Riddle Me This McBama
How in the fuck do either of you expect a thinking person to believe you have a modicum of backbone when you both voted for the fucking Mexico/U.S. fence?
Christ on a rubber cross, we’re hosed either way.
Postscript: Because of the comments below, I’m posting a like to Reason.com’s great diagram of just what it takes to become a US citizen. I found it this very evening. Link.
I am curious as to why the fence would be such a big factor for you, when there are so many other factors to consider. What is your opposition to it?
Basically, I think building ANY fence is moronic and will do exactly NOTHING (except move people to other sections of the border of course.) That said, even if you were to believe that a fence could work, and even if you thought a fence were the right solution (which I do not – open immigration is IMO the only intelligent solution) don’t these numbers bother you at all?
Cost so far: $2.7 billion
Additional funds requested so far: $400 million
Estimated total cost over 25 year: $49 billion
Length of US/Mexico Border 1952 miles.
Length of $49 Billion fence: 690 miles.
Apparently Congress doesn’t realize that 690<1952.
And by the way, I reject the premise of what people are saying the “problem” is – it’s like looking at a car that won’t start and beginning to do a lot of body work.
That’s a tremendously shitty analogy, but I assume you get my drift.
Interesting. I was hoping you wouldn’t speak down to me & you didn’t, thank you. I totally agree about the wall & the real problem… I’m assuming you believe it’s the businesses that hire the illegals ~ that’s my belief. I also believe we have the necessary laws, but they aren’t being enforced… because it’s the businesses! Big businesses.
I had no idea the fence has cost that much so far. It reminds me of something I heard over 10 years ago, that we’d paid millions of dollars to send basketballs to Zimbabwe, or some place like that.
It feels as though the money our gov’t spends, our money, is like monopoly money ~ it’s not even real.
Common sense seems completely lost on politicians, regardless of party.
BTW, I’m here via your wife’s soap blog. I hope you win your election.
Well thanks! My position is a lot simpler (much like my mind.) I don’t know why people flip out about this at all. I don’t buy the “they’re stealing our jobs” argument, and the “terrorists will cross the border” story is a fear-mongering hunk of crap.
That leaves the debatable issue of “they’re costing us money in social programs” argument. Debatable because many states may well see a net increase to their coffers because of the laborers here illegally. Debatable for other reasons as well.
I think it’s a red herring. And if we had open borders – meaning you can come and work here for as long as you want, legally, as long as you aren’t, say, a felon – then this entire problem would go away. Take away the laws saying people can’t come here illegally, and there won’t be illegals here. Instead we’d get a motivated work force of people paying taxes and supporting our economy.
I hate to say it because I don’t want to sound like a knee-jerk lefty, but I think this is largely a race issue – and I think a lot of people don’t like the idea of more tinted skin here. Me, I’m all for it. The more the merrier. Plus, tamales are SO much better than fluffer-nutter sandwiches and ambrosia.
Or that’s what I think anyhow.
Don’t worry, you can’t get any further left than I am. Plus, I’m part Mexican… people always say “part,” but I don’t know what else to say because my mom is of Mexican descent & my dad wasn’t. So, there you have it, I’m a half-breed.
The taxes thing, I think for the most part illegals do pay taxes & we benefit from them. And what about the taxes they pay that go towards Social Security? As things stand now, they’ll never see a dime of that ~ so that is profit for us.
Where we lose $$ is with all they’re sending back to Mexico & other countries. I believe the $$ incoming from illegals to Mexico is Mexico’s 2nd biggest revenue. (I think it’s called revenue)
I disagree about removing the “illegal” wording for the reason you said. IMO that kinda sounds like, “say you don’t have to stop at a Stop sign & people won’t run Stop signs anymore.” I’m not trying to play semantics, but the reasoning doesn’t make sense to me.
I didn’t use to believe this, but now I do believe if there are jobs, they should be able to stay. The fact that people say they’re on welfare is a 100% myth ~ they come here to work. period.
I agree about race & oddly enough, sometimes I find myself on both sides of the fence (pun intended). I resent them flying the Mexican flag here and the clerk speaking to a customer in Spanish, yet not extending that same courtesy to me in English. There have been some hot debates in my family on the illegal topic. (Ohhh, I think I just had a lightbulb moment about the “illegal” statement you made earlier… did you mean if we stop calling them that, we’ll stop looking at them like that?)
I believe McCain has always been pro-immigrant, until he went against it (haha flip flop!) for the conservatives.
Obama, I’m not sure his stance on this, although I’ve read his website a few times. But I like 99% of what he says, plus he would definitely take our country in a different direction. It may be left, right, up, down… right now I don’t care, I just want to go a different direction!
sorry… got side-tracked
That’s not what I meant about illegal actually. Your stop sign analogy was closer, but it obviously wouldn’t make sense (dead kids, car accidents, messy.) My point is that if we put the mechanism in place for people that want to come work in the US to be able to do that, then people won’t come here illegally. Because they won’t have to.
We agree that people that come across the southern border want to work, not collect welfare. So why don’t we just LET THEM? I understand about the flow of money back to Mexico, but don’t know enough economics to know how that is really damaging this country, though I suspect it isn’t. However, were people here legally, and moreover were able have their family come visit or live with them, or were able to go back and forth more easily, I suspect that it would be less of a problem.
Also, I do know that illegal workers pay taxes and social security – not all of them, but the estimates range from 50-75%. You’re wrong that it’s all profit though, as we do spend money on services for people here illegally. Net gain or loss? Dunno. Probably be a bit better if we weren’t spending millions on interdiction and billions on a fence.
Also, about $7 billion goes into Social Security from illegal workers – none of which would go back to them unless they get to become citizens, which right now is pretty damn tough.
Bottom line for me is that the majority of the issues around this come from the fact that we’ve made it next to impossible to come and work here legally. And anytime something is illegal, a whole shitload of other issues spring up around it. Let people come, work and help shape this country. I’m not a fan of locking the door behind me just because my family got here safely a few decades (or years, or centuries – who cares) ago.
Okay, so to work here they’d have to sign something at the border, which would mean we would know who is here, from where, etc. That actually does make sense. And because it makes sense, it will never happen. There are too many people that think voting for, or agreeing with this would mean their a commie pinko, or something along those lines.
Jane – simple never works for those who govern. See, it puts them out of a job. See link I added to original post for great diagram of what it takes to become a citizen.
Okay, thanks for the info!