Who said it couldn't be done......

[paladin]

Back during the great depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of all illegal aliens in order to make the jobs available to American citizens that desperately needed work.

And then again in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower deported 1.3 million Mexican nationals (called operation "Wetback") in order that returning American WWII and Korean veterans had a better chance at jobs. It took 2 years, but they deported them.

If they could deport the illegals back then, they can sure do it today.

If you have doubts about the veracity of this information, just type Operation Wetback into your favorite search engine and confirm it for yourself.

Reminder don't forget to pay your taxes.....12 million illegal aliens are depending on you!

[Phillip Allen]

The left wing-political-correctness-NEA faction is going to prevent this.

[Norman Bernstein]

If they could deport the illegals back then, they can sure do it today.

The only thing preventing it would not be the so-called 'liberals'.... the ones standing in the way of deportation would be the large agricultural, manufacturing, and service industry interests. Guess what: they're largely big supporters of Republican politicians. It's all about money, and has nothing to do with poltical correctness.

I view this as a black and white issue: we either deport every illegal immigrant, or we declare that they're not really illegal. I'd be happy with either solution.

If we're not going to deport them, then they deserve every privelege that the current 'legal' immigrants have, in this country... including drivers licenses and so on. Consciously letting them stay here, while at the same time forcing them to compound their criminality to do so, is hypocritical.

Throw them out... or acknowledge that they're not really illegal.

[uncas]

Norman
I will only support any illegal if he/she wants to become Americans. If they just want to take advantage of the system, they can go home.
I don't care who it is...

I have no problem with remembering and honoring one's heritage. We are all immigrants. I'm a real mix... but to me America is first, religion, ties to Russia, Scotland, England, who knows where is secondary. I don't feel comfortable giving rights to those who wave the Mexican flad ( or any flag other than ours ) in our faces when they decide to protest. That really bugs the heck out of me.
I'm sorry, I taught in the ghettoes of Houston. I dealth with it every day.

[jack grebe]

Giving the illegals the boot would only cause a labor shortage. many of the illegals are doing job that americans are unwilling to do or at wages americans would not work for. Can't mess up the welfare, ya know

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Right-wingers in Texas have been making fortunes off illegals for decades. The Texas economy would be a lot less miraculous without cheap illegal labor. With a Texas president supported by Texas money there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that any meaningful efforts to reduce the availability of illegal Mexican labor will get off the ground.
As a side note, it is known that a whole class of wealthy American born Texas Hispanics have been knee deep in the use of illegal Mexican labor for generations.

[Norman Bernstein]

Norman
I will only support any illegal if he/she wants to become Americans. If they just want to take advantage of the system, they can go home.
I don't care who it is....

The overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are here because they can come here... we make it easy for them: we don't penalize employers who hire them, and we don't deport them when they're found. No border fence will stop them... that whole idea is nothing more than pandering.

If we wanted to eject them, we could. But we don't. Primarily, because major economic interests want them here.

So, let's see.. what do we do about it?

1) Deport them all

2) Let them stay, but force them to hide from the police and INS and whoever else is searching for them.. thereby, compelling them to be even more criminal than they already are.

3) Recognize that politically, ejecting them is impossible.... so 'regularize' them by identifying them, making them pay taxes, giving them drivers licenses, etc.

Take your pick. I say that only #1 and #3 are rational solutions.

[uncas]

Norman.. yup.. I agree.
I would suggest that the tests are in English. If they learn the language and are willing to use it, let them stay. If they refuse to learn English.
1) they won't be able to answer the questions
2) If they learn the language, perhaps they will consider the US as home... At least it is the step in the right direction.

As it stands now, a good percentage could not care less as long as they are paid.. but they are wiilling to protest for rights given to US citizens..

Some have to meet us half way. We should not be expected to bend over backwards for them. And it isn't just Mexicans.

We have a guy in Laurel DE.. A Canadian, been here 12 yrs... Wife was American. or had papers.. She died. He is now going to be sent back to Canada and yet, as a vet., he has given more to the US than a lot who are pleading, expecting equal rights.
He deserves them..( I hope his case will be revieqwed ). A lot of others don't.

[uncas]

Searover..
Perhaps.. I don't know.. just on the local news and the news is anything/ everything the mother base wants to print. From what i can gather, he has until mid Nov. to put his affairs in order...here in the US. Then back to Canada..
Go figure.. we allow elephants to come in across the borderwith only a tick check but kick out people who actually work in a community, support that community and are involved in the community and don't ask for public assistance.
You go figure, I can't.

[Bob Cleek]

"They only do work American's won't do." Not proving to be the case. Originally, it may have been, but experience is now proving otherwise. Here, recently, thousands of tons of pears, about half the crop, spoiled on the trees because the farmers couldn't get workers to harvest them. Were the workers illegals, of course. Problem is, they can make the same money, or more, standing on street corners waiting to be picked up by rat job contractors paying ten to fifteen bucks an hour. This is a better deal than the piecework pay in the fields. They ARE taking jobs from American tradesmen and they AREN'T doing work citizens won't do. It's becoming a bit of a problem. "It's the economy, stupid!" The problem isn't going to abate until Mexico gets its economic act together. Their rich get richer and their poor flee north!

[Stiletto]

People hiring workers for $15 per hour were never in the market for full price tradesmen, so whose job is being taken?

[Norman Bernstein]

Norman.. yup.. I agree.
I would suggest that the tests are in English. If they learn the language and are willing to use it, let them stay. If they refuse to learn English.


Well, here we are going to vigorously disagree.

I think the hangup people have about 'why don't they learn English' is a snobbish prejudice. Language has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it. We do not have any sort of 'national' language, and our rich history of accepting immigrants into this country demonstrates that it's not only unnecessary, it's prejudicial.

My own paternal grandmother could barely speak English, even when she died in 1979, at the age of 93, having been in this country since 1906. She could write her name in English, but that's about it.

Nonetheless, she and her husband survived and prospered, even operating a small store, raising three sons who built a busness and provided handsomely for their family. The descendants of her parents, who emigrated here, now number 460+.... and, as the family genealogist, I know they compose doctors, lawyers, engineers, businessmen, artists, and more... all of whom speak English now.

We didn't turn immigrants away, at the turn of the last century, because they couldn't speak the language... and today, the millions of immigrants who don't speak English, but work the fields and farms and factories and service jobs, still make their contributions to society and build a life for themselves here in the US.

Their children, if we don't shun them because they're 'illegal', will learn English in our public schools, just as my father did, and will integrate into our society as the generations propogate.

The real problem is the illiteracy of English speaking Americans, who (unlike most other western countries) don't make much of an effort to learn alternate languages. I've travelled extensively in Europe, and have made three trips to Japan, and I've never encountered a situation where people there couldn't understand and speak enough English to communicate with. The problem isn't that they don't speak 'our' language... it's much more a problem of us not speaking theirs.

Our obsession (and, I believe prejudice and hatred) of foreigners who don't speak English is just that.... a prejudice.

[uncas]

Norman.
I'm only putting myself in their place. If I moved to another country, learning the language of that country would be the very top of my list of things to do.
I would not expect the inhabitants of said country to learn English just because I was living there or put everything in English just because I lived there. Or have the option of pressing "2" on the phone..

It has nothing to do with hatred..I certainly don't hate immigrants. Hell, I taught in the ghettos of Houston for very little money ( therefore that wasn't the incentive ) for two years.. 98% of my students were hispanic...

[Norman Bernstein]

Norman.
I'm only putting myself in their place. If I moved to another country, learning the language of that country would be the very top of my list of things to do.

No it wouldn't.

Earning a living and getting enough food to eat and a roof over your head would be your top priority... and if you were able to do that without having to learn a new language, you wouldn't. Learning a new language would be priority #90 or so... after picking tomatoes in a field all day, or cleaning offices and bathrooms. You'd hardly have much incentive to spend your precious few hours not working, sitting in a classroom learning a new language.

[Meerkat]

Reminder don't forget to pay your taxes.....12 million illegal aliens are depending on you!Not as much as the employers that are making money off their wet backs and deducting taxes too.

[Dan McCosh]

People hiring workers for $15 per hour were never in the market for full price tradesmen, so whose job is being taken?


Might note that industrial wages--in US auto plants, are currently entry-level at $14/hr. That's at the high end of the industrial scale. Skilled trades command about a 30% premium. The abrupt collapse of industrial wages is usually blamed on a combination of competition from overseas operations and low-cost immigrant labor. (We had a thread on this subject a while ago, and it wasn't clear if the currency was accounted for.)

[Stiletto]

OK, I was thinking about carpenters wages and construction workers.

How much would a skilled carpenter be paid in that area?

[uncas]

Norman
I'll just have to disagree...Norman..
Looking at American History... 1848 late 1800s and early 1900s especially, there were thousands of immigrants from Germany, China, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Holland who came here to work..In mant cases, menial jobs by the way, who managed to learn English and in many cases, also managed to retain their culture.

I just don't buy it.

On another aspect of this, how can someone in charge of workers communicate if there is a language barrier.. I can't see it working very well. Now if those coming in to this country don't want to get ahead or expect the country they have entered to abide by their wants/rule etc. fine.

Now, if America wants to bend over and appease them, well, so be it.

[jbelow]

The problem we have here is because of Mexicos government . We should have made Mexico a U.S. territory after the Mexcan/American war and gave them their independence back after they established an American form of government . There is no excuse why Mexico should not be one of the worlds properous nations .