Illegal immigrants could be granted US amnesty within 8yrs
- Millions of illegal immigrants in the US could be granted amnesty and become permanent residents within eight years, under plans being drawn up by President Barack Obama.
After eight years, they would be eligible for a green card granting legal residency - provided they learn English, pay any back taxes, and study "the history and government of the United States".
The bill is being drafted by Mr Obama and his aides as a fall-back option in case much-heralded bipartisan talks by senior congressmen fail to produce solid plans.
Surely, if thought about logically, this would encourage more illegal immigration from Mexico and other countries and not less?
lotuspuppy
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This "amnesty" is just one of the proposals for overhauling our broken immigration system. You may recall the U.S. did this once before, in 1986 I believe. At the time, that amnesty was billed as a one off thing. It may have attracted more illegals, but I think the strength of the U.S. economy relative to Mexico's was a bigger factor. Of course, now that our economy has slumped, there is actually net migration to Mexico.
Whatever happens, we need to do something about our 12 million uninvited guests. I personally favor a guest worker program with no option for citizenship, unless they can get a green card.
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This "leak" is just pandering to Hispanic voters and nothing more. It has 0 chance of becoming law.
Deportation for 12 million or however many people is unrealistic but people that enter the country illegally should not be given citizenship.
End the drug war, secure the border by bringing our troops home, don't provide services for illegals, end automatic birthright citizenship for those born by non-citizen parents that enter the country illegally. That would just put us on par with pretty much every other country on earth, what do you think would happen if you enter a place like Japan illegally?
lotuspuppy
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By whom? How do you propose to find them? How do you propose to deport them?
Unfortunately. Though if it was realistic, they can hardly say that they have an excuse. They broke the law of the land.
The problem with this is that this leaves their children and grandchildren in an absolutely awful bind in that their parents may have moved to the U.S. illegally, had their children here and they may now be adults. They cannot vote, receive services or have anything else that normal U.S. citizens would get. I think we also have to be careful not to punish teenagers and adults of illegal immigrant parents that have grown up here, as it's not their fault after all.
Agreed - as a mild libertarian, it isn't the state's business what we put into our bodies.
Agreed. I favour a similarly non-interventionist policy for the UK. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, we should be defending the UK and territories (and our very close friends), nothing more.
Switzerland do this. They call them secondos. These secondos I think usually get Swiss citizenship when they become in their twenties or so, but many of them are the grandchildren of non-citizenimmigrants and even they are not allowed Swiss citizenship! Swiss citizenship is one of the toughest kinds of citizenship in the world to get.
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The social conservatives are more likely to pay for your welfare system.
Anyway, it's not - by a long chalk - just social conservatives that are against mass (legal or illegal) immigration. Not by a long chalk.
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I think the average cost of a deportation is something like $12,000. It just isn't cost effective on top of a whole bunch of other issues. We'd be better off offering them money to leave the country voluntarily versus forcibly removing them. There just can't be any incentive for a person to enter a country illegally.
I think ending 'jus soli' and making English the official language would at the very least streamline integration. Creating more ethnic enclaves is not going to help anything. When you come to live in another country you should embrace its culture.
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The social conservatives are more likely to pay for your welfare system.
Anyway, it's not - by a long chalk - just social conservatives that are against mass (legal or illegal) immigration. Not by a long chalk.
Um, no economic conservatives who are socially liberal are often rich. Social conservatives are usually like Irish in your country traditionally were --- poor, uneducated, rural, and usually sexually promiscuous with lots of out-of-wedlock children, in spite of their so-called religiosity. Just look at states like Mississippi.
I've been saying that for years.
At the moment, the United States has no official language, amirite?
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lotuspuppy
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That's not my job. That is the job of the border services.
The usual way is to raid places of employment and things like that, and demand to see their credentials.
Those are two aspects of the problem. There are scant Border Patrol for all of our borders, let alone inside the country. In terms of employment, raids like this do happen from time to time, but not frequently. Most states do not care to enforce immigration employment law, and in any case are powerless to do so. The federal government typically only conducts such raids if there is a broader problem, or they somehow have an overwhelming amount of evidence. Congress can change this, and I think it will, but it hasn't been in the mood to change immigration enforcement much since the last major reform in 1986.
More broadly, I really think a lot of Americans do not care about immigration. Some truly do, and a lot others think they do. But cheap labor illegally in this country give us the cheapest groceries in the OECD, and in the boom years, were a cheap and dependable gardening and landscapping service. They are also a cheap source of nannies and live in help. Every so often, you hear of an illegal working as a domestic servant in near slave like conditions, and s/he escaped only when s/he figured deportation was better than slavery.
There are a lot of powerful economic interests in the U.S. that want immigrants here. They outweigh any cultural push factors.
The usual way is to raid places of employment and things like that, and demand to see their credentials.
The policy proposals of the mental midget.
First things, first: yes, these people have no legal right to residency or work in the United States. But that point is academic. They are already there and they are already well established there. Why do they have no status? Because for years Congress has indulged its political cowardice, failing to answer the needs of employers who rely on these workers by creating some legal mechanism for their admission and their continued presence. Congress has simply assumed that by focussing on the border, and not on the interior, that they can pander to the bigots, and allow for "business as usual" in the cities.
Well states have demonstrated themselves to be first-class morons and have gone rushing in where any sensible government would fear to tread. So now, Congress' hand will be forced.
The US economy cannot survive an wholesale assault on improperly documented workers. Cities would collapse. Every policy maker in Washington is well aware that every major city in the United States operates on the basis of undocumented workers. There are entire industries that function with almost complete reliance on them. And let's not forget the amount of consumer spending that 12,000,000 people contribute to the economy.
Like it or not, these people are there, and their presence is no longer optional. So Congress can either continue to turn a blind eye to it, or Congress can finally pull its collective thumb out and take control of this policy agenda.
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Jacoby
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The usual way is to raid places of employment and things like that, and demand to see their credentials.
The policy proposals of the mental midget.
First things, first: yes, these people have no legal right to residency or work in the United States. But that point is academic. They are already there and they are already well established there. Why do they have no status? Because for years Congress has indulged its political cowardice, failing to answer the needs of employers who rely on these workers by creating some legal mechanism for their admission and their continued presence. Congress has simply assumed that by focussing on the border, and not on the interior, that they can pander to the bigots, and allow for "business as usual" in the cities.
Well states have demonstrated themselves to be first-class morons and have gone rushing in where any sensible government would fear to tread. So now, Congress' hand will be forced.
The US economy cannot survive an wholesale assault on improperly documented workers. Cities would collapse. Every policy maker in Washington is well aware that every major city in the United States operates on the basis of undocumented workers. There are entire industries that function with almost complete reliance on them. And let's not forget the amount of consumer spending that 12,000,000 people contribute to the economy.
Like it or not, these people are there, and their presence is no longer optional. So Congress can either continue to turn a blind eye to it, or Congress can finally pull its collective thumb out and take control of this policy agenda.
And what would be the effect if they were to become legal and documented, would they still work for an illegal undocumented wages? If you believe that the entire economy is built on the backs of illegal immigrants, then you probably should be strongly in favor of the status quo.