by phaster » Tue 01 Apr 2008, 18:46:55
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', 'A')s long as the "illegals" don't file for government bennies or do anything illegal, they have a right to come here to live and work. God knows this country needs lots of workers to do the jobs which are beneath us Natural Born residents.
My ancestors had no Social Security numbers, no Medicare/Medicaid, no free lunch whatsoever. They were completely unknown to the Federal government. Contrary to popular belief (and this belief appears to be strong among some moderators on this board based on posts of mine which have been deleted), you do not need a license to work and live in this country.
On the other hand, if you want to come here and commit crimes and/or get free shit from the government without first going through the process of Naturalization, you deserve to be arrested and deported.
Thought I'd play devil's advocate and vote against the majority which at this point is 79% for actively looking for illegal immigrants...
IMHO no one is looking at the big picture, which is to some degree the reason the USA has thrived in the past is because we have embraced immigration and free trade... But by looking to close down trade and immigration, the USA is very quickly being Balkanized! Therefore I feel it is important to have have some kind of program similar to the old Works Progress Administration (WPA) that builds up public infrastructure and public community.
So how about take an "undocumented economic refugee" and make them serve time in their own community to improve public infrastructure. For example here in southern california, for the past couple of years before the subprime mess put an end to the real estate boom, it seemed like most of the guys doing construction where mexicans. Chances are some of them were just "undocumented economic refugees" just trying to make a living, cause there were no economic opportunities in their home country. My pragmatic approach would be to draft these individuals who have some skills, and draft them to improve infrastructure in run down communites, by painting out graffiti, fixing up roads and side walks (all this stuff would improve property values), and I would make this kind of public service in addition to the other requirements of learning the language and american history a prerequisite for US citizenship.
If I were king, I'd even go further a public service draft program (similar to the old military draft).
The program would be run akin to the "peace corps" but for a short time period of something like 4 months so that it is not all much of an inconvenience or as disruptive as a 4 year tour in the military, but the time needs to be long enough to actually get some work done. The objective of the "public service draft" would be to improve the basic infrastructure of a country, which would be geared toward having long term economic and environmental benefits.
For example say a type "a" college bound student get their number called up who has been exposed to all the benefits of a wealth suburban lifestyle, such as all the college prep classes, soccer camp, connections to classmastes from higher social economic levels. What I think would be an eye opener for an individual such as this brought up in a pretty affluent life style would be to have this person tutor under-privileged elementary aged school kids. That way both groups gain some benefit and insight.
Another example, I think would be kind of a learning experence is take inner city youth who have never seen or experenced the great outdoors and give them an opportunity to learn a skill such as maintaining buildings in a national park. I think this would be a win/win situation, because youth never exposed to the out doors get a chance to gain working skills out doors and public park infrastructure is maintained, something like
http://www.thesca.org/internships/
For the most part people tend to stick to their own kind (weather its an economic or ethnic class) and have very little intereaction with dissimilar social or economic groups. A solid public infrastructure allows the enconomy to thrive, so I feel a public service draft would be a long term investment in the future of this country...