Cone_Junky wrote:
As for "jobs Americans won't do"- it's an unfair arguement. The illegals have biased the payscale of such jobs that we won't do it for as cheap as them. How much do they need to make when they live in a tent, or a house with 20 other illegals, and get free health care and education? 2/3 of their paycheck is typically sent south of the border to their families. So they are not even participating in our economy.
+1 There is much more here than meets the eye.
Apologies this is going to be a bit rambling or disjointed...
Background;
My parents are immigrants, refugees from Vietnam. They had to leave because my dad was higher ranking on the South Vietnamese side fighting alongside the US. They had no choice but to leave, it was hard but they did things the right way, built businesses and paid their dues, took the tests and became naturalized. I now live in SoCal and I see a lot of things that bother me.
People driving without license, insurance, getting into accidents and who gets the shaft? The guy who plays by the rules and has insurance and registration and a license. He has to pay for uninsured/underinsured coverage as well as increased premiums due to how many ppl are insured vs uninsured. Or if he doesn't have that coverage, he's out a car. And if that's his only car?
Housing, cars and jobs... if the low wage jobs such as fast food, cheaper housing and cars available have a higher demand, which they do due to illegals, what happens to the prices? They go up. Then what? How is anyone trying to get a single family home going to be able to put more money back into the economy when they have to compete with 5 families in a 4 bedroom home with one in the garage who sends money out of the country? So we get cheaper produce but things like cars and homes are inflated due to demand and supply so what does that do to the argument that illegals allow us a cheaper cost of living?
Schools being full of kids who need extra help to learn a language they don't know, from families who don't have much education themselves so what does that do to the test scores? Drains resources and brings down test scores and affects funding? And having to have things printed in any multitude of languages, yes we don't have an "official" language by law, but the money to offer forms and announcements in all those languages comes from taxpayers.
Emergency rooms that are full of nonemergent items that should normally be taken care of at their primary care doctors. So if you have a real reason to be there, you might have to wait for your turn even if your injury/condition gets you priority, no room means no room. And you have ppl who know hospitals won't turn away anyone, sometimes lie about their names/addresses/social security numbers to get care. Who pays for all that?
It's a very touchy subject, some people want to throw the racism card around or do open doors and have everyone else pay to support people who will not contribute enough to offset what they take.
Yes our immigration policy and process is not efficient and flawed, where immigrants trying to do it the right way have to jump through hoops and pay thousands to prove they want to be here and contribute to making our country and their lives better. We need to address that. We also need to have some policy that allows for migrant workers to come and work and then go home. Amnesty is a slap in the face to legal immigrants and will not help our country.
This isn't about color or race, it just so happens that where I am, the majority are from South America due to proximity. Illegal immigrants and a welfare state are big problems that we need to address.