turn the magnet attracting illegal immigrants into a super-magnet. Why not just make American citizenship, welfare benefits, and voting rights available to all the poor people everywhere in the world?

It appears to me that it is a "hot button" issue for one major reason, both major political parties believe that the majority of immigrants will favor leftist positions and policies for both socio-economic reasons, and the belief and political systems in the societies of their origination, and will therefore vote Democrat (whether legally or illegally).

Whether this belief is, in fact, true, has not been established (as far as I can see anyway), but it seems to inform political strategies and issue adoptions on immigration, just as do assumptions about other monolithic voting blocks.

quote:

Why don't they want to become legal citizens?

why should they bother, when our society bends over to give them almost everything they want, often at the expense of citizens who need it more.
There's no incentive to put some skin in the game. Oh wait, that sounds racist, gee sorry.

quote:

Originally posted by Fenris:
So you want to turn the magnet attracting illegal immigrants into a super-magnet. Why not just make American citizenship, welfare benefits, and voting rights available to all the poor people everywhere in the world?

It's all about incentives and how they affect behavior.

Faulty Supreme Court reasoning giving "Anchor babies" citizenship? Incentive: -> Get here any way you can, and have kids pronto! Oh, and those pesky US voting laws are no more important than the immigration laws you've already violated anyway, so be sure to "Vote D" to keep adult supervision from sending you back home in the meantime.

If we're not careful handling the "Dreamers" that will do the same thing, without the (dubious) legal cover provided by having an anchor baby here. Want everyone in the third world with an infant to consider immigrating illegally? Simple - just make it so that their little one is the easy ticket out of their hellhole.

quote:

Originally posted by mike28w:
Since they are already here, wouldn't it be simpler to find a way for these folks to become citizens rather than spend all of the money that we are spending to catch them and deport them. We could then concentrate on deporting the ones that don't become citizens ?? Am I too naive ?
Fwiw...I don't have any problems with limiting the number of folks who get citizenship. The US has a long history of immigration limits. I also have no trouble with a wall or enthusiastic border protection.

Naive? Yes. But no more than Reagan or anyone else who bit on the Immigration and Control Act of 1986 which was supposed to do exactly what you're talking about. Obviously, it didn't work then and it wouldn't work now, with human nature being what it is and all.

I worked as an independent contract auditor for INS during in the late 1990s when Clinton wanted to naturalize as many people voters as possible while Newt and the Republicans in Congress were railing about people being naturalized without any sort of background check...Newt and the boys rallied a lot of support (which led to people like me being hired to "certify" the process) by harping on the fact the some of the first World Trade Center bombers - the van in the parking structure guys - were "natzed" without even being fingerprinted. During the 2-3 years I was around INS, I had first hand interaction with lots of immigration officers all over the country who suffered through the '86 fiasco. They all said the same thing: working in the "benefits section" of INS was like sitting in stop-and-go traffic, what you did and what pace you did it at depended on which politicians were in charge...and you never seemed to get anywhere.

The only way to deal with this issue is to deny anyone who didn't follow the rules. Anything less is just some sort of half-measure...and most of what anyone could dream up has already been tried. Path to citizenship? Tried in '86. Didn't work and fraud was through the roof. Pay a fine (or "back taxes")? Yep. They did that too. It was called "The Big Fine." Something on the order of $1,000 to absolve all of the applicant's immigration sins and start anew. It's a big mess and changing the rules won't fix it. Worse, changing the rules will just punish those who were stupid enough to follow them (like your sister-in-laws) along with anyone who is naive enough to believe that the Constitution and rule of law aren't just abstract ideas (like me, guess you're not the only one who's naive).

An early poster hit the nail on the head. We, the American people, are caught between a bunch of self-interested parties who want illegal immigration to persist. The biggest two are those who want to expand the social welfare state and those who want to minimize their direct labor costs. Of course, any sane person knows that the welfare state is unsustainable and cheap labor is not cheap when it has to be sustained through an ever-expanding welfare state. The irony is that unfettered immigration will accelerate the collapse of the welfare state and labor costs will rise ahead of that collapse because the illegal immigrant worker (or his/her children) will expect and demand a higher standard of living once they are legitimized (sound like the DACA protesters?). That's why controlling immigration is THE ISSUE of our time. If we don't take it on nothing else will matter.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
If citizenship is so important to them, have them pay all the back taxes (state and federal) from the time they arrived to the time they began paying said taxes. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

EXCEPT we would NEVER EVER see the money.
Why, because what are you going or can you do if they don't pay > nothing.
Just like giving them ROR to show up in court after they are caught > they NEVER show up.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

Why are there so many folks ( mostly Mexican , it seems) That don't seem to want to become US citizens. They seem to want to stay here . A lot of them seem like good people. Why don't they want to become legal citizens?

They come for the money > only.
Not interested in anything else.
If their shithole of a country would allow them to prosper we wouldn't be seeing them.
Further complicated by Dems wanting votes and Reps wanting cheap labor.
Hence, the kicking the can down the road ensues.

AND, they turn where they live here into the same shithole they came from. Trash all over their yards, trash thrown out of their car window as they're driving, etc. Down here in Miami, an American has to speak Spanish to get a job at Burger King, that's how bad it is. There are Spanish people here 20+ years that don't speak any English.......

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
If citizenship is so important to them, have them pay all the back taxes (state and federal) from the time they arrived to the time they began paying said taxes. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

EXCEPT we would NEVER EVER see the money.
Why, because what are you going or can you do if they don't pay > nothing.
Just like giving them ROR to show up in court after they are caught > they NEVER show up.

They get their citizenship once funds are paid in full.

There are really only two possibilities with illegals and taxes.

One, they work legitimate jobs under assumed identities. In this case taxes are being withheld. They may or may not file returns under the assumed identities. But the taxes are paid. And in this case, they're paying FICA taxes for Social Security benefits they'll never see.

Two, they work completely under the counter for cash. No records kept, no bank involved, no taxes paid, no way after the fact to determine how much they were paid, or even that they were paid, to tax them on

So either they've already paid taxes, or there's no way to know how much in taxes they should gave paid. So getting more taxes out of them is a fools errand. On the flip side, we could just set a fixed price for them to buy legal residence.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
If citizenship is so important to them, have them pay all the back taxes (state and federal) from the time they arrived to the time they began paying said taxes. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

EXCEPT we would NEVER EVER see the money.
Why, because what are you going or can you do if they don't pay > nothing.
Just like giving them ROR to show up in court after they are caught > they NEVER show up.

They get their citizenship once funds are paid in full.