Obama taking action on Immigration Reform

Good for him! It needs to be done.

I thought my husband had the best idea.  He said these people pay 1500 or more to risk their lives coming here.  Why dont we just send busses down and sell work permits for that money.  Come on up to America...but you must work and you must pay taxes for the next five years.  Then you can maybe renew for a fee for another five years.  In the meantime....become a citizen if you want to stay longer and bring your family.  Then use all the application fees to strengthen the border.

I think its a great idea myself.

Interesting to me because I just happen to be reading a book right now about border crossing and immigrants.

I watched the speech. It's gutsy, but IMO, fair.

Clay's comments:
President is standing in the gap for what is right. It's ballsy & it's impressive. "It's about who we are as a country and who we wanna be"

I like Clay's statement.

To me the biggest problem of illegal immigration is that because they have no papers they work cheap and off the books thus ypu have a very large population wearing down the infrastructure and using public funds while not paying any taxes to restore those things. I think thats the major problem we are looking at. I have to wait for a transcript to see his speech but Im really proud of him for making a stand no matter what it actually is.

"It's about who we are as a country and who we wanna be". Who decided this for me? It's not who I am and what I "wanna" be. How does pardoning all those people make us what we "wanna" be? Do we "wanna" be the United States of Mexico? Sorry, but I cannot see how this will have any positive influence on our already troubled economy.

I'm on the fence on how this will all pan out. But I think its important to remember there are literally millions of illegals. To deport them all is just not a realistic option. So then the question becomes... What do we do? As far as it being who we are, I understand that ruffles some feathers... But unless you are 100% native american, our ancestors were immigrants, too. Our nation was founded on immigration... On the bases of give us your tired, your poor, huddled masses... Does that mean we should open the gates for everyone? No... I'll be the first to say don't coddle them, make them learn the language so I don't have to press 1 for English when I am calling places. My dad learned the language... He also came here legally... I would rather they be documented and paying taxes like the rest of us, rather than just living illegally and getting paid under the table... Because like it or not, there are too many to expect you can find them all and send them back. I sure don't like the overuse of power in this executive action... However, someone needs to act, because the problem was getting worse... Not better.

Heres the thing, its not financially feasable to deport them and the tide continurs to replace them anyway crossing the border....Its an obvious problem.

These are my thoughts....

Putting aside how I personally feel aboUt these hard working good people and the terrible poverty they are trying to escape......they are breaking our laws.  They have slowly and steadily grown to numbers we cant deport by...breaking our laws.  Doesnt matter why they did it or how important they have become to our economy  ....its still illegal.  Just because we turned our backs on the situation until it got beyond us doesnt mean that the country should throw up their hands and say...oh well...everyones doing it....we will just accept it.   Its now ok to break oir laws.

Mr. President there are a lot of people dealing drugs out there and not enough jail cells...oh yes and housng them in those prisons is expensive and catching them has a price too.  Oh well, they have been doing it a long time and they have roots in the community.  Their dollars help the economy and putting them in prison sadly breaks up families.  Maybe we could just accept it and move on.

Oh and those child pornographers are everywhere.  All it takes is a computer, some greed and a sick mind.  Their numbers are growing...when will they reach critical mass where breaking the law versus money spent to correct the problem causes us to look away. Is this anyway to show respect for our own justice system? Overload it and we will change it? nuh uh

Im in no way saying the crime is the same calibar but in each case a law has been broken.  You can argue its a victimless crime but so is prostitution and many other crimes that we prosecute every day at great taxpayers expense and nobody cares if the prostitute going to prison has children left behind.

So now how do we enforce ANYONEs lack of papers.  So anyone from any country here illegally gets the same pass.  Wouldnt that also include terrorists who want to kill us all in the greatest numbers they can manage?   Wasnt our best weapon against some of those people deporting them and removing them from direct contact with Americans  ?  Dont we want to rid the country of immigrants without papers who are not contributing members of society?   Havent we just tied oir own hands?

Then theres the argument that they do jobs Americans dont want.  I dont find this to be true.  Plenty of tradesman looking for work they cant get because an undocumented worker is doing the job for an unreasonibly low amount of money and the greedy foreman on the job is real happy with the situation.  Im sure plenty of college students would do landscaping to pay for school.  Migrant workers?   Ok now youve got a job that only someone starving would take so ok these jobs have always been held by people from other countries with temporary work visas...enforce the damn things!  Housekeepers?   There are plenty of Americans with lesser education levels  that would clean houses, offices, hospitals,etc...but those jobs are locked down by Spanish speaking people hired by Spanish speaking bosses.

What I see that needs to change is this.   Born on our soil...you are a citizen.   Its the glue that most Spanish people use to stay here.  Whats wrong with changing that to born in this country of legally documented parents and you become a citizen.  Undocumented?   So is your citizenship.

American employers need to stop using cheap illegal labor and law enforcement needs to enforce it.
Unfortunately that drives the cost of everything up and therein lies why Americans dont really want to change things.

Maybe our dollars are better spent keeping Mexicans in Mexico by helping Mexico promote industry so they can have jobs.  Most of them dont really want to be here.  Stop the tide from the other end.

I dont want to see these people hurt but then I dont want to see tragic prostitutes and drug addicts hurt either.  BUt if you break the law you should have to face justice...not social services paid for by those of us that dont break the laws. The answer in my opinion is not  found in condoning illegal activity.  That only encourages more people to come.

For those of you who dont know how this is done...a group of people in Mexico pool their resources until they have maybe 1500 dollars to send someone to America in some ver risky way.  Back of a van with little air...hidden in a trunk, led through miles of desert...many, many die.  But say ten people pooled their money to get one person here.  That person will now work two jobs and send their second income back to fund the next person.  Now you have two people sending money back to the eight until one more can come...now three people funding the seven until all ten have arrived.  Those ten people will then help house and employ the newcomers as well as support the older members of the family that chose to stay behind.  It doesnt take long for these people to get the whole group here and of course there are thousands of groups working at the same time.  Deport someone and they simply send to American friends for the money to come back.  They are usually back within a week or two.  Somehow we need to be less attractive to these people and Mexico has to somehow be more capable of employing its citizens.




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I'm sure the terrorists have seen how easy the Mexicans are coming over here and it's only time before they use these methods themselves. They have access to a lot more money than the Mexicans and will probably pay the smugglers well to get them into the US. (They probably have already) Goes to show you just how safe we really are. I live in the Northern part of our country and Mexicans dominate the small construction businesses, landscape businesses, restaurants, farming, etc. So they have been coming for a long time.

My feelings are that the America we think we have, no longer exists.