The Origins of Illegal Immigrants in the United States

Everyone of us have read the all to common plights . . .

should be

Every one of us has read the all too common plights . . .

From a usage point of view, you are using 'plight' incorrectly.

i don't see it as a race issue. i see it as a border issue and that our country needs to respect their own sovereignty. the federal government has not enforced the laws effectively for many years. the illegal aliens should also respect the laws of the country that they're living in. because they are not here legally, they run the risk of of engaging in other illegal behavior to hide the first problem.

they are hoping we will legalize them and dissolve their first problem.

i wish reagan had never granted amnesty. they expect amnesty. and i think they have no standing to demand it.

I would rather be called a racist and win the issue than worry about the name-calling and cede our country to the illegals.

This is a simple sovereignty issue.
Build a wall.
Budget heavily for it.
Remove financial incentives for illegals to be here.
Fine companies for hiring them.

Suddenly, the problem will solve itself.

It is not a race issue...and your math shows the facts...it is unbelievable to me that our federal government has not paid more attention to this ongoing tragedy. Watched Lou Dobbs special on immigration, from San Antonio tonight and was really appalled at the amount of money this whole thing is costing us...the American taxpayer, and the figures they were giving were just for Mexico, none of the other countries you have listed.

The laws that have been inplace for YEARS against employers and companies that use illegal immigrants have been totally ignored.

You have to wonder, with Mexico's minerals, gold, natural gas, oil and coffee...they would be able to more than pay their citizens a decent wage to live there...One comment made at the meeting was "40% of their population is living below poverty level...not at - but below....

From what I heard, Mexico has a lot more money than we do to put up a fence to protect the border... they said for every 1 illegal immigrant they catch, 3 get in....sounds like we need more than a fence...

Wihelmine,

My ancestors were immigrants, but none of them stole anyone's social security numbers or identity.

G Rammer,

Oh, I guess that I should have wrote " anyone's social security number " instead of " anyones social security numbers ".

lol Timothy V. got grammar spanked... Ooops! "has been spanked for his grammar".

Mexico needs to take care of its own and stop exporting its problems here. Their Socialist economy does not meet the needs of its citizens. Mexicans should be rioting in the streets over this, but instead they seem to think that going even more Left will somehow help them (witness the 45% of the population that voted for Obrador, the near-Communist who ran for President recently).

I must say... Some good comments here, I don't even know what I could add to it.
I am forever being called a racist.
I think in ways it's a little harder on my because I am hispanic, although I tell everyone that I prefer to just be called AMERICAN.
As for the Social Security thing?
My sister is going through that problem right now herself. So yeah, they can go ahead and call me racist if that's what makes them feel better. I have plenty of AMERICANS to stand with me.

Ar'Ullamh ( from now on, I'll refer to you as " Ar " ) ,

Yep, I've been spanked by them thar grammer police.

I checked out G Rammer's profile. I was going to pick apart his/hers articles and point out the grammitical errors ( I shore hope I spelt grammitical right ) , but this Rammer person created the profile just last night. No articles, comments, pics, no nothing.

Gee, Timothy, with a comment like that one, you could join the military and get yourself sum of dat thang - edjucamation.

Nanci,

I ain't got no edjumacation, hell i ain't even got no book learnins.

Illegal immigrants are just that, illegal. We punish other illegal crimes and being an illegal in the United States is a crime. Apparently, we need to see it as the crime it is and get these people back to Mexico where they're from, and not here where the more that get in, the more come.
Racist? Ok. I'm an American too.

Yeah I think if we can keep the topic on all the laws that illegals from south of the border are breaking we can actually win one for the people of this country. I'm a democrat but I gotta tell you I don't understand why the dems got on the wrong side of this issue. I think someone called it a liberal issue and democrats jumped on the liberal side without even thinking.

Our elected officials should work for american citizen's no matter what party they belong to. When senators swear in to office they swear to uphold the constitution of the united states and to defend it's citizen's. Our congressmen should not be trying to pass laws that favor citizen's of other countries over the citizen's of this country. It's plain and simple. I don't see how they could see it any other way.

Timothy,

Great article! However, I believe those numbers to be grossly underestimated. I live in the heartland and can go out on any day at any time and arrest illegal aliens. I see illegal aliens all the time. (Ha ha).

Approximately 1.2 million illegal aliens were apprehended by the USBP last year. It is estimated that approximately 500,000 made it past them. That does not include the illegal aliens that came here on non-immigrant visas then failed to depart. Personally, I would estimate the number of illegal aliens to be at least 20 million.

The only people I've seen that have brought racism to this website are Beltran and Senobia. It seems that they see racists everywhere. Beltran is paid to advocate for illegal aliens and that is her job on this website. Senobia married an illegal alien then "fixed" his papers. So the race card tactic is to be expected from both of them. When you don't have a good argument, pull the race card.

Beltran has played the race card on me and compared me to Hitler because I am white and against illegal immigration. Isn't that racism?

Debbie,

The point is that this isn't a racial issue, it's an illegal issue. Everytime that I'm talking to someone about illegal immigrants, they immediately bring up the Mexicans, which is another point that I was trying to make in this article.

Debbie ,

You would be shocked at how many people that I talk to don't even know that there are illegal imigrants other than Mexicans in this country.

John W ,

I wonder how many have expired student visas, and have overstayed ?

Debbie,

I heard this joke today. " If the U.S. is going to build a fence on the Mexican border to keep the illegals out, they should make the Mexican side of the fence look like a Wal-Mart. The Mexicans would then just stand in front of the fence ".

I'm not sure if this joke was racist, or of it was out of ignorance. Either way, the joke was inappropriate.

I wonder how many have expired student visas, and have overstayed ?

Have they relaxed that "check in each year" rule?

Sandy,

You'll have to ask John W about that, I really have no clue. This is all a learning experience for me.

Timothy- I have to agree with troublemaker on this one. I have commented before that my family has a camp right on the Canadian border. We can never enjoy this camp when we take the kids on vacation. People that have all of their paperwork, declare themselves at the checkpoint with no problem. People that don't have the proper paperwork come across our property from private property in Canada. Border Patrol goes through there when they can, but they are shorthanded. The local police won't do anything because the town will loose revenue if they make this an issue (snowmobile races and other events). The property owners have no recourse but to defend themselves. Why should I be threatened for telling someone not to use my backyard as an illegal border crossing??? Some of these people don't look hungry either driving their $7000 top of the line ATV! I guess no one could understand the problem unless they had property on the border. We meet up with at least 20 people a day doing this too! They tell us to go to hell when we ask them to get off! The wardens actually do a very good job protecting us from this but the state cut their budget and they are working with a skeleton crew now.

The term "racist" is bandied about whenever we discuss illegal immigration to deflect people's attention from the real issues. Even being thought a racist makes most of us cringe. This is not a race issue but one of sovereignty; the right of any nation to determine who crosses its borders. We don't allow immigration for the convenience of those wishing to come here, but for our own welfare. We accept (or should accept) only those who demonstrate a wish to assimilate into our culture and with the skills and desire to contribute to the general good of the country.

I personally don't see that fines on businesses that hire illegals are an effective means of stopping their activities. Most businessmen save so much money by paying depressed wages and not having to pay benefits that they see any fines as a cost of doing business. Rather, we need to make hiring an illegal an offense that carries a mandatory and escalating prison sentence for any business and not just some clerk in their HR department, but the company president.

I am of two minds on the guest worker program since I have first hand knowledge of how this system is abused now. There are indeed jobs Americans won't take. I live in WA state and jobs in the orchards paying in excess of $10/hr cannot be filled. When jobs pay a decent wage such as this and Americans still will not take them, then perhaps a well regulated guest worker program would work.

What should not happen is for employers to pay such depressed wages that Americans cannot afford to take the jobs and be able to survive. There has to be protection and a prevailing wage assurance built into the program. If there is not, then it will go the way of the building industry which has seen wages drop precipitously since the industry has begun going to illegals for its labor force.

As for amnesty, my answer is a loud, resounding, and absolute NO! We tried that once during Reagan and the program proved to be a total failure that did nothing whatever to stem the tide of illegals. Anyone who has ever raised kids knows that rewarding bad behavior only ensures you get more of it.

For now I will take a wait and see attitude.