

Immigration reform

Let them stay, let them in

An area where Barack Obama has got it right

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Readers' comments



law-and-order in reply to gw111

Guess who is the big winner under your descriptions? The American real estate developers. By hiring Mexicans, they have, in effect, shift a significant portion of their construction costs onto the American People.

Increasing already high unemployment is exactly what Obama and his party want - add to the already overflowing rolls of individuals living off of the federal government. They will vote for the party that promises to provide goodies paid for by others. A no brainer for Obama.

That big copper lady standing out on Ellis Island defines America's immigrant tastes in slightly less restrictive terms:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!


Lieutenants study tactics, Captains study strategy, Generals study logistics. America currently takes 1 million immigrants each year. Obama not only wants to legalize 11 million illegal migrants, he wants to increase the number of immigrant visas available to oversubscribed family-class categories. Considering that the 11 million will have to go through USCIS processing 3 times (temporary residence, permanent residence, citizenship), the whole system is going to slow to a crawl. In addition, fraud will be a major problem. In 1986, 800,000 or so applications for legalization were rejected as fraudulent, out of some 3 million. Extensive fraud checking will slow down processing even more, so word will go out that fraud checking will be cursory. That's not exactly "fixing a broken immigration system." Want to sponsor someone for US immigration? Do it now.
It's often said that it's impossible to deport 11 million people, but legalizing them won't be a piece of cake, either.

Albertican in reply to supamark

Oh, you mean the guy who lied about being a professor at Stanford thinks Bill Gates is full of crap?

The basis of Bill Gates' argument is that if you don't allow these tech workers in companies are just going to move more of their workforce overseas. While providing a lot of bluster on H1B visa abuse, Cringely doesn't touch on that central part of the debate.

As to the foreign tech workers driving down wages for Americans, call me crazy but I don't think people should get paid more for the same work just because of where they were born. That's as true for low paid agricultural jobs as it is for high paid programming jobs. The key difference is that when Mexicans flood across the border they're predominantly competing with low income black people, while when Indian and Chinese come they compete against middle class whites, which touches on nerves in protectionists like yourself.

Tech work has become a commodity that can be done anywhere in the world. If Americans really are better at it and therefore deserve better pay, they must demonstrate that in this globally competitive marketplace. If they expect to get paid as much as "several less qualified people from India" they must show that they are as productive as all of those people put together. Don't like it? Find another industry that isn't so thoroughly fungible.

roderickvlouis in reply to iamus

You say: "I would prefer (illegal resident hispanics) move to Canada..."

That would solve only one of the 'symptoms' of the illegal entry into the US of hispanic persons problem...

The root cause won't be solved by moving illegal resident hispanics from the US to Canada...A

All of the citizenries of hispanic countries from Mexico south to Antarctica are needed to be informed in blunt terms that, due to their/their countrymen's decades of illegally entering the US- no persons from their countries will be permitted to enter the US for the next 3-decades... except for specific, time-limited, visa-enabled purposes... and that, subsequent to the enabling-of-legalized-residency of the current 11 million illegal resident hispanics: never again will the US grant legal residency to hispanic persons that have entered the US unlawfully....

Roderick V. Louis,
Vancouver, BC, Canada

iamus in reply to Katie10

We pay 30% of our GDP in interest on our debt, should the other countries realize our governments ponzi scheme and raise the interest rate by just 1% - in our current economic state - we will be declaring bankruptcy and selling Hawaii to pay our 2.5 trillion debt to china and japan - actually thats not a bad idea since they have the largest amount of welfare recipients per capita.

Rippie in reply to iamus

Of course it is. And really, other than the USA, what morons actually invest so much in empowering their competitors and enemies now or historically as we do??

That's right, none. If Tsinghua or Zhejiang are so exceptional, why do their faculties push their top graduate students to come to MIT or Caltech for further work at the expense of THOSE schools to return with those US educations? Those are two schools I personally know, firsthand, which do that.

It is not very different from industrial espionage... and the reality is that our immigration policy has turned away thousands and thousands of the "brightest and best" who WANTED to stay without any prompting by the US government. One of the major reasons we don't speak German in much of the West now and much of the East does not speak Japanese is because we USED to welcome the best and brightest and go out of our way to do so.

We have lost that edge as collateral damage to increasingly short-sighted immigration policy, trying to protect lousy US jobs that citizens don't want and won't take, instead opting for welfare.

Other countries are WELL aware that higher education is the path to success for people and nations. As our youngsters continue to drop in literacy and fall behind other nations in graduation rate and overall educational impact, we find ourselves with workers too ignorant to be re-employed without heavy remedial educations. In fact, our Army has to teach Infantry enough remedial basic math and English to make them capable of being shot at in the battle field, a cost the Army finds to be increasingly onerous.

Corporations have been offering bonuses/scholarships to youngsters in order to guaranty a reasonable supply of new domestic workers, because the Government won't let them fill technical positions with immigrants (we've taught), which will turn out to be a new form of indentured servitude.

Seeing that there are bright and young people BEGGING to come here to learn, study and live who desperately desire to become part of the total American experience, of course those are the ones we want, and in competition, just as those other nations try to use our resources to undermine us, we should use them to undermine them... and I get the impression that "them" is you. Sorry, but this is war. China, Malaysia and other nations have already declared that war. Instead of bullets, we'll fight with money and jobs and productivity.

And we intend to win.

iamus in reply to mtweng

So you would like us to resurrect those responsible and to go back and change history? What is your argument regarding making any class of people special as regards illegal behaviors - today?

alexTheCentrist in reply to Squeedle

"Pretending that vast portions of the US economy don't depend on illegal immigrant labor is ridiculous. "
That is true ONLY because wages are too low for those positions. If gob't would enforce existing laws for employer checks of legal right to work in US, those wages will rise such that legal workers can be in those positions. Rising wages may increase a little the prices, but not too much. However, they will allow US people to work, and will also create demand for innovation (as it happened in past)
P.S. I am naturalized US citizen, and thus not"yahoo nativist"

iamus in reply to Rippie

At what cost to those nations they come from - who could dearly use their skills? That you would only want the brightest and the best to remain - is this not selfish?

Alexander A in reply to Rippie

Firstly, and crucially, I did not refer to them as 'wet-backs' which is a racist term, but rather to the 'operation wet-back' of the 1950s, perhaps give that a quick wikipedia search...

Secondly, I have a strong disagreement with what your logical conclusion is, that Americans are mostly lazy/not hard-working, and immigrants are hard working. If the wages are right, then the native borns will work for it. It would be a better society to have our native born have proper jobs that pay decent wages than have a super-rich elite, masses of native born on welfare and life of dependency, and an underclass of low-skill immigrants to do the jobs no one else wants to for a pittance so big business can make more money. It's about what kind of society you want to see, not just what is most profitable for agri-business.

Your proposal would seem to call for continuous immigration because of the inherent laziness of Americans. I do not believe Americans are lazy, but rather the wages are not high enough because of illegal immigration. Also, those kids born in US are citizens so they would obviously stay if they were old enough.

Leon Duffy in reply to Kmaxwell77

Where do you get these kinds of ideas about liberals and Obama? It is just ridiculous and, because of that attitude, we will never be able to work together to fix the problems with common sense.
If you would talk with an educated liberal, you would see that we don't want to go to work every day and pay taxes for people to be on welfare. It just doesn't make sense.


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