cyberquiet

I have to say that these marchs are counterproductive for illegal immigrants. They do not help their case by acting as if they have the same moral standing as African Americans who were brought here in chains.

I think the problem is their susceptibility. They believe to the first one who shows interest in their issues.

If insitutions doesn't play this role, groups interested in using them for their advantage will readily show up.

I'm amazed that academic science has not tapped into the illegal immigrants as of yet to do "slave-labor" lab routines!

 

We all know that a person does not need a college degree or even GED to do mini-preps' date=' make buffers, split cells, or run a gel!! Hell with enough training, i'm sure you can get the illegals to do your restriction digests, and radioligand binding assays!!!!

 

We don't need no stinking ph.d's no more!!![/quote']

Because academics really risk legally if they hire illegal immigrants. They are not difficult to punish like big corporations.

http://www.zmag.org/books/pareconv/parefinal.htm

Ever heard about it? What do you think? I'm still reading the book, and I find the idea a lot interesting.

I think we really need an alternative to capitalism, so I very much appreciate those who work to find a viable alternative.

I'm sure it can if "just" means an economic system that shares whatever wealth exists without attempting to create wealth by harnessing human greed.

I don't want to get off topic' date=' we may open another thread for discussing this. The only thing I will say is that no one has givean a [b']proof[/b] that something better than capitalism cannot exist, do you have one?

agreed... I fail to see how socialism is a 'just' system. But that's getting off topic' date=' sorry.

[/quote']

Please, I don't like preconceptions about socialism. Socialism as written on paper was never realized, the so-called past socialisms were all but socialist.

 

It is possible to focus too exclusively on resources. What resources does S. America lack compared to N. America?

Unfortunately, I don't have enough knowledge to answer this question. Possibly they have the resources, but they don't have the right to use them or they don't have the technologies to extract them.

Isn't your position shaped by compassion?

In part it is' date=' but it's primarily motivated by the desire of economic and social equity.

My point is that politicians and the average citizen, but especially the most affluent ones, hardly make some economic sacrifice in the name of compassion...

There are a variety of geographic, historical and cultural reasons which account for the United States' wealth. Academics could argue for years as to primary causes. It really has nothing to do with being fair.

Indeed there is not a single factor, but I think resources are the essential basis for wealth. No civilization who lived in a desert may have produced the same wealth at the same pace, however culturally or technlogically advanced.

From this I logically deduce that if you born in a place with more resources than me, you are luckier than me.

Unfortunately, "just" systems do not produce wealth to share in the first place.

What do you mean? Are you arguing that a more just economic system cannot exist?

Also, cutting of the supply of workers, or at least threatening to, would put the politicians in a position where they have to finally make decisions and act.

It may work, but it won't be easy to make the employers behave correctly...

They will most probably respond by "emigrating" to another country where workforce is less costly (I like to insist on this, damned Michael Moore )

The point here being that property owners and nations have the right to draw boundaries. Compassion will influence how much of their wealth or country they will share but it is not all that controls.

Don't you think if we only wait for "compassion" to take out developing countries from their misery, we may wait forever?

Why should a US citizen have so much rights over a cospicuos share of the global wealth simply because she is born from a legally recognized US family? Recall this:

You have housing that would be considered luxurious in many countries only because you were born in a country that provides opportunity for education and advancement. You worked hard to acquire these things but so would these people who had no such opportunities. You might be able to provide 4-5 families with housing if your family just made do in the master bedroom and shared the spare rooms. For that matter' date=' why are you entitled to the master bedroom merely because you are an American?

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Don't you think a just system should not give so much privileges to people who only were lucky?

 

Newt Gingrich had a good idea. Legalize immigration but require employers to deposit 10% of wages in an account that can only be accessed on proof of periodic return to the home country.

This is an interesting idea. So once they have accumulated some money they can return to their home country and start developing there.

But if there are political or other kind of constraints, this may suppresss any attempt of development in their home country. Such constraints are not uncommon: think about wars, dictatorship, corruption, environmental destruction...

 

Enable class actions by American workers against employers with some fixed penalty for the depressed wages.

 

Send employers who willfully violate the law to jail.

 

We could get this done if we wanted. It's just politically easier to drift.

As I said earlier, employers strongly benefit from illegal immigrants, but regular employees suffer economically from this.

But I'm still waiting for a strong political action aimed to control those employers...

And even if such action would be taken, I think companies will instantly move their factories outside the US, increasing unemployement.

Even if you owned your own home and were willing to allow another family to live with you, wouldn't you still demand the right to control who comes in and on what basis? You might want to limit how many families come in so that the home does not become uncomfortable. You might be concerned if they stayed so long that they even came to have an interest in your property?

Cool, I don't know if it was intentional but this fits perfectly even if we substitute the concept of home with the concept of a state/region.

Anyway, this is correct, bringing tolerance at the extreme may cause serious economical and social problems, and no one will benefit from them.

But I don't think we're even close to this point Jim, there is plenty of room in our home.

We just need to arrange them more intelligently.

I firmly believe that the current American citizenry with all of its diversity "owns" America and has the absolute right to control who comes into the country and on what basis.

I find a bit difficult to follow this argument. For example, on what basis the english who colonized the States and their descendence could claim to "own" the country?

In making our decision as to who comes in and on what basis, I believe we should consider the impact on the US economy, the suffering that might be alleviated by allowing a particular immigrant group and the ability of that group to "melt" into the American pot. This last element is impacted not only by the tendencies of the group (and, yes, a group that comes from a contiguous country may be less likely to assimilate than groups from Europe, Asia or Africa) but also the numbers we are absorbing.

 

I want all of those factors to be assessed and then for the nation's policy makers to make a decision.

This leaves a open problem: how will you block the undesired immigrants? How can we expect poor people who can merely gain elementary education to know the correct procedure needed to enter the country?

As I said before, without intervention on the "source" countries, immigration will not stop.

If you came home today and a destitute family had taken up in your spare bedroom, would it be immoral for you to call the police to remove them? They wouldn't have taken such a drastic step if their situations hadn't been so very desperate.

I would go further and say they have the right to do so. It may seem foolish, but I think it's not more than declaring we have the right to live wastefully and in all the luxury we can afford.

You have housing that would be considered luxurious in many countries only because you were born in a country that provides opportunity for education and advancement. You worked hard to acquire these things but so would these people who had no such opportunities.

This is perfectly right, but a lot of people still insist in saying they don't like and don't want to work. In reality I've never seen people working harder than the immigrants who built an house behind mine last summer...

You might be able to provide 4-5 families with housing if your family just made do in the master bedroom and shared the spare rooms. For that matter, why are you entitled to the master bedroom merely because you are an American?

I don't live in a supersize American home, but at least 2 families could live confortably in my home. My parents will hardly accept something like that, anyway...

I hope it was intentional, but a lot of posters seem to ignore the huge human aspect of this issue....

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't US corporations massively moving their factories to Mexico so they can pay employess 60 cents per hour?

If it's so, why shouldn't a Mexican citizen ask himself: <<why should I work for these US corporations doing the same things (or worse) US citizen were doing one year ago and be paid a tenth?>>

If it's not so, I'm sure they've serious problems making a living in their country, otherwise they wouldn't do such a desperate thing...

As Lester Brown says:

And each day Mexicans risk their lives in the Arizona desert trying to reach jobs in the United States. Some 400 to 600 Mexicans leave rural areas every day, abandoning plots of land too small or too eroded to make a living. They either head for Mexican cities or try to cross illegally into the United States. Many of those who try to cross the Arizona desert perish in its punishing heat—scores of bodies are found along the Arizona border each year.

I think the only solution is to improve living standards in their home countries, until this is done, I find morally unjustifiable to enforce country borders or to expel them.

Obviously no government will intentionally do so, since US enterprises appreciate this low-cost and low-risk workforce, and medias have new scaring "enemies" useful to keep citizen frightened.

In Italy it is pretty going in the same way...

Hi, this is my first post on this forum.

I voted "other". I think public transportation and bicycle are the only viable solution if we want to prevent a host of problems in the future.

But until the "smart growth" philosophy will be adoped, hybrids should not be understimated as a way to reduce oil consumption.

Amory Lovins even claims hybrids may be made much more efficient by using better materials and aerodynamics.