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That the labor is illegal isn't really the driving factor, it's that the labor is cheap. A smart country might come up with a program to allow such laborers to continue working cheap but my country doesn't develop smart programs. Just programs that will pass the Senate

 LordofHats wrote:
How can you check if someone has a right to services without checking them out?

Checking out someone =/= equal vetting 300 million people.

 LordofHats wrote:
It will always happen regardless because no system is perfect, no human incorruptable, and there will always be someone clever enough and willing to find a way to cheat. Its not about will it happen but will the reduction of occurances be worth the cost to achieve it. I find it illinformed to for a moment believe that any system we could develop to reduce the number of immigrants in our system would be worth its cost.

So you think that we would spend over $100 billion would be spent in preventing fraud?

 LordofHats wrote:
You got in before my edit. Recheck the above for my clarification of my intent with that comment.

So now you want to pretty much artificially create a new set of voters. If you cannot see the folly of this then nothing further can be said

 LordofHats wrote:
I never claimed there were no negative consequences to them, merely that defining their presence as solely negative is to black and white to be anywhere near true.

You almost got through a post without a strawman. Empirical evidence shows that illegal immigration is overwhelmingly a burden, not solely a burden.

feeder wrote:
That's right, ya only gotta check the brown ones, right? Right?

And with any good discussion on immigration someone always feels the need to inject race into the discussion for absolutely no benefit.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Checking out someone =/= equal vetting 300 million people.

10 people apply for a service with information that looks valid.

How the hell are you going to determine one of them is lying without an investigation? How are you going to determine who to investigate without a process that goes through the information and tries to detect fraud? I.E. Given that we don't automatically know who is committing fraud just by looking at them, you have to develop a process to find them meaning you are vetting everyone who applies for a service to see if they are a valid applicant for said service.

How is this hard to understand?

So you think that we would spend over $100 billion would be spent in preventing fraud?

Given the costs of what would need to be done to do it? Yes...

Do you think the IRS investigates everyone who defrauds them? They often know for a fact they're being defrauded and don't bother because it's not worth the investigation. And these are cases where they are informed by someone fraud is occurring sometimes with hard evidence. Tens of thousands of Americans get away every year with with not paying the IRS money because it costs too much for the IRS to go after them, and you don't think the it's too expensive to go after millions? The IRS loses 2 to 3 hundred billion a year in tax fraud and only from a number of people miniscule compared to illegal immigrants.

So now you want to pretty much artificially create a new set of voters. If you cannot see the folly of this then nothing further can be said

I have no idea how you can get that from what I clarified. I don't care about a new set of voters. People who's job position depend on winning votes do, hence why the government is so sits on the fence about immigration. They won't throw them out, but they don't want to make citizens either and they do this for many reasons. Potential future voters is one of the reasons, so is economics and business interests. Right now it's just too profitable to keep them illegal, and neither party is really gunning at the moment for more voters (though I think the Republicans may surprise us in a decade or so).

Empirical evidence shows that illegal immigration is overwhelmingly a burden, not solely a burden.

Most economics experts consider illegals to be a net positive for the US economy, so no, empirical evidence in fact disagrees with you since how much the government pays out and how much immigrants themselves pay into it isn't the sole point on which their economic impact can be determined. Read the article above. Illegal workers have raised wages of citizen in complementary jobs by 10% and helped allow business to expand by providing cheap labor. They pay 15x into Social Security what they take out.** Almost all the money they earn stays in the US economy spent on consumer goods. The idea that all the illegals jobs would go to a citizen if we kicked the illegals out is pure folly*. The business could just not hire anyone (the more probably outcome) and the claim ignores the argument that illegal immigration has created jobs in some markets for US citizens.

*And this being the base of the claim that the government would lose money legalizing immigrants, makes that number silly in itself. Really the reason business' want illegals to stay illegal is because if they become legal their cheap labor goes away and so will those jobs. Yeah, we'd probably lose money legalizing immigrants (EDIT: As an immediate short term trade off, long term economics favor amnesty), but to claim those jobs will become jobs for legals is stupidly pointless.

**Really, more illegals is a potential solution to the looming SS crash.

And the burden? Considering no other economic factor is bad math and bad politics but I'll look at the number anyway. The Federal government alone spends 3.5 trillion dollars. Combined the states spend 1.89 trillion. 100 Billion in 5.39 Trillion is a little under 2%. The governments of our country lose about as much on rounding errors as they do on illegals. Further it's stupid, as always, to take the amount the government spends and proclaim every citizen is paying X, because that assumes every citizen pays the government the same amount in taxes which they obviously don't.

And with any good discussion on immigration someone always feels the need to inject race into the discussion for absolutely no benefit.

It's hard to look at the immigration debate as a whole without getting a racist vibe from some of the things that are said so inevitably, no matter what, if there's an immigration discussion someone's gonna jump in and call racism. Kind of like Godwin's Law but with racism instead of Nazis (though not much a difference there I guess)

It's hard to look at the immigration debate as a whole without getting a racist vibe from some of the things that are said so inevitably, no matter what, if there's an immigration discussion someone's gonna jump in and call racism. Kind of like Godwin's Law but with racism instead of Nazis (though not much a difference there I guess)

I'm waiting for that to happen on the Boehner thread

 Jihadin wrote:

It's hard to look at the immigration debate as a whole without getting a racist vibe from some of the things that are said so inevitably, no matter what, if there's an immigration discussion someone's gonna jump in and call racism. Kind of like Godwin's Law but with racism instead of Nazis (though not much a difference there I guess)

I'm waiting for that to happen on the Boehner thread

There are lots of articles that claim Republicans are especially hostile to Obama because he's black. Personally, outside of Birthers, I think that's stretching it but people do make the claim

 LordofHats wrote:
It's hard to look at the immigration debate as a whole without getting a racist vibe from some of the things that are said so inevitably, no matter what, if there's an immigration discussion someone's gonna jump in and call racism. Kind of like Godwin's Law but with racism instead of Nazis (though not much a difference there I guess)

The accusation of racism with no evidence, the last resort of someone with nothing else to say.

Good talking with you.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

The accusation of racism with no evidence, the last resort of someone with nothing else to say.

Good talking with you.

Oh please. I'm not calling you a racist, simply answering why that accusation always pops up. Might as well call it 'Hats Law' If there's a conversation predominantly about a specific ethnic group, the chances that someone will accuse someone else of racism slowly approaches 1

So since most conversations about illegal immigration tend to orient around Hispanics, eventually someone will accuse someone of being a racist and you and me are kind of the only ones talking about it right now so it had to be your or me

"I'm going to take one little thing you said, get upset by it and use that to ignore everything else that might actually show I'm incorrect"

"Good" is the wrong word.

 LordofHats wrote:
Oh please. I'm not calling you a racist, simply answering why that accusation always pops up. Might as well call it 'Hats Law' If there's a conversation predominantly about a specific ethnic group, the chances that someone will accuse someone else of racism slowly approaches 1

So since most conversations about illegal immigration tend to orient around Hispanics, eventually someone will accuse someone of being a racist and you and me are kind of the only ones talking about it right now so it had to be your or me

I don't recall mentioning a specific group

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

I don't recall mentioning a specific group

Yeah but it's an illegal immigration. The first thought in any talk of it for most people is 'hispanics' even if the word is never even uttered (I think I'm the only one who has mentioned it, but people think what they think).

Personally, people would be interested to know most illegals deported from Mexico are from Hong Kong. They go the Mexico because they're trying to get here and there's a lot of them. 100,000 at least actually make it here yearly. Then there's the tens of thousands from Eastern Europe. Illegal immigration from Asia is increasing over the years faster than immigration from South America. Maybe some day we'll have more illegal Asians in the US than Hispanics. We'll need to think up a whole new slew of racist immigrant jokes. That one about the Olympics just isn't gonna cut it anymore.

Dread....Lord is right Immigration talks breaks down into Race debate. Who's not racist, who appears to be racist, what group is not racist, what group is racist and the Lock hammer of Alpharius, actually Major Tom hits the thread

 Jihadin wrote:
Dread....Lord is right Immigration talks breaks down into Race debate.

Happens to debates about the urban poor too

And of course, back in the dark days of G-Baby, every debate was about how white people hate black people and how only white people can be racist and only black people can suffer from racism. Good times /sarcasm

Something something faecal matter.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
Dread....Lord is right Immigration talks breaks down into Race debate.

Happens to debates about the urban poor too

And of course, back in the dark days of G-Baby, every debate was about how white people hate black people and how only white people can be racist and only black people can suffer from racism. Good times /sarcasm

Was I around for "G-Baby"?

 Jihadin wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
Dread....Lord is right Immigration talks breaks down into Race debate.

Happens to debates about the urban poor too

And of course, back in the dark days of G-Baby, every debate was about how white people hate black people and how only white people can be racist and only black people can suffer from racism. Good times /sarcasm

Was I around for "G-Baby"?

No. He hit here right after I joined in like, 2008 I think. As you can imagine, he didn't stick around for long.

Whew. I was overseas stomping out some disgruntled local in cave up some mountain at that time frame