Karkadinn
If I tell my children that from now on they should only walk on one foot inside the house, and they disobey me, who is at fault? The disobedient child or the idiot who made an idiotic rule?
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
Pro-Freedom Fanatic
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Of course! When the rules are stupid/oppressive/unreasonable/both, blame rightfully belongs to the rule-maker, not the rule-breaker.
That One Guy
I dislike illegal immigration because of how unfair it is to the people who work through the system. Like my friend's parents, for example. They had to work hard to become nationalized, now they run a bakery. It's not fair to them or the millions of people who worked to become legal citizens to house illegal immigrants who don't pay taxes and such.
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Indiana Solo
Exactaly!
Karkadinn
What do you mean by 'fair'? Exactly how are they being HURT by those illegal immigrants? And as previously noted, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS STILL PAY TAXES.
You're also missing the point with that 'by working hard' bit, in trying to make it sound like it's just a matter of wanting it badly enough and not being lazy. It's not. We only allow so many people in, and far more people than that want to come in. No matter how hard you work, you can't get in on hard work alone.
To present an anecdote to counter your anecdote: I have an acquaintance who's a legal immigrant and isn't likely to leave any time in the future, but she refuses to try to become a citizen because she's terrified that they'll find an illegitimate excuse to kick her out during the process, so she doesn't want to risk what she's already got by drawing attention to herself. She bases this off of reported incidents of exactly that happening to other people of her nationality in the same situation. And she's CANADIAN.
edited 3rd Oct '11 12:58:06 PM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
I changed accounts.
And it's up to you to prove to us why it's stupid/oppressive/unreasonable. Challenger to the status bears burden of proof.
And, yes, I completely sympathize with the "my parents came here legally, so fuck these people" argument...
I am now known as Flyboy.
Pro-Freedom Fanatic
Punishing noncompliance with arbitrary restrictions in some sort of misguided recognition towards those that did abide with them doesn't make any sense.
edited 3rd Oct '11 1:15:23 PM by SavageHeathen
You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.
I changed accounts.
- 1) Our country, our rules.
- 2) Arbitrary = see above
- 3) Misguided recognition? Oh, I didn't realize that "wanting to follow the law" was "misguided."
- 4) Yes, it makes complete sense. Violating laws = punishment. That's how it works in the real world.
Karkadinn
USAF, points have ALREADY been made in this thread about the problems inherent in the current immigration system. Our resident pseudo-anarchist shouldn't have to repeat them because you couldn't be bothered to pay attention the first time.
Go tell that one to civil rights activists.
edited 3rd Oct '11 1:25:30 PM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
I changed accounts.
No, I'm not arguing that it's good to punish them.
I'm simply arguing that we have the right to do so, if we so choose.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
I am now known as Flyboy.
More like giant cherries
What do you mean, illegal? It's not like we just misfiled the paper work on some millions of people and that they all really have visas and/or are citizens.
Actually, in some cases, that's exactly what happened. Many people who are here illegally arrived with a legal visa but were unable to renew it due to bureaucratic snafus and just stayed anyway.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
After Ruling, Hispanics Flee Alamaba Town
They left behind mobile homes, sold fully furnished for a thousand dollars or even less. Or they just closed up and, in a gesture of optimism, left the keys with a neighbor. Dogs were fed one last time; if no home could be found, they were simply unleashed.
Two, 5, 10 years of living here, and then gone in a matter of days, to Tennessee, Illinois, Oregon, Florida, Arkansas, Mexico — who knows? Anywhere but Alabama.
The exodus of Hispanic immigrants began just hours after a federal judge in Birmingham upheld most provisions of the state’s far-reaching immigration enforcement law.
The judge, Sharon Lovelace Blackburn, upheld the parts of the law allowing state and local police to ask for immigration papers during routine traffic stops, rendering most contracts with illegal immigrants unenforceable and requiring schools to ascertain the immigration status of children at registration time.
When Judge Blackburn was finished, Alabama was left with what the governor called “the strongest immigration law in this country.” It went into effect immediately, though her ruling is being appealed by the Justice Department and a coalition of civil rights groups.
In the days since, school superintendents have reassured parents — one even did so on television in Spanish — that nothing had changed for children who were already enrolled. Wary police departments around the state said they were, for now, awaiting instructions on how to carry out the law.
For many immigrants, however, waiting seemed just too dangerous. By Monday afternoon, 123 students had withdrawn from the schools in this small town in the northern hills, leaving behind teary and confused classmates. Scores more were absent. Statewide, 1,988 Hispanic students were absent on Friday, about 5 percent of the entire Hispanic population of the school system.
John Weathers, an Albertville businessman who rents and has sold houses to many Hispanic residents, said his occupancy had suddenly dropped by a quarter and might drop further, depending on what happens in the next week. Two people who had paid off their mortgages called him asking if they could sell back their homes, Mr. Weathers said.
Grocery stores and restaurants were noticeably less busy, which in some cases may be just as well, because some employees stopped showing up.
In certain neighborhoods the streets are uncommonly quiet, like the aftermath of some sort of rapture.
Drawn by work in the numerous poultry processing plants, Hispanic immigrants have been coming to Albertville for years, long enough ago that some of the older ones gained amnesty under the immigration law of 1986.
But the influx picked up over the last decade, and the signs on Main Street are now mostly bilingual, when they include English at all.
What the new immigration law means on a large scale will become clearest in a place like Albertville, whether it will deliver jobs to citizens and protect taxpayers as promised or whether it will spell economic disaster as opponents fear.
Critics of the law, particularly farmers, contractors and home builders, say the measure has already been devastating, leaving rotting crops in fields and critical shortages of labor. They say that even fully documented Hispanic workers are leaving, an assessment that seems to be borne out in interviews here. The legal status of family members is often mixed — children are often American-born citizens — but the decision whether to stay rests on the weakest link.
Backers of the law acknowledge that it might be disruptive in the short term, but say it will prove effective over time.
“It’s going to take some time for the local labor pool to develop again,” said State Senator Arthur Orr, Republican of Decatur, “but outside labor shouldn’t come in and just beat them every time on cost and put them out of business.”
Mr. Orr said there were already signs that the law was working, pointing out that the work-release center in Decatur, about 50 miles to the northwest, was not so long ago unable to find jobs for inmates with poultry processors or home manufacturers. Since the law was enacted in June, he said, the center has been placing more and more inmates in these jobs, now more than 150 a day.
On Monday morning, one of the poultry processing plants in Albertville had a job fair, attracting an enormous crowd, a mix of Hispanic, black and white job-seekers, lining up outside the plant and down the street.
“This needed to be done years ago,” Shannon Lolling, 36, who has been unemployed for over a year, said of the law.
Mr. Lolling’s problem seemed to be with the system that had brought the illegal-immigrant workers here, not with the workers themselves.
“That’s why our jobs went south to Mexico,” he said. “They pay them less wages and pocket the money, keep us from having jobs.”
Not far from the plant, in the Hispanic neighborhoods, it is hard to differentiate the silence of the workday, the silence of abandonment or the silence of paralyzing fear.
Many Hispanics have chosen to stay for now, saying, with little apparent conviction, that the law will surely be blocked by the president, the judge, “the government.” Until then, they are not leaving their homes unless absolutely necessary. They send others to buy their groceries and tell their children to quit the soccer team and to come home right after school.
Rumors of raids and roadblocks are rampant, and though the new law has nothing to say about such things, distrust is primed by anecdotes, like one told by a local Hispanic pastor who said he was pulled over outside Birmingham on Wednesday, within hours of the ruling. His friend who was driving — and who is in the United States illegally — is now in jail on an unrelated misdemeanor charge, the pastor said, adding that while he was let go, a policeman told him he was no longer welcome in Alabama.
“I am afraid to drive to church.,” a 54-year-old poultry plant worker named Candelaria said, adding, “The lady that gives me a ride to work said she is leaving. She said she felt like a prisoner.”
All summer long, Allen Stoner, a lawyer in Decatur, has been helping his Hispanic clients fill out forms appointing friends or family members as guardians of their children, who are in many cases American-born citizens. This way, the children would not be transferred to social services if the parents were arrested and deported.
Much of this was done by the time the judge’s ruling came down, though last week Mr. Stoner’s clients began to contact him immediately to ask what they should be doing. Monday was quiet.
“We had a lot of phone calls Thursday and Friday,” Mr. Stoner said, “but it has plummeted.”
He did not know for sure, but he figured his clients were gone.
I always love how they say the labor pool will develop again. when almost any case where mexicans leave the area, they cant get anyone to work as farmhands. Mostly because most americans would rather be unemployed than do backbreaking labor. Hell, I know I'm among them.
Besides,. anyone find it slightly ironic that its the traditionally "republican" small businesses like farms and factories that are hurt most by immigrants leaving?
edited 4th Oct '11 7:59:36 AM by Midgetsnowman
Karkadinn
Well, on the bright side, maybe our nation can watch Alabama fall into ruin and thereby realize that the 'outsiders' aren't the problem with the economy. Loss the battle to win the war and so forth.
Now I'd like to see ANYONE argue for indiscriminate enforcement of immigration laws. Come on, tell us straight out that legal citizen children mean less to you than deporting their illegal-immigrant parent. I defy anyone to do so.
edited 4th Oct '11 7:48:28 AM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
I'd imagine if the right had their way they'd find a way to turn any "anchor baby" into "not a citizen"
Sadly, people realizing the role of immigrant labor in the economy is unlikely. Every time we've had a massive immigrant influx, people have blamed them for everything.
edited 4th Oct '11 7:58:40 AM by Midgetsnowman
I changed accounts.
I could say that such a situation means the kid would fall to Social Services.
I'm not a "deport the illegals" person, though...
I am now known as Flyboy.
More like giant cherries
I'm just continually amazed by the inability of agriculture lobbying to stop this kind of stuff.
And apparently, it's impossible to find many non hispanic workers, even if you pay above minimum wage. People just don't like to do backbreaking labor in the heat all day.
edited 4th Oct '11 4:45:24 PM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
Karkadinn
Which probably implies that wages are drastically too low even when they're legal, I should think.
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
I changed accounts.
Which finally implies that farming is a losing industry as it is, and survives while propped up on government money even as a handful of megacorps eat up the little people the government money was meant to save.
I am now known as Flyboy.
Farming subsidied mostly benefit big farm, not mom and pop farm.
Nobody actually gives a shit about the small town farmer in the republican party.
edited 4th Oct '11 5:21:33 PM by Midgetsnowman
scratching at .8, just hopin'
and have hit upon the fact that agriculture subsidies are not meant to help the small farmer. Big agri corps LUUUUUUV them that cheap illegal labour. Why would they lobby against that?
edited 4th Oct '11 5:54:32 PM by RadicalTaoist
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
and the small farmers who rely on samesaid workers cant find anyone willing to work on farms.
OMG NO NOSECONES
Thread-hop: I really wish it was easier to immigrate to our country.
"Hey guys, you want to live here and do yoru share? Not a problem! Sign here, here and here, take this pledge, and BLAMMO, you're a Citizen (well, not that simple, but still...), with all Rights and Responsibilities afforded to you as such!"
"Congratulations, Citizen, now you can vote, pay taxes, participate in Jury Duty, represent and be represented fairly and equitably, and be a contributing part of the greatest nation on Earth!"
"To help acclimatize you to this great nation, we only ask that you make an honest effort to learn English. Not to worry, there will be plenty of opportunities provided for you to learn."
Really, does it have to be so freaking hard for them to get in that they have to lie, cheat and take undue risks to be here?
We need to fix Immigration.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
I changed accounts.
~adds "immigration" to the "list of things that America needs to fix"~
I don't think we'll be getting to that for a long time...
I am now known as Flyboy.
Ah yes, we should blame the creator of the rule, as opposed to the individual that knowingly breaks it; that's just brilliant.