Illegal Aliens are beginning to scare me.

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Dragon Sage007
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Illegal Aliens are beginning to scare me.

Unread postby Dragon Sage007 » Sat Aug 23, 2008 1:39 am

First, some links to catch everybody up to speed on these things. Michelle Malkin has the news and links to related sources on the major things that worry me, so I'm going to use her as a central reference-that, and I respect the lady. I know that some of you keep up to date with this more than I do, but still...

San Francisco says, "Let Illegal Aliens Stay!"

L.A. Passes Day Laborer (Read:Illegal Aliens begging for jobs) Mandate.

San Francisco gives 650,000 to Illegal Alien Felons!

Compounded by...

A US border agent has a gun pointed at his head by mexican troops.

Which was allegedly a 'misunderstanding.'

Gee, maybe we should have some sort of fence-like obstruction to stop these 'misunderstandings.' Except it's not happening.

...Am I the only one worried by this, especially seeing them all together like this? I'd go ahead and compile some numbers on how often these incursions have happened, and exactly how much of a problem illegal aliens are in San Fran and LA, except I need to lie down now. Sandwiches don't taste that good coming back up, especially mid-post.

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Unread postby Idran1701 » Sat Aug 23, 2008 3:33 am

I'm not going to comment on the articles themselves right now, since I'll want to research them first. But I honestly don't see how you can respect someone that is, among many other hatemongering things, still in favor of the Japanese internment camps from World War 2. Malkin even went so far as to write a book about how they were needed, and the right thing to do at the time. That in itself should be enough commentary on if she deserves respect from anyone or not.

Edit: All right, I'm looking into these articles now. First off, the "San Francisco values: Let the illegal alien felons stay!" and "San Francisco gives 650,000 to Illegal Alien Felons!" articles. To quote the news article Malkin quotes in the latter:

As San Francisco’s juvenile justice system shielded young illegal immigrant felons from possible deportation, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office gave grants totaling more than $650,000 to nonprofit agencies to provide the underage offenders with free services - everything from immigration attorneys to housing assistance to “arts and cultural affirmation activities,” city records show.
...
Newsom’s office created the program, in part, to deal with an influx of Central American youths being housed on drug charges at San Francisco’s juvenile hall, according to those familiar with the grant. Crowding at juvenile hall had led to protests among youth advocate groups.
“A key goal of this project is to assist these individuals to successfully navigate the juvenile justice system and achieve stability within the community setting,” according to a 2006 invitation issued by Newsom’s office for agencies to bid for grant money.


The former article says the same thing; these programs are used for underage illegal immigrants held here on drug charges. These programs are meant to help rehabilitate them. If we just deported them back to Central America, where would they be going to? Back into the drug cartels where if they're lucky, they wouldn't be killed or tortured for getting caught? I know that's dipping a bit into an appeal to emotion, but even thinking about it rationally, what is better for these children? Helping them get on their feet here, or sending them back into the environment that led them to get arrested for drug trafficking in the first place?

As for the second set of articles, yes, there was a mixup in the border. Nothing came of it, there was no violence and things were resolved peacefully and diplomatically. What exactly is the problem here? I'm sure things like this happen on occasion along the Canadian border too (because nothing illegal ever goes on there :O), but I don't hear anyone calling for a wall to be built there too.

Here's what I think. If people are so eager to become US citizens, why not let them become US citizens? The current immigration policy is so tied up that if you're not a college graduate, it can take literally years to get a visa to become a citizen. That's how much of a backlog there is. We need to ease restrictions on immigration, not do as much as we can to kick the illegals back across.

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Unread postby Capntastic » Sat Aug 23, 2008 3:48 am

Do you have any links from a website that doesn't seem to have a blatant "MEXICANS GO HOME" bent to it? I went to the site's index and saw the word "Hispanderer" and immediately closed it and washed my hands.

Anyways, I'm not too clear on the legal stuff regarding illegal immigrants, but is it a precise federal law to have them shunted from the country at earlier convenience? I don't know, but if it isn't a federal law, I'm totally fine with state and city governments deciding not to spend millions in taxpayer money to hunt down and escort them home.

Likewise, I don't think spending even more millions on a 'big fence' is going to do much other than be a big moneyhole- the sort of thing that looks good on newspaper headlines for the types who like to do big stupid projects while trying to lower taxes- the sort of thing causing budget crises.

I'd also like to pre-empt any notion of 'Mexicans steal jobs' because I doubt the majority of suburban Americans would want to be day laborers or landscapers for two hundred dollars a day. Minus materials, tools, and gas money. It's a tough life, and I respect anyone who has to take that route and does so gratefully.

Living in California, I tend to deal with folks who may or may not be illegal quite a bit, and I don't care about their legal 'status' at all. Dumping cash into a sort of 'War on Immigrants' is doomed to fail for the same reason the 'War on Drugs' is a failure for the same reason Prohibition failed. The free market's gonna flourish, and people need cheap labor and illegal immigrants want to work.

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Unread postby pd Rydia » Sat Aug 23, 2008 1:30 pm

Idran1701 wrote:Here's what I think. If people are so eager to become US citizens, why not let them become US citizens? The current immigration policy is so tied up that if you're not a college graduate, it can take literally years to get a visa to become a citizen. That's how much of a backlog there is. We need to ease restrictions on immigration, not do as much as we can to kick the illegals back across.
This.

So, most of the complaints I see about the "illegal immigrant" problem has to do with them being illegal. Y'know, not paying taxes, not having licenses--breaking the law to get into our country (irregardless of whether or not breaking the law to get into our country was a life-saving choice)--and so on.

And yet, so many people who obsess over illegal immigration don't want illegals to start paying taxes or get licenses. They don't want them to have more opportunities to come into our country legally or become legal citizens. They just want to kick all them dirty Mexicans* out of the country.

Really, this isn't about an "illegal immigrant" problem as much as it is about a "damn foreigners in our country" problem. It also has a touch of "oh God, everywhitey panic, the brownies are going to outnumber us in [X] number of years!"

* Where Mexican is almost any foreigner who speaks a foreign language.

:eng101: See also: every other immigrant wave in our nation's history.

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Unread postby Idran1701 » Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:36 pm

pd Rydia wrote::eng101: See also: every other immigrant wave in our nation's history.


This is another thing that can't be ignored. When the Chinese were coming over in record numbers, we hated the Chinese. When the Irish were coming over in record numbers, we hated the Irish. Hispanics (not even just Mexicans; like those articles said, they're from all over Central America) are just the most recent targets for immigrant-hatred.

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Unread postby Kai » Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:48 pm

When the Italians came, they weren't considered white. They were "ethnic caucasians." Same for the Irish. Hispanics are the same way. At the risk of dragging us off-topic, I think it's worth noting that these major immigrant waves (with the exception of the Chinese) were all from Catholic countries.

Whether we're afraid of losing our Protestant cultural purity, or just afraid of how quickly them damn Catholics breed (causing them to outnumber white Protestants more rapidly), I don't know. But I recall this coming up in my American religious history class last year. Americans seem to panic more when the immigrants are Catholics.

Edit: To elaborate! Because I thought of something else. To me, I think it's less a worry about breeding than about being invaded. People used to be terrified of Catholics. There was a widely-believed conspiracy theory back in the early 20th century that Catholics who came to America were part of a Papist plan to take over. They'd fill America with Micks and Wops and Spics and all these others who were slavishly obedient to the Vatican and then someday they'd rise up and hand America over. Supposedly a man got thrown off a train because someone started a rumor among the passengers that he was the Pope, headed to Chicago by rail to start the rebellion.

Things like this suggest to me that there might be some of that old Protestant-Catholic divide at play here. That's why Mexicans and Italians and Irish are so much scarier as migrants than, say, Polish people.

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Unread postby pd Rydia » Sat Aug 23, 2008 2:54 pm

Idran1701 wrote:This is another thing that can't be ignored. When the Chinese were coming over in record numbers, we hated the Chinese. When the Irish were coming over in record numbers, we hated the Irish. Hispanics (not even just Mexicans; like those articles said, they're from all over Central America) are just the most recent targets for immigrant-hatred.

You'd think we'd learn better! Except...

Image

Kai wrote:When the Italians came, they weren't considered white. They were "ethnic caucasians." Same for the Irish.

There's a book on that topic, with a ridiculously long title, that I want to get ahold of and read sometime. (Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs).

I've seen someone speculate that the U.S. will eventually consider Hispanics white, just so that whites don't become "outnumbered."
Kai wrote:Edit: To elaborate! Because I thought of something else. To me, I think it's less a worry about breeding than about being invaded. People used to be terrified of Catholics. There was a widely-believed conspiracy theory back in the early 20th century that Catholics who came to America were part of a Papist plan to take over. They'd fill America with Micks and Wops and Spics and all these others who were slavishly obedient to the Vatican and then someday they'd rise up and hand America over. Supposedly a man got thrown off a train because someone started a rumor among the passengers that he was the Pope, headed to Chicago by rail to start the rebellion.

There's still a little of that stuff left around, although it really is the fringe that still worries about it. You know. That fringe.

I still love this list.<ul><li>The Catholic Church keeps "the name of every Protestant church member in the world" in a "big computer" in the Vatican for use in future persecutions.[1]</li><li>But the conspiracy is much broader than this, and it has been going on for a very long time. In the sixth century, for instance, Catholic leaders manipulated the Arabian tribesman Mohammed into creating the religion of Islam to use as a weapon against the Jews and to conquer Jerusalem for the pope.[2]</li><li>The Jesuits instigated the American Civil War, supporting the Confederate cause and seeking to undermine the Union. When they failed, they arranged the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.[3] Later, they formed the Ku Klux Klan.[4]</li><li>"Jesuits worked closely with Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin" to create Communism, and it was "believed that soon . . . Communism would rise up as the new strong daughter of the Vatican."[5] It was Rome that instigated the Bolshevik Revolution and the murder of the czar’s family.[6] The Communist "liberation theology" movement also is a Vatican plot.[7]</li><li>The Nazi Holocaust of the 1940s was a Vatican-controlled attempt to exterminate Jews and heretics.[8] Further, "Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were backed by the Vatican for the purpose of setting up a one-world government to usher in the ‘Millennial Kingdom’ under Pope Pius XII."[9]</li><li>The Vatican conspiracy is so extensive that, through the Jesuits, Rome controls the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, international bankers, the Mafia, the Club of Rome, the Masons, and the New Age movement.[10]</li><li>The Jesuits created the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Unity, Christian Science, and other religious groups.[11]</li><li>"Pope John Paul II has been a good Communist for many years"[12] and engineered a phony assassination attempt against himself in 1981 to shame Islam into warming relations with the Vatican, since the would-be killer was a Muslim.[13]</li></ul>

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Unread postby Idran1701 » Sat Aug 23, 2008 3:13 pm

Kai wrote:Edit: To elaborate! Because I thought of something else. To me, I think it's less a worry about breeding than about being invaded. People used to be terrified of Catholics. There was a widely-believed conspiracy theory back in the early 20th century that Catholics who came to America were part of a Papist plan to take over. They'd fill America with Micks and Wops and Spics and all these others who were slavishly obedient to the Vatican and then someday they'd rise up and hand America over. Supposedly a man got thrown off a train because someone started a rumor among the passengers that he was the Pope, headed to Chicago by rail to start the rebellion.

Things like this suggest to me that there might be some of that old Protestant-Catholic divide at play here. That's why Mexicans and Italians and Irish are so much scarier as migrants than, say, Polish people.


I don't know that it can be chalked up to anti-Catholic fears. Most of the fear amongst the right-wing that I've seen, besides that they're going to steal our jobs etc., is that they're going to take parts of the country back for themselves by increasing their numbers and refusing to integrate. In that respect, it seems closer to anti-aboriginal sentiment than anti-religion. Fears that they're going to take back what used to be theirs. It goes far enough that there are conspiracy theorists that think that's an actual goal amongst them.

Plus, for the most part nowadays anti-Catholic sentiment doesn't seem as strong as it was in those days. I wouldn't be surprised if Kennedy's term as one of our most beloved presidents helped with that, but whatever the reason, Catholicism seems to not be as big of a fear in the country. Now, I'll admit I could be wrong on this and maybe it's just gone underground, because it's not something I've looked into or looked for, honestly.


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