Reader comments
'Comprehensive' reform called for on illegals

In response to story : Just how many broken
Laws like Illegal Immigration,Document Forging,
Identity Theft,Welfare Fraud and gaming and abusing
the U.S. Legal System. should these "hard working" Illegal Aliens be Forgiven with "A Path To Citizenship"!

Gives us a law like OK has and they'll pack themselves off. Enforce the laws prohibiting hiring them and they'll pack themselves off.

Not popular but practical.

Step one, secure the border. Period.

Step two, improve ability to track those who come to the US with student, business and travel visas. I have read that up to 60% of all illegal aliens came to the US on a visa. When their visa expires time to either renew it or return home. We need to get serious about this issue.

Step three, fix the visa. Simple economics shows that when you have ten million plus breaking the law, the law might have an issue or two.

People are foolish if they think that ridding ourselves of illegal workers "cold turkey" is going to help our country. Our economy would be severly hurt, as would most employers.
Yes we need to fix immigration.
Yes we need to secure the borders.
Yes we need to enforce laws.
Yes this is decades old, and we've exacerbated the situation by not doing anything sooner.

But...

We must also consider the family members left behind by those deported.We must consider those who are left in our care as a society, because their parents chose to improve their life by illegal, but common means.

We must consider the devastation it will cause to the construction, manufacturing, agriculture and food industries, and come up with a realistic work program. Otherwise, homes, durable goods, and food prices are going to skyrocket.

A reasonable work program and reasonable expectations on employers (not these vague, conflicting, and out-of-touch rules and regulations) are the only solutions.

Illegal immigration is driven by cheap labor. Illegal immigration depresses the wages of unskilled Americans and those legally in the U.S. This requires taxpayers to provide support for these workers and those unable to find work at a living wage. Any wage below subsistence level is a wage subsidized by the taxpayers. The money saved by consumers from the use of depressed below subsistence level wages is taken from them through taxes. This is in addition to taxpayer support of medical, welfare, and educational support of illegal aliens. Since wages, like goods and services, is a product of supply and demand. The unskilled labor market is being flooded by illegal alien labor which depresses wages and is in effect an employer subsidy by the taxpayers.

Ethnic and social supporters of amnesty for illegal aliens are simply unwitting clients of the businesses and politicans that depend on illegal alien cheap labor for their profit and political office. If labor laws were enforced, illegal immigration would cease to be a problem in several years without deportation, except for the criminals.

I live in an area where the Hispanic population is booming (outside DC).

I'll tell you right now. YOU DO NOT WANT TO LIVE NEAR ILLEGALS.

They need to crack down. Please, will someone save us?

Remember back in the early 1980s when the Feds granted legal statis to all the illegals that could prove they had been here 5 years. All it did was incourage more to come. Did not solve anything. THis time I favor a severe approach. They are law breakers just by being here. I say find em, send em back, put there name at the bottom of the list for immigration. Fine them enough to help pay for the program, to make sure they do not take much back with them. Severe, yes, but I have to deal with them on a daily basis sometimes.

You want to increase education funding, get the illegals out of public schools. The amount of money is staggering.

The Dept of Ed needs to publish how many actually failed the core tests and cost schools passing AYP.

I worry about the total affect of all of our policies right now.

Between the War in Iraq, the subprime housing market, energy policies, spiking inflation tied to a collapsing dollar, increase in food prices, and of course this issue.

Right after the stock market crash of 1929 America went into a real funk. As I remember from my college courses though the real depression did not hit this country until we got reactionary. We passed the Smoot Tariff trade act, implemented incredible amounts of protectionist trade policies, increased taxes, etc and that completely jammed us into the Great Depression.

Are we doing a repeat?

Right now we are talking about slowly doing trade, DC is talking about an almost $1 trillion tax increase, and they are looking at increase redistribution policies as a way to help the wage gap created over the past 10 years.

Immigration, legal and illegal, has helped the economy. I agree that we MUST have it done legally. I worry that if not handled properly, with other tough measures we may just force ourselves into another Great Depression.

Any thoughts?

In reply to Victor,

How do you know they are all illegal? Maybe all the Hispanics came here on those amazing Visas that are so easy for them to get.

In repy to BBKing,

We are definitly pushing our country in that direction. What would happen if we gave these people a route to citizenship? Would they start buying houses? You know, in places where the prices have gone down. Would they start spending their money again? Right now they are holding on to it out of fear of raids or firings. If people would back off and take an honest look at the overall situation in this country, they might just get a shock. What is going to happen when we make an enemy out of the countries to the south of us. Do people honestly believe this people are inferior to us? Hugo Chavez is crazy. But by making enemies of this people and their American children, what do you think is going to happen? He is going to be building influence and using America's children against us.

It is obvious most of these people posting hate comments live in a cespool of ignorance.
First of all everyone including illegals PAY TAXES simple daily purchases at any place are taxed, a lot of these people are homeowners,their property taxes are used to support schools and hospitals, the rest of them who pay rent give their landlords the money to pay for the property taxes of the building they live in.
All the payroll taxes collected from their paychecks amout to vast sums of money they will never get back since they cannot claim any SS benefits or tax refunds of any kind.
So it is ridiculous to claim they put a burden on hospitals or schools since they only represent the 5% of the US population and they are not the only ones in this country who don't have health insurance or cannot pay for their medical expenses at the emergency rooms.

How are we a land of laws....when our own Government breaks them everyday???