Roland Hulme

"I have nothing, so give me yours."

I can't remember where I read that.

Whatever the situation, turning a blind eye to illegal immigration isn't going to solve these people's problems - just create new ones.

All we've done is created an underclass that lives effectively outside of our society.

bevinva

There was an incident in Virginia Beach last year where a drunk illegal killed two teenage girls in a car crash. Bill O'Reilly called Virginia Beach a haven for illegals. Now the local police are supposed to ask about a persons legal status if they stop them. I have to wonder if my fading accent will show enough for them to ask me or if they wouldn't ask me because I don't fit their ethnic profile of an illegal. Hopefully I won't be able to come back with an answer to that any time soon!

www.hamptonroads.com/node/248021

Manc

it's all nice and rhetorical bollocks what you write, and in a perfect world maybe so.


you're a bloke with a wife and 3 kids.
you live in a ramshackle cinder block house with a dirt floor in the middle of nowhere.
the unemployment rate in your town is 47%.
and the 53% whom are employed pick coffee for $2 for a 24lb bag.


what are you going to do?

Manc

Best Hurry roland, you're children are hungry.

Your wife has Angina by the way, she can take aspirin to keep it under control.

the nearest place to get aspirin on a regular basis is 130 miles away, but you can't afford the bus ticket let alone the cost of the pills.

what you gonna do?

meauxna

Add to that, it's not like it's some brainwave this particular paisano had to come up with in response to the hungry kids. This is what your father, his father and even his father before you have done. Go to El Norte, make your money, come home to the farm.

You can not reverse 80 years of US policy overnight and expect people to stay away because it's "against the rules". Rules means something very different in their world and governments have spoken to the people on both sides of the border in forked tongue.

Roland Hulme

I totally understand - try and go somewhere better where you can get a better quality of life.

But riddle me this - when millions of people are pouring illegally into your country, what are you going to do?

I sympathise, but the price of us enjoying our ridiculously affluent (in comparison) way of life is living in a world where other people live like that.

To pretend any different would be far more of a 'perfect world' that you accused me of writing about.

Let's be honest here. Most of the very worthy and honourable intentions of liberal-minded people towards illegal immigration are fine, as long as they don't have to do anything about it themselves.

I don't see you lending out your basement to a needy illegal immigrant family. You're volunteering other people's resources and trying to suggest we should feel guilty about not giving them.

Manc

and this is where I make you look a twat.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509647

Roland Hulme

I don't need any help being made to look like a twat! Don't you know me at all?

I think it's wonderful all the charity work you were doing and yes, that does mean I think you're less of a self rightous arse (lovely photos by the way.)

But still, by advocating illegal immigration you're volunteering other people's resources.

I live on a street with fifteen cars parked there every night with out-of-state plates, because they're owned by illegal immigrants. You might remember the blog post when police banged on our door at 4am looking for an illegal immigrant. Read the papers about kids getting run over by illegal immigrant drivers - happens near us.

Illegal immigration negatively effects people's lives over here - so if people don't want to bow down to your attempts to guilt trip them, that's their right. You can understand the problems illegals face in their own country. You can understand what motivates them to come to America.

But telling Americans that they should just put up with it?

good luck, mate.

Manc

Americans are putting up with it though.
they have been putting up with it for 225 years.

In November they'll vote for the Republicans whom like illegal workers for the low wages.

or they'll vote Democratic whom like illegal workers as they feel good about allowing someone to pick cherries for $2 an hour instead of $2 per day.


If we open the border to Mexicans, within 30 years the standard of living will increase expedentially in Mexico and they'll no longer feel the need to leave their country just so they can eat.

and you know what, then they'll be worrying about their southern border instead of us.

it would be a generational plan, and could cost us short term and would be painful to a certain degree..... but I think as with the Eastern Europeans whom moved to the UK, once the economy picks up in their homeland, they'd go home, and they are going home.

Why don't we do the same?

Roland Hulme

American voters + Long Terms Plans don't really go well together! Otherwise we'd have preempted this gas crisis back in the seventies!

I will say this - I went to Ellis Island a few months back and they had prints from newspapers showing articles complaining about the 'menace' of Irish immigrants, chinese immigrants, Jewish immigrants...

Now Irish pubs, chinese take-away and bagels are as American as pizza and apple pie (Italian and German respectively.)

On the one hand, maybe this 'Spanish Immigrants must be stopped' is more of the same. But then again, nobody had to learn Gaelic or Yiddish back in the day (since I speak French and German, I get royally pissed off when somebody gets snooty that I don't speak Spanish.)

But america is ultimately a melting pot (the fat rises to the surface and the people on the bottom get burnt.)

It's not like we can realistically round up 25 million illegals and deport them, so bitch, moan and complain, we have to accept the reality that they're here.

But I still don't have to like it! :curse:

(Impotent rage is the final bastion of the stuffy white guy.)

Manc

amnesty won't work. it's just going to encourage another influx.

as I said, either we do
a) do nothing and hope the situation goes away
b) open the border and within 30 years hope the situation goes away
c) spend $30 billion or whatever on inefficient policies looking like we're doing something and hope the situation goes away.

Roland Hulme

I vote for 'a' since it's worked so well for us in the past.

Although you missed option 'd'

d) Invade some totally unrelated country on trumped up charges to divert attention away from the issue.

Britinsac

or e) Round them all up and use them to invade some totally unrelated country on trumped up charges to divert attention away from the issue.

Bob

If the cops ask, they'd be breaking the law...only ICE are allowed to ask your immigration status...

snowbunny

There are cheap legal immigrants working as doctors in under-served areas. I guess people don't have a problem with immigrant doctors, but they do with immigrant hotel cleaners.