Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

Fair enough but what we're talking about are the millions of illegals (and their children) who are ALREADY here - not the new immigrants who might come. Blame Mexico if you like, but the fact is there are many illegal immigrants living and working in our cities and towns. Their kids go to school with our kids.

This is a practical issue. Rounding up all these millions of illegals and sending them back to wherever they came from would be inefficient, costly, and probably harmful to segments of our own economy. So a guy like McCain has the guts to try and find a workable compromise solution to this very complex problem - and everyone just yells "amnesty!" as if it's the most horrible thing they could imagine.

I don't think most democrats or republicans would object to better control of our borders. If only legal immigrants came to the US from now on, that would be fine with me. I am not a fan of illegal immigration. But it seems counterproductive (not to mention mean) to insist on rounding up and deporting millions of people who are already here because their own country was horrible, and we couldn't control our borders to stop them.

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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What percentage of this issue is just racism, do you think? (I heard the words "assimilate" and "be a part our culture" a lot from the candidates, which sounds a heck of a lot like code to me.)

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I think 90% of the issue is culture, not racism. Have you been to a fast food restaurant or retail store lately? No one working in those places speaks English anymore. As long as the majority of the workforce that people interact with on a daily basis have 0 language skills, people will be pissed of about illegal immigration, regardless of whether those people are illegal immigrants. That and its nice to be able to go to Home Depot without being swarmed by illegal immigrants asking you if you need help.

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In return, stuff is cheaper.

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Compared to less illegal immigration, a broken legal immigration system and a broken welfare system, yes.

Compared to less illegal immmigration, an effective legal immigration/guest worker program and a welfare system that puts people to work instead of feeding them life support, no.

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How is limiting immigration ever going to drive prices down? I mean, if you lump in "removing welfare" with your limiting of immigration I'm sure you are going to get a NET decrease in costs, but its in SPITE of your legal immigration system and not because of it.

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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Just to confirm: illegal (excuse me dennis kucinich, undocumented) immigrants pay taxes? Is that a fact, jack?

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Fact.

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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McCain is a national hero?

Oh wait, I forgot that for some reason people consider bad things happening to you to be heroic. Nevermind, carry on.

*goes and heroicly jumps into the Grand Canyon*

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The guy was offered an out-of-sequence release by the North Vietnamese because his father was a relatively-famous commander in the Navy and he turned it down because he didn't think it was fair to get sent home before other less-well-connected POWs who had been imprisoned for longer were forced to stay; he was then mercilessly tortured because of the refusal to leave.

I suppose we can debate what it means to be a "hero" and the nobility of purpose of flying jets in Vietnam, but you jumping into the Grand Canyon != McCain being offered the chance to escape imprisonment and torture but refusing to do so because it violated a dearly held principle. Not that I would expect your typical ACist to actually understand any of this kind of nuance, or why someone would do something like experience terrible physical trauma because of fidelity to dearly held principles (I know, I know -- you and Nielsio and other ACtards have experienced the terrible pain and suffering that the jackbooted thuggery of state authority and their taxation, which has wrought terribly wretched and painful lives upon you, which can only be remedied by sacrificing enormous time and energy...by posting about it on an the intraweb and YouTube. That is umm, a little similar, but not exactly the same).

Anyway, I thought it important to point this out, just in case there were other people like gobbomom out there who thought you were funny but hadn't quite considered why your analogy was retarded.

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Hmm... jumping into the Grand Canyon = tremendously stupid decision

Willingly choosing to be stay imprisoned and be tortured = tremendously stupid decision

Seems like a good analogy to me!

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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Just to confirm: illegal (excuse me dennis kucinich, undocumented) immigrants pay taxes? Is that a fact, jack?

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They certainly pay sales taxes when they buy things. Illegal immigrants who are assigned fake SS #s by their employers are also paying payroll taxes and aren't be eligible to collect any of the benefits.

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The VAST MAJORITY pay taxes. All the ones working at burger king, mcdonalds, wendys, whatever....they all get cut paychecks and have taxes deducted.

The house cleaners don't, and I think my sister, who cleans one house every 2 weeks for some pocket money.... I would be willing to bet that she does not report that on her and her husbands annual income taxes.

I don't know how the people who pick fruit are paid but the people working in regular stores are paid by check with SSA, FICA, Fed, state railroad, whatever the hell.... deducted right out of it before it gets to them. The 1099's are then all filed by the employers to the government and none of the immigrants file tax returns.

For the past 15 years the IRS has been getting 1099's from dozens of meat packing plants across the midwest with 100 employee's all with the same SSN. LOL

I don't understand it. People come on her biotching about people who cross a the desert to get a job at McDonald's but keep their trap shut about the government standing around handing out welfare, et al, to able bodied citizens.

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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Willingly choosing to be stay imprisoned and be tortured = tremendously stupid decision


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The ability to do tremendously stupid things is, along with the ability to do tremendously intelligent things, the greatest of human traits.

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

All this focus on illegal immigration takes away attention on how ridiculous the process for legal immigration is.

I have a friend from Tanzania, who went to a private highschool here on full paid scholarship, graduated public highschool here and gained acceptance to a private College on full scholarship, graduated, then completed his MBA. he's been here for over a decade and now either has to get sponsorship from a company, go back to school, or get deported.

he faced idiotic stipulations for getting a job, making sponsorship near impossible (he has two degrees, business and japanese). Don't know if things changed, but there was a period a year or so ago where he couldn't find a sponored position because any place he wanted to work at was required to turn down a specific number of citizens or have a specific ammount of time where no citizens applied before they could consider him.

yeah, lets go ahead and call these [censored] xenophobes, when they're not outright racists.

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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People come on her biotching about people who cross a the desert to get a job at McDonald's but keep their trap shut about the government standing around handing out welfare, et al, to able bodied citizens.


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Complaints about the welfare state = 95% of posts in this forum, what are you talking about?

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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People come on her biotching about people who cross a the desert to get a job at McDonald's but keep their trap shut about the government standing around handing out welfare, et al, to able bodied citizens.


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Complaints about the welfare state = 95% of posts in this forum, what are you talking about?

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And it would be 105% if the government wasn't so inefficient...

Re: The immigration issue (YouTube Republican debate)
 

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What percentage of this issue is just racism, do you think? (I heard the words "assimilate" and "be a part our culture" a lot from the candidates, which sounds a heck of a lot like code to me.)

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I think 90% of the issue is culture, not racism. Have you been to a fast food restaurant or retail store lately? No one working in those places speaks English anymore. As long as the majority of the workforce that people interact with on a daily basis have 0 language skills, people will be pissed of about illegal immigration, regardless of whether those people are illegal immigrants. That and its nice to be able to go to Home Depot without being swarmed by illegal immigrants asking you if you need help.

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In return, stuff is cheaper.

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Compared to less illegal immigration, a broken legal immigration system and a broken welfare system, yes.

Compared to less illegal immmigration, an effective legal immigration/guest worker program and a welfare system that puts people to work instead of feeding them life support, no.

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How is limiting immigration ever going to drive prices down? I mean, if you lump in "removing welfare" with your limiting of immigration I'm sure you are going to get a NET decrease in costs, but its in SPITE of your legal immigration system and not because of it.

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Its not in spite of nor because of, its a package of rational policies that would result in whatever the necessary levels of immigration/guest workers are and reduce welfare costs at the same time. the net result is the same or lower prices and lower taxes/smaller deficits