Yes We MexiCan! - Page 2

Originally Posted by tonton

What on earth does illegal immigration have to do with the Dems? The last amnesty was brought forward and passed by Ronald Reagan. Repubs love illegal immigration because it provides certain business owners with cheap labor.

My suggestion is to get rid of the lottery and replace it with a work-for-citizenship plan that gives Repubs their cheap labor in certain industries, and also gives ambitious immigrants an alternative to illegal immigration.

Originally Posted by steve666

Reagan did sign the Bill, but it was pushed by Dems.
Shrub did push for the amnesty in a cheap push for latino votes and as you said, cheap labor for business.
Your suggestion is not the answer though, IMO.
Our legal immigration rate is already too high and we take in the wrong type of labor. We need to tie our immigration to the industries that actually have labor shortages like engineering, and to also let high tech workers who study in universities in the US the chance for citizenship when they graduate. Total unskilled labor needs a time out until the unemployment rate drops to 6%.
End chain migration, end citizenship for those born here to illegals, and enact tough penalties against businesses that hire illegals.

Originally Posted by tonton

If there's a labor shortage in a particular high-skill industry, like engineering, it is legal, RIGHT NOW, to work in the United States under an employment visa. We do not need to make any further provisions for this.

However, unskilled industries where there is a labor shortage -- like hand farming and live-in domestic help, cannot sponsor anyone under an employment visa. These also happen to be the industries where illegal aliens are most often employed (along with catering). You want to get rid of illegal immigration, give the unskilled immigrants a way to join these industries legally, and give these industries a legal way to hire help below minimum wage.

Originally Posted by steve666

There is a limit to those visas. Some businesses say there aren't enough of them, which needs to be proven. However there is no automatic path to citizenship for University grads and they are the real entrepeneurs, not day laborers.

There is no labor shortage for domestic help

and if there were why do they all have to be Mexicans? They are Poles and other East Europeans who would be glad to take those jobs.

As for farm workers, there should be a guest worker program that would not lead to citizenship, which is what the Dems are proposing. Apparently they don't understand the meaning of 'guest'. They come when there is work and go home when there isn't, but they would have no problems gaining reentry when work starts up again.

Originally Posted by tonton

University grads can follow the path of employment or investment visa. It happens all the time.
There is for live-in domestic help, and that's what I'm talking about. If you want a cleaner to come to your house twice a week, it's no question you can hire locally and legally. If you want a cook or maid to give up their families and work in your house -- not so easy.

Who said they did? Expect most to be filled by Mexicans, Filipinos, Thais, Indonesians, mostly. Not so much Europeans, but they should have the opportunity as well. This works well all over the world, especially in places where there is a large number of affluent.

Why is this the wrong meaning of "guest"? I suggest we take this further so that it leads to citizenship for those who play by the rules.

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has begun to shrink, ending two decades of steady growth, according to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center.

An estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants lived across the United States as of March 2009, down nearly 8 percent from a peak of 12 million in 2007. Still, the unauthorized population remains a third larger than it was in 2000.

"This is something we haven't seen before," Jeffrey Passel, a senior Pew demographer, said of the decline. "It's a rather large decline and sustained over two years."

Passel attributed the new trend to a sharp decrease in the number of illegal immigrants crossing U.S. borders in recent years.

At a time when illegal immigration has returned to the political spotlight, figures released Wednesday show a sharp decline in the number of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S. border, in what researchers are calling the "first significant reversal" in 20 years.

The total number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. dropped to 11.1 million in 2009, down from a peak of 12 million in 2007, according to estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that studies the nation's Latino population. The report echoes the findings of a study released in February by the Department of Homeland Security.

"We know there has been ramped-up enforcement in the last several years," said Jeffrey Passel, the study's co-author. "Unemployment is high and there's the state of the economy. We know it's harder and more dangerous for undocumented immigrants to sneak into the country. At this point, both of those broad factors seem to be working in the same direction and both seem to explain why the numbers are down."
Passel stopped short of saying the economy and enforcement are the definite reasons for the decline in numbers.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

The best part is Mexico will have tons of US Money in the coming decades. Mexican's will save and post, and paradoxically that will help lead to a new union, based on trade and currency. Perhaps only MJ1960 and I will think that's healthy, but he, rightly, will be concerned about sovereignty. I say, it a choice, a choice made to expand and thrive.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

That's actually true. The EU is actually very strong. The Euro isn't in fact doing badly and the ties, better saying interests and influence, are formidable.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

That was probably to save the US's banking reputation. Not too different from Iceland in that sense. Who knows why exactly and who gained what, but it really wasn't bailing out Europe.

WASHINGTON -- I live in a very multicultural and ethnically diverse county in my state. My children’s school is situated minutes away from a community that looks to be over 90 percent Hispanic. I drive through it after dropping my children off each day. Last week, on the eve of an attempt by Democrats in Congress to pass a controversial immigrant bill known as the Dream Act, the thought crossed my mind that it is very likely that many of those children in that community would have benefited from that legislation. The Dream Act, which was tacked onto the defense authorization bill, would have enabled the children of illegal immigrants who were brought to this country by their parents to gain legal permanent resident status on condition of them attending college or serving in the U.S. military for two years.

The bill failed on procedural grounds last week, but many thought it to be dead in the water given the anti-immigrant sentiments that dominate American policies these days especially against those from Hispanic and Latin American countries. According to research, about 76 percent of all illegal immigrants are Hispanics, with Mexicans being the largest group at 7 million.


[R]ecent immigrants have come from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. Like their European predecessors, they also came chasing the American Dream, thus the name of the bill, the Dream Act. A July 2010 poll revealed that 70 percent of Americans supported the Dream Act.

In fact, 10 states including Texas, Utah and Nebraska grant in-state tuition to undocumented youngsters. The law would have legalized these students and create standards, while enabling these states to retain education revenue. The Utah legislature had to backtrack on a plan to remove its in-state policy when it realized it risked losing 1.5 million in tuition revenue from those students had it reverted its policy. Indeed, immigrants wanting to educate themselves create real value to our economy and society that cannot be denied.

In the end, without a policy that would enable more to attend college, Americans would still lose out as our safety and security would be compromised by those opting a more dangerous route. Furthermore, the cost of prosecuting and deporting any youthful offenders would also bear a burden on our economy. College and military seem like such a better alternative. But on whose dime?

It seems to me that something has to be done. I do not have the answer and I am yet to see anyone present a humane, non-radical, cost-effective and doable solution.

Originally Posted by e1618978

The European union is not capable of keeping itself stable over the long term, unless they integrate into a single country more fully.

Thousands of protesters from across Europe are taking part in a mass demonstration in Brussels against spending cuts by some EU governments.

Trade unions say EU workers may become the biggest victims of a financial crisis set off by bankers and traders.

Many governments across the 27-member bloc have imposed punishing cuts in wages, pensions and employment to deal with spiralling debts

Etuc says the protesters are marching to voice their anger over budget-slashing plans and cuts which "could lead Europe into a recession".

The union warns that the financial crisis - which it describes as the worst in Europe since the 1930s - has already made 23 million people across the EU jobless. It fears that the austerity measures being implemented by various EU governments could "result in even more unemployment".

"We didn't cause this crisis. The bill has to be paid by banks, not by workers," Etuc said.

Instead, the organisation urges governments to guarantee workers stable jobs, strong social protection and better pensions.

Workers in many EU countries are frustrated that they are paying for the mistakes of the banks and the financial sector, the BBC's Christian Fraser in Brussels reports.

The recovery is still fragile. In some countries it has not even begun, and many fear the cuts could provoke further trouble, our correspondent says.

He adds that in short, it is a debate on austerity versus stimulus, cuts or spending, and the opinions are deeply and bitterly divided.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

I think your talking about the IMF deal for Greece, which I wasn't commenting on. The EU will definately grow and become more as one, but at the same time new global rules will be put in place over the coming years too. The US hasn't really bailed out Europe as such. It has given loans through the IMF to Greece, which counts obviously, but it's maybe $7 billion out of the hundreds of billions.

Originally Posted by gerald apple

When you start to open up the boarders every illegal will try to make his way to the states and i am sick and tired of this! That is all they say speak no English. But they get all the benefits of Food stamps, Wic, welfare, medical procedures,and many more. Enough is enough. I lived in Az. I saw this everyday and it made me sick.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

So far though only Greece has been bailed out, at roughly $6 billion. The money you're talking about is speculation and hasn't been spent. What of that will be spent is still a big unknown.

The intersest that the US will be paid on that money already lent to greece will be twelve times higher than it's paying for the money. The US is paying 0.25% and Greece will pay the US 3.0%.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

The US's only lending to date is 17% of the roughly $40 billion it's contributed through the IMF and $2 billion of that is not a straight loan. The US will make a 2.75% interest on those billions likely for a long time to come, which will be a tidy profit.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_569452.html

WASHINGTON - Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey has introduced a broad immigration reform bill that would put the nations approximately 11 million illegal immigrants on a path toward citizenship and enact other sweeping reforms.

The bill, introduced late Wednesday, calls for enhanced border security and tougher enforcement of laws banning employment of undocumented workers, and woulhttp://www.rgj.com/article/20100930/NEWS12/100930039/1321/news/U.S.-senator-introduces-immigration-reform-bill-d make it easier for legal residents to bring family members to the U.S.

Los Angeles- Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) has reintroduced the DREAM Act days after Republicans voted against the measure, which was a part of a comprehensive immigration bill.

The DREAM Act would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented youth who came to the U.S. before the age of 16. The Act allows undocumented students to apply for a conditional legal status for a six-year period if they graduate form a two-year college, complete two years of a four-year institution, or serve two years in the military. At the end of this period, the undocumented students would be able to become permanent legal residents, given they have a clean record.

Washington Sen. Orrin Hatch proposed his answer to the nations immigration problem this week, introducing a bill that hugs the conservative line against undocumented workers trying to obtain jobs and forcing police agencies to cross-deputize their officers as immigration agents or lose federal funding.

Hatch introduced his bill late Wednesday as the Senate shut down until after the November election, leaving little chance the bill will see the light of a committee room or come to a vote this session.

Hatch said his measure hits head-on the concerns residents raised to him during a recent state tour and would go a long way to securing the U.S.-Mexican border, clamping down on identity theft and hindering drug cartel efforts.

More than a century after she crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US, Eulalia Garcia has become an American citizen at the age of 101.

"I feel really good about what I have accomplished - at my age and with my health," she said.

Ms Garcia, who entered the US on 12 October 1909, became a citizen on the 101st anniversary of her arrival.

She said the first thing she wanted to do as an American was vote in the mid-term elections on 2 November.

"Sure, I do - for the best [candidate]," Ms Garcia said.

The case exposed ethnic tensions in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 that has lured Hispanic residents drawn by cheap housing and jobs in nearby factories and farm fields. Ramirez moved to the town about seven years ago from Iramuco, Mexico, working in a factory and picking strawberries and cherries.

The 2000 U.S. Census showed that Schuylkill County's population was 96.6 percent white, with 1.1 percent of the county listed as Hispanic or Latino.

The fight began late July 12 when a half-dozen teens, all Shenandoah residents who played football at Shenandoah Valley High School, were walking home from a block party and came across Ramirez and his 15-year-old girlfriend in a park.

Brian Scully, 18, asked the girl, "Isn't it a little late for you to be out?" That enraged Ramirez, who began yelling in Spanish and dialing friends on his cell phone. Scully admitted shouting ethnic slurs. The verbal sparring soon turned into a physical altercation as Ramirez and Piekarsky traded blows, though prosecutors and defense attorneys disputed who threw the first punch.

Donchak then entered the fray and wound up on top of Ramirez. Prosecutors said he pummeled Ramirez, holding a small piece of metal in his fist to give his punches more power. Defense attorneys said Donchak tried to break up the fight between Piekarsky and Ramirez and denied he had a weapon.

The two sides eventually went their separate ways. But Scully kept yelling at Ramirez, leading the immigrant to charge after the group.

Colin Walsh, 17, then hit Ramirez, knocking him out.


Fanelli accused prosecutors of ignoring exculpatory evidence, including statements by two of Ramirez's friends shortly after the fight that the kicker wore white sneakers _ the color Scully was wearing.

Fanelli also said prosecutors offered leniency to key witnesses _ including Scully and Walsh, who admitted knocking Ramirez unconscious with a punch to the face _ giving them a strong motive to lie.

Walsh pleaded guilty in federal court to violating Ramirez's civil rights and could be out of prison in four years. On the witness stand, he identified Piekarsky as the kicker. So did Scully, who told jurors he tried to kick the immigrant but missed. Scully is charged in juvenile court with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation.

Prosecutors called the beating death of an illegal immigrant from Mexico a hate crime, and they urged an all-white jury in Pennsylvania coal country to punish two white teenagers for their roles in the attack.

Instead, the jury found the teens not guilty of all serious charges, a decision that elicited cheers and claps from the defendants' families and friends _ and cries of outrage from the victim's.

Brandon Piekarsky, 17, was acquitted of third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation, while Derrick Donchak, 19, was acquitted of aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation. Both were convicted of simple assault late Friday following a trial in which jurors were left to sort out the facts of an epithet-filled brawl that pitted popular football players against a 25-year-old Hispanic man, Luis Ramirez, who appeared willing to fight.

A representative of Ramirez's family said the jurors got it wrong.

Prosecutors had cast Ramirez as the victim of a gang of drunken white teens motivated by a dislike of their small coal town's growing Hispanic population. They said he was killed by a kick to the head from Piekarsky after he'd been knocked unconscious by another teen.

The jury evidently sided with defense attorneys, who called Ramirez the aggressor and characterized the brawl as a street fight that ended tragically.

Jury foreman Eric Macklin said he sympathized with Ramirez's loved ones but that the evidence pointed to an acquittal.

It now appears that the police, the district attorney and the judge were all complicit in the sham trial in which two racist hoodlums were cleared of all serious charges by an all White jury in the brutal racially motivated killing of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez.

The video below shows an interview of one of the most important witnesses to the racially motivated killing which the prosecution, by design, failed to call to the Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania trial. The witness is former Philadelphia police officer Eileen Burke who witnessed and heard the killers yelling racial epithets at Luis Ramirez while beating and kicking him to death.

Eileen Burke also makes some incriminating statements concerning Shenandoah cop Jason Hayes who according to court testimony is the "lover" of bar maid Tammy Piekarsky. Tammy Piekarsky is the mother of killer Brandon Piekarsky whose deed the all White jury decided was only a "simple misdemeanor."

The background to the federal trial is this:

After Ramirez was killed in 2008, the investigation into his death was initially placed in the hands of a police officer who had a sexual relationship with the mother of the accused killer. Police misconduct was so bad that several cops involved in the investigation have themselves been arrested by the federal authorities. Roughly half of the Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, police department now face federal felony charges.

Following the killing, local residents held large and boisterous rallies supporting the accused killers and demanding the deportation of the local Latino minority. After the acquittal, local groups organized a victory celebration, which was only canceled when the Philadelphia media learned that the keynote speaker was a well-known white supremacist who worked with the man now known as the Holocaust Museum Shooter.

According to the Associated Press:

Finally, the truth is coming out about the KICK IN THE HEAD MURDER of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, PA. The Federal Hate Crime Trial IS ON!!! Eileen Burke, the eye witness of the murder who WAS NOT allowed to testify at the extremely BIASED Shenandoah Trial previously, was FINALLY allowed to testify! Her testimony is REVEALING! Finally, Finally the TRUTH is coming out!!

[T]he tape of the 911 call made by Elaine Burke, Shenandoah, a retired Philadelphia police officer. "It doesn't look like he is conscious," Burke said on the tape. "It was a fight." Previously, Burke testified that Piekarsky had made a threat to Ariel Garcia, a friend of Ramirez who was crouching next to his motionless form. '"You tell your Mexican friends to get ... out of Shenandoah or you're going to be ... lying next to him'," was what Piekarsky said, Burke testified.

A second person, who was with the Shenandoah-area men testified Thursday that one of the defendants delivered a fatal kick. Brian Scully, of Shenandoah, said he had kicked Ramirez in the shoulder, but that Piekarsky was more accurate. "I regained my balance and I saw Brandon kick him. (Ramirez) started shaking," he testified. Scully, who was tried as a juvenile in Schuylkill County Court, said he has no deal with federal authorities concerning possible charges from the incident

In her summation to the all-white jury, Justice Department prosecutor Myesha Braden said Wednesday that Donchak, 20, and Piekarsky, 18, were motivated by their dislike of Shenandoah's growing Latino population when they beat and kicked Luis Ramirez during a random late-night encounter in a park.

Afterward, she said, the young men joked about what they had done and plotted to lie to the police.

"They showed no remorse that night no sense of responsibility for having beaten a man to the point of death," Braden said.

The defendants, along with two of their friends who have already pleaded guilty, acted as a team, she said.

"As a team they issued racial threats and slurs. They told him as a team to go back to Mexico. And they beat him as a team. The defendants are responsible together for what happened to Luis Ramirez."

Donchak and Piekarsky were charged in federal court with violating Ramirez's civil rights after an all-white jury in Schuylkill County cleared them of most of the serious state charges last year.

Prosecutors allege that Piekarsky delivered a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he'd been knocked unconscious by another teen, Colin Walsh, who pleaded guilty in federal court and testified against his former friends.

Donchak took part in the fight and then conspired with Shenandoah police to cover up the crime, federal prosecutors say. The accused officers are scheduled to go on trial early next year.

Both defendants are charged under criminal provisions of the Fair Housing Act, while Donchak faces additional counts related to the cover-up. The hate crime charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

As they have all along, defense attorneys insisted Wednesday that the fight stemmed from youthful aggression - not ethnic hatred.

"Brandon Piekarsky is not, nor has he ever been, a racist," said James Swetz, Piekarsky's attorney.

He ridiculed the government's theory that Donchak and Piekarsky intended to deprive Ramirez of his federally protected housing rights, saying they didn't even know that Ramirez lived in Shenandoah.

The brawlers that night were "too filled with street pride, easily inclined toward crass language, too quick to anger," said Donchak's attorney, William Fetterhoff. They lacked "maturity, judgment, prudence and self-restraint - Luis Ramirez included."

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

Maybe the right-wing elements here will heed these oddly accurate words by G.W. Bush as he defines the US's axis of evil.

""What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some 'isms' that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was an American-first policy that said, 'Who cares what happens in Europe?'" Bush said. "And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians, therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope that these 'isms' pass.""
~ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_817996.html

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

Maybe the right-wing elements here will heed these oddly accurate words by G.W. Bush as he defines the US's axis of evil.

""What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some 'isms' that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the '20s, for example, there was an American-first policy that said, 'Who cares what happens in Europe?'" Bush said. "And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians, therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we've been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope that these 'isms' pass.""
~ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_817996.html

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

I think he's pointing the finger at the Tea Party here. His three points of axis are, in many ways, Tea Party ideals (though attacking foreign nations seems to be good with them).

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

I think he's pointing the finger at the Tea Party here. His three points of axis are, in many ways, Tea Party ideals (though attacking foreign nations seems to be good with them).

Originally Posted by e1618978

I think that these tea party ideas are just in your imagination. All of the tea party platform items have to do with finances and energy, nothing to do with immigration.

1. Identify constitutionality of every new law
2. Reject emissions trading
3. Demand a balanced federal budget
4. Simplify the tax system
5. Audit federal government agencies for waste and constitutionality
6. Limit annual growth in federal spending
7. Repeal the healthcare legislation passed on March 23, 2010
8. Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy
9. Reduce Earmarks
10. Reduce Taxes

Also, nothing about attacking foreign nations in there...