The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

May 1, 2009 Steve -- Fort Myers, Florida writes:

I continue to be intrigued by the failure of our leadership (Both Democrats and Republicans) to take effective action against illegal immigration.

Jobs are few, wages are decling, America is in an economic mess and our leaders still continnue to talk, but refuse to take action against an evident problem that is destroying the country.

Suffice it to say both the Democrats and Republicans are indebted to the special interests who see illegal immigration as a windfall to their businesses. Americans are either nieve, stupid, or complacent and subsequently fully deserve the declining standard of living that has resulted from illegal immigration and the “Free Trade Agreements”. Yeah for globalism —SCREW America!!!

May 1, 2009 M A Andrews-Los Angeles writes:

Have ethnocentric and criminal employer special interests
gotten so much control over U.S. Congress that our
U.S. Melting Pot has turned into a Tower of Babel
and become ungovernable?

May 1, 2009 Dale MN writes:

Steve, The big problem is that the elected officials do not know the definition of ILLEGAL. There are different interpretations of the law when these supposedly educated people do not use the definition given to words used in our laws and Constitution as ILLEGAL. Evidently the word ILLEGAL has a different interpretation with regards to immigrants. I know if I as an American citizen does something ILLEGAL I am arrested, charged, judged and served a sentence according to the guidelines of the law if found guilty. The elected officials that have determined that the ILLEGAL immigrants are not breaking the law and promoting the ICE law enforcement be stopped as Pelosi stated, with proof of promoting criminal activity, of the law should be held responsible for each and every crime that is committed by one of there ILLEGAL immigrants with a charge against them for aiding in the commission of a crime.
The laws are made to be followed by all that are on American soil and it is OUR responsibility to see that the people that are violating these laws on our American soil be prosecuted no matter if an ILLEGAL immigrant or a elected official aiding the ILLEGAL immigrant.

LAWS ARE LAWS FOR ALL. Who made the elected officials above the law. These actions of our elected officials are not much different then telling the law enforcement to stop enforcing the sexual predator’s laws. As to not enforce the law when a sexual predator does not register as required by the LAW.

Can anyone think of other examples or situations of the way Pelosi and others are putting these ILLEGAL immigrants above the law?

I know if I do something ILLEGAL I pay for my crime. Is this because I am a LEGAL citizen.
LEGAL charges against elected officials that are supporting ILLEGAL immigrants and other infractions are not happening and is one of the reasons the government is out of control. They have no consequences for their illegal activities.

Sorry for the rambling but ILLEGAL IS ILLEGAL when OUR LAWS are VIOLATED!! NO matter who.

May 1, 2009 Maggie Wahington writes:

I see time after time on blogs, “No one is illegal”

Well put that to test. Proudly enter any other country in the world (other than America) and just see how liberal every other country is. I think you will find that every other country in the world values it’s borders other than the US. And all the idiots who think differently need to test the borders of Mexico, China, Japan, Russia and just see how strongly other countries guard their borders. Only idiots in the US blah blah blah about “no one is illegal in Gods world.” What a crock.

May 1, 2009 Maggie Wahington writes:

Mexico, who pushes all their poor and unwanted and sick off on the US, and for pity sakes, we pay them to do it, would be glad to stick you in one of their stinky prisons and I doubt seriously if you get served 3 squares a day and get your doctorate education while you are in there. The US needs to toughen up on their laws and the pride they have in being a soverign country.

May 2, 2009 Estoban - Phoenix, Az writes:

We are a consensual society under a Constitution that provides rights, freedoms and the mechanics to create laws that we citizens live by. Citizens accept that breaking our laws results in proscribed punishments. An unholy alliance of lawbreaking illegal aliens, criminal employers and elected officials that look the other way are hypocrites and anarchists. They feel that they can pick and choose which laws are convenient for them to follow and willingly break those that are personally inconvenient. This breaks down our legal system and works against the rule of law that we depend upon for our daily safety and national security. All lawbreaking illegal aliens should be deported, all criminal employers should be jailed and elected officials that have failed to carry out their oath of office to defend the Constitution and our laws should be fired, voted out of office, impeached and perhaps charged with criminal dereliction of duty. The 1986 amnesty was a total failure. Never again!

May 2, 2009 panola, VA writes:

7-8 million illegal aliens are working in construction, manufacturing and service industries and nearly all of these criminals are committing a felony by using fraudulent ID since they are actually on the payroll and NOT being paid under the table.

Everyone, including Obama, is in agreement that all illegal aliens guilty of a felony will be deported.

Imagine you’re the one that receives a notice from the IRS asking why you’re attempting to file two tax returns and receive two refunds because some illegal is using your ID.

Imagine you’re the one that is denied a loan on a new car because your credit has been trashed by an illegal.

Have they stolen your child’s ID??

May 3, 2009 Dale MN writes:

These professional political correct lying elected officials are counting on the illegals their families voting them back into office. These politically correct professional politicians do not have any other training or experience then being a politician and they need each other to get what they what. They keep the job where they are by getting better and better with their BS. And eventually the BS isn’t going to carry the base that got them a good start. Term limits are long past needed. Napolitano is no different then only she has been appointed by a professional political correct politician instead of being elected.

May 4, 2009 Norski, MN writes:

Too many people defend Illegal Immigrants because they think that they actually contribute to our economy. That is a fallacy. Here is why.

Fact 1 - A Pew study by Jeffrey S. Passel “estimated that illegal immigrants fill a quarter of all agricultural jobs, 17 percent of office and house cleaning positions, 14 percent of construction jobs and 12 percent in food preparation.” That means that 75 percent of all agricultural jobs, 83 percent of office and house cleaning positions, 86 percent of construction jobs and 88 percent of the food preparation jobs are done by U.S. Citizens and Legal Residents. There is no job American’s won’t do because they are already doing them. So Illegal Immigrants compete directly with U.S. Citizens and Legal Residents for those jobs.

Fact 2 - Per the March 2009 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Report we have 19.0 million U.S. Citizens looking for work (13.2 million people listed as unemployed and 5.8 million people designated as “Not in Labor Force: Persons Who Currently Want a Job”). According to Pew Center and Social Security estimates 7.2 million Illegal Immigrants are working. This imbalance of many more unemployed Americans than we have working Illegal Immigrants has been present through all of the last two decades. Even when these numbers were at their closest to each other in March of 2007, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 11.3 million Americans looking for work versus an estimated seven million working Illegal Immigrants. And this condition only lasted one month as in both February and April 2007 there were five million more Americans looking for work than there were employed Illegal Immigrants. So if the Illegal Immigrant were not working, U.S. Citizens and Legal Residents would be. Thus there is no real net increase in GDP or for that matter no net increase in income tax collections attributable to Illegal Immigrants.

Fact 3 – Per U.S. Government Statistics unemployment pays the equivalent of $7.00 to $13.00 per hour depending on State ($14,000 and $26,000 per year). Add in an average of about $2,700 welfare payments (per government statistics), multiply by 7.2 million, then assume that only two thirds of the unemployed actually get this and the net cost is $100 billion per year. This massive transfer payment costs the average taxpayer an extra $600+ per year in taxes and supports those who are unemployed thanks to Illegal Immigrants. Transfer payments of this sort are not part of GDP.

Fact 4 – If the Illegal Immigrants had never come to the U.S. they would not be here to spend what they earn. But if the U.S. Citizen and Legal Resident were working those jobs instead, they would be spending money in the same way as the Illegal Immigrants are now except for remittances money sent to Illegal Immigrant’s home countries. So actually in this area Illegal Immigration represents a drop in GDP due to remittances.

Fact 5 - The $100 billion in transfer payments that currently go to support those unemployed would not happen so it would seem that this would be a GDP loss. But in fact, without these transfer payments each working person in the U.S. would be paying $600 per year less in taxes and thus would have $600 per year more to spend. Considering the average U.S. Savings Rate for this decade is effectively zero, all of this tax reduction would be spent resulting in no significant change in GDP.

Fact 6 – In the Labor Markets most affected by Illegal Immigrations Economists such as George Borjas have reported an average 8% decline in the wages, which is a direct reduction in GDP.

This leads to the inescapable conclusion that rather than experiencing a GDP gain from Illegal Immigration, we actually experience a net GDP loss thanks to Illegal Immigration. Thus, those who profit from Illegal Immigration do so at the expense of our entire nation.

May 4, 2009 Edward Springs, CO writes:

Here is a superb piece written by a Mexican intellectual who was once part of former Mexican president Fox’s entourage. In that role he met many Dems and Repubs and formed a clear view as to why our politicians have been driving this illegal crime wave, and you can be sure that this has always been driven by our own politicians. If our government used the tools of enforcement with serious intent, how long could poor uneducated people remain in our country? Ha, not long at all. This argues strongly that our unresponsive politicians want this criminal activity to occur.
—————————–
Immigration and Usurpation
Elites, Power, and the People’s Will

July 2006

By Fredo Arias-King

Americans are aware that their political class may not always act in their best interest. This belief is enshrined in the American character, its laws, and the very philosophy underpinning the U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers crafted things so that the “knaves” will be forced to abide by the will of the people, but they warned that their “natural progress” is to find ways to remain in power and increase that power at the people’s expense.

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and others got it right—the knaves have, by and large, behaved, and their actions largely reflect in some way the will of the American people. Americans do not need to engage their politicians in an uncivil way—as happens most elsewhere—since the ballot box, the media, and other constitutional tools largely suffice. Indeed, the American political system works remarkably well. However, there are a handful of topics where the elites do not act in the interests of those they govern.
…
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back706.html

May 5, 2009 Tony Catalan writes:

Illegal immigration is a by-product of poor law enforcement, business’ need for cheap labor, and people looking for a better way of life. There is plenty of blame to go around. We all need to compromise and allow for a fair resolution to take place; we are dealing with humans beings not cattle. I am in favor of a reform that would allow undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship provided they have paid a fine and demonstrated good moral character.

May 6, 2009 Edward Springs, CO writes:

Tony Catalan wrote: “;we are dealing with humans beings not cattle.I am in favor of a reform that would allow undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship provided they have paid a fine and demonstrated good moral character.”

———-
Well that would be a foolish arrangement for any country to agree to. First off, no one on this thread has asserted that Mexican people are cattle, so your inclusion of that unprovoked rebuttal tells us something about your view of the participants in this debate.

Secondly, how can people who commit not one crime, but a great series of crimes and acts of theft en mass, then display “good moral character”?

And lastly, from the “real world” department, there were NEVER sufficient jobs for all these outsiders to push and shove their way in to grab for themselves.

Even now unemployed Americans are living in tent cities! As per: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-04-new-homeless_N.htm

These people here illegally are not “immigrants”, you can only call yourself an “immigrant” if the host country in question agrees to let you apply. These people are “illegal aliens”.

Now it turns out that with the banking fiasco and the false housing price disaster, our united states are far less wealthy than we led ourselves to believe they were.

These people will have to return home, there is no alternative. The grinding collapse of our country’s false wealth will send these people home, as well as crush the life out of the extreme socialism which had taken root in years of late.

Tired clichés like “people are not cattle” and “show me some character (you thieves) and you may steal my nation” will simply be ineffective against the almost unanimous will of Americans NOT to be overrun by greedy outsiders, combined with our newfound (and constantly worsening) economic situation.

Americans need jobs. These illegal aliens cannot just live on as they did during the good years, nor can they continue to profit from the precious jobs that millions of them are now illegally withholding from Americans.

You can be sure the seriousness of this issue is not even close to having been felt nationally as yet.