Originally Posted by robin1234

Our US house race, the Democratic contender might have had a chance of unseating the Republican incumbent - except there is a third candidate, Green Party, who'll probably keep the incumbent safe. Then there's our Dear Leader, Andrew Cuomo, who Five Thirty-Eight have as 95% chance of winning. Several friends of mine are promising to vote for minor candidates for governor, just to "send a message," but I'm voting for him - he's a mean bastard, but he's OUR mean bastard.

Originally Posted by Boiler

Begs the question who caused it before?

Originally Posted by Lion in Winter

I think we need a little more light and a bit less heat in this discussion. The thread is about the children who are born here acquiring citizenship, therefore they arecnot "illegal". Their presence is completely legal, which is exactly what Trump is making a fuss about - those 85 years of living in the US, remember? That is what he is proposing to stop. So my question was, what harm do these children do to the US, especially when you consider how tiny a percentage of the US population they actually are. The answers you provide are not about these children, but about all undocumented immigrants and while they do only represent less than 4% of of the population, they are not the people I asked the question about.

To the points you have made, however, I don't at all disagree with you on the toll of cheap labour. I think it's naive to think that the permanent underclass in this this country is down to illegal immigration however and your historical memory isn't going back far enough or wide enough. Every capitalist economy requires a surplus of labour. That's how they work. It's always somebody, and always has been somebody. The deep-seated racial divides in this country, founded on genocide, built with slave labour, and sustained by a very long history both of racism and the suppression of workers' rights, have left us where we are today. This is irrespective of whether an immigrant is here with the state's permission or not. If you felt that their lack of status is what allows US business to pay them less, then you could fix the problem by simply making everyone legal. But I'm guessing you don't want that, and I certainly don't think that would fix the gross inequalities here. How will less than 4% of the population make life better for the vast bulk of the rest of us? Do you think if they were gone there would be no underclass? That is not what history suggests, anywhere.

Questions of race (a social, not a biological construct), national origin and immigrant status have been used very successfully to divide and conquer in this country. These things have lately been worked up to fever pitch again because of the electoral and economic goals of the powerful running the country. Here we all are, fighting about immigration (again, it's a trick as old as the hills - Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese have all had to take their turn) instead of about what matters. And some of the people on the losing end will vote for Trump, thinking he will make their lives better. Guess who wins here.

You might also want to be a bit careful about making assumptions about the lives of people you are talking to who you don't actually know at all. When you are thinking about the "haves", I might tell you about living in a woman's shelter with a small child. Or I might not. Knowledge is better than assumptions, on the whole.

Originally Posted by jeepster

Wrong: Illegal immigration doesn't represent 1% of the population. They were saying there were 11 million illegal immigrants back when Gerry Ford was President. That was over forty years ago. No, illegal immigration is probably closer to 40 or 50 million.

Originally Posted by Anian

Announcing something you can't achieve, and therefore won't be held to if it fails, that plays well with your voters just before an election, seems like a smart thing to do. Which is why someone else told Trump that he could do it with an executive action and it wasn't even his idea.

Originally Posted by NYer

This amendment does not have to be repealed, simply clarified.

Originally Posted by Gordon Barlow

Yes. Everybody seems to be assuming (presuming!) that the legal position is settled. It's not.

Originally Posted by kimilseung

Its only not settled to the extent that nothing is ever settled. like Please vs Ferguson settled things until they were reversed.
US v. Wong Kim Ark has already settled it to most people's view.

Originally Posted by Lion in Winter

My money's on women. Bet they did it.

Originally Posted by MidAtlantic

That case did not even address a situation where the parent is illegally present, so it certainly did not settle that.