<p>“Of course, I don’t know if that takes the cost of educating their children into account.”</p>
<h2>Doubtful, Consolation. Add educational + medical services (ER care), + frequent lack of automobile insurance coverage, & the cost is considerable to any particular already-paying customer. (Reduction/elimination of other private medical care, due to hospital bankruptcies; school taxation; cost of auto insurance policies, etc.)</h2>
<p>“While I am not sure to whom you refer as “at the others who add virtually no value to our economy” I assume you’re not talking about the undocumented aliens who hold jobs in farming, in food processing, in construction, and in many other sectors.”</p>
<p>The healthy economy & society is one in which there is a balance among various labor segments, with no one tier dominating or consuming other input/outgo. An enlightened immigration policy, which ours is not, would take that balance into account. So, it seems that the cynical de-facto gov’t position is to wink-wink allow cheap illegal labor in. What makes no sense is that there is no acknowledgement that because that labor pool is heavily undocumented, therefore we should demand only a high-skilled labor pool as our legal immigrants, assuming as the gov’t cynically does, that the unskilled will come anyway & there will absolutely no serious attempt at reversing that trend via economic opportunity in the home countries.</p>
<p>How I wish that instead of supplying billions to the Iraq effort, we had supplied billions to Mexicans to revolt against their corrupt & neglectful politicians. The peasant uprisings there have been futile without serious foreign aid.</p>
<p>I might be all for this if the students were contractually obligated to “repay” society by working in the public sector for a defined period of time after graduation. I can think of worse things than replacing the home-grown mediocrtities who constitute much of the NEA’s membership with bright, motivated immigrants with a measure of gratitude to the nation that provided them such opportunity.</p>
<p>I think post 43 makes a good point. I agree that lots of U.S. citizens might be happy to support their public education through college, and be happy as well to have paid for previous educational, medical, other benefits up to that point, if those graduates were met at graduation by Selective Service agents to escort them to national, non-military service posts, or face immediate deportation.</p>
<p>Most appropriate would be qualifiable service positions in education, medicine, & gov’t social service agencies.</p>
<p>The only reason why we’re pulling the ladder away is because to many people are bringing their own ladder. </p>
<p>We here in SoCal only see our neighbors to the south,but we are aware that our faltering immigration policy extends to other countries as well.</p>
<p>We as a nation are the most generous in the world with regards to aid. However, when I invite guests to Thanksgiving Dinner, I’m not surprised when a few unexpected guests arrive. It’s when my unexpected guests bring others that I wish respect and common courtesy before I’m expected to foot the bill!</p>
<p>In our area, schools do not check if kids are legal or parents are legal. They are more crazed by those who do not physically live in the district than if the family is legal or not. So these kids go through the system and get a high school diploma. Now what? If they are illegal, they can only get under the table type jobs. So they are allowed in college at state tuition rates. When they graduate from there, what next? It seems to me that we are addressing the wrong problem here.</p>
<p>“So they are allowed in college at state tuition rates. When they graduate from there, what next?”</p>
<p>Two of us answered that question for you: They are conscripted into national service, to repay the country that so generously provided them a free education, free emergency-room care for all their well- and sick-care needs, kept them out of prison while often knowing they have no documents, etc. At that point, they are escorted to service jobs with modest pay – only enough to live on without danger & without luxury – certainly not enough to send additional cash home to relatives south of the border. At the end of that service, presuming that service is adequate & they do not jeopardize their status with serious law-breaking, their previous history of employment is validated, along with their post-college service (employment) history.</p>
<p>One of the key goals of “immigration reform” is to “get immigrants out of the shadows,” so that they can become visibly productive members of society, contributing to the economy & without motivation to break the law, engage in tax detours, etc. This could aid in accomplishing that.</p>
<p>Like Americorp? I saw the answers, Epiphany. The problem is that the bills and movements are to let them into college at state tuition rates. They are already allowed in colleges and precollege schools. There is no active movement to take care of the next step. Until we do this, all we are doing is extending the problem. It is madness, in my opinion. And yet I can see why we want to do this. We allow them here. We allow them to work. We allow them to put their kids into public schools. We allow them to use our health care and other programs. We allow them to go to college. We allow them to have state rates for college tuition. All of this is done. What we have not started to do is to get them out of the shadows, come up with a policy that we can enforce so that we are not being hypocritical.</p>
<p>“Do you really believe they would agree to voluntary indentured servitude?”</p>
<p>What’s to “agree” about it? I think it’s far more agreeable to the U.S. public than comprehensive amnesty is. And I think on the part of the immigrants, it’s far less dangerous than hoping they won’t face deportation. It restores their previous work efforts, after service. (Which is like amnesty, just labor-paid amnesty – just as we have labor-paid them in educational, medical, often legal services – beyond ACLU, btw.)</p>
<p>What do you think the U.S. Service Academies are, for U.S citizens? You think they’re not “voluntary indentured servitude?” (Actually, they’re not: they’re repayment of a loan; just as we loan services/$ to illegal immigrants by pretending not to notice that they’re draining expensive services.)</p>
<p>“There is no active movement to take care of the next step.”</p>
<p>For the 3rd time now, I proposed the next step. This is not rocket science, & is less cumbersome & more equitable than many other suggestions, which are too slanted either in favor of, or against, the well-being & futures of immigrants. It can become an active movement for those who are forward-thinking & solution-oriented. </p>
<p>Immigrant-bashing is not the answer. But surrender is equally not an answer.</p>
<p>Xiggi - I respect your criticism and you make a very valid point. Like I said, I do feel sympathetic towards those illegal immigrants who are coming here to make a better life for their families - but it just seems like more and more, the ones who are coming are not the classic immigrant in our minds of a person who truly wants to become an American and contribute to our country. I cannot go a day without hearing a story on the news about a huge drug bust involving illegal immigrants or police officers - not even border patrol - being killed on the highway due to a confrontation on the highway with illegal immigrants. This may be in large part due to a media bias, but it no less infuriates me.</p>
<p>And yes, I kind of got carried away near the end of my post. Obviously, illegal immigrants from Mexico should not be treated any differently than those from any other country.</p>
<p>To be fair, I also don’t really have an answer as to what we can do about the existing illegal population. Legislation in this area must toe the fine line between justice and common sense - especially when it comes to the children who got dragged into all of this with no say of their own.</p>
<p>PS What part of history are you suggesting I read more into? I’m not sure what part of the Treaty of Guadalupe is supposed to make me feel bad that Arizona is now part of America? I’m not trying to sound flippant, I’m actually confused, lol</p>
<p>And may I point out that my proposal deals with another unfortunate, stubborn link in the chain that contributes to the intransigeance of this problem: the one-way cash journey south of the border: This is the single greatest reason why the Mexican gov’t absolutely loves our current non-policy/idiot practice. They’re thrilled with U.S. cash going south, with zero impunity to Mexico. A five-year moratorium, post-graduation, on a salary sufficient to do that, is more likely to encourage the Mexican gov’t to begin to make their own economy more attractive to producing a stable, residential middle-class.</p>
<p>I see the proposals here on the board, but not on the table to be done. But the other steps are on the table. Do we go with what’s on the table before getting other reforms in place? Yeah, because that’s what we have done, and what we are doing. Don’t see it happening soon any other way. I do believe that if you are an illegal alien, some legalization process is available if you join the military. Not that many takers though.</p>
<p>“producing a stable, residential middle-class”</p>
<p>Mexico actually has a stable middle class. What Americans fail to realize is that the vast majority of illegal Mexican immigrants in the U.S. are issued from the lowest classes in Mexico. That’s why most of them are uneducated and at times unsophisticated. I just wish people would think logically about these issues before going on stupid and usually racist rants.</p>
<p>Children should not be faulted for their parents’ “mistakes” (if that’s what you want to call it). In my opinion, ALL undocumented children who graduate from U.S. high schools and are admitted to a 4-year university should be given in-state tuition AND a path to eventual legalization. This is the only way we will, in the long term, prevent an underclass of immigrants in the U.S.</p>
<p>lillybbloom, are you talking about the attempts within the last 10 or so years? And no, I’m not “out of my mind”? Are you?</p>
<p>Since I have a close relative who was intimately involved in these peasant uprisings, I in fact am entitled to talk about something I’m quite familiar with, thank you.</p>
<p>“Mexico actually has a stable middle class.”</p>
<p>Of course they do. It merely excludes most of the millions who travel north through <em>illegal</em> means. You read very hastily. The context of my comments was converting the CURRENT undocumented underclass (there’s no “will”/future about it, which is what your last sentence implies), to a stable, domestic middle-class status.</p>
<p>“I just wish people would think logically about these issues before going on stupid and usually racist rants.”</p>
<p>And I just wish you would read carefully before going on reactionary, illogical name-calling (“out of your mind”) rants, accusing people of being uninformed when they’re read much about the subject & often have relatives here from Mexico, who have married into the family.</p>
<p>You have no idea whom you’re talking to on a message board, “NU '09” or not.</p>
<p>I want to make clear that illegals cannot just join the military and become legal which is pretty much what I said in Post #54 but was not what I meant to say. I do not want to give misinformation. The fact of the matter is that military recruiters who have tried to go this route have been panned for taking advantage of illegals. It is not going to be an easy thing to legalize illegals by requiring service, I can tell you. You then get into the situation with their famiies who are also illegal. I would like to see more forgiveness of loans for kids that go into services in the US that could use them. It woud be far simpler to do, but I don’t see this on the table either.</p>
<p>As I said earlier, I don’t have strong feeling on how the problem should be resolved, but I think right now, we are in a terrible situation of not enforcing our own laws and actually making new policies to encourage breaking them.</p>
<p>This is fallacy. In the long term, denying in-state tuition to one generation of illegal immigrants will not result in the creation of an “underclass” of immigrants. The U.S.-born children of those illegal immigrants will have the same opportunities as your own children.</p>