Pres. Obama's October surprise ! Amnesty to all illegals

I have great admiration for many of the Native American tribes. They had their own wars and "savage" ways misunderstood by Europeans. However, the genocide of the Indians started this country on a bad karma as far as I'm concerned; perhaps that's why we seem so out of sorts now - it's catching up. You can only pillage and live by greed for so long - and what goes around comes around. Always when it comes back, it appears unearned.

Even in those times, however; good people knew what was being done was wrong but were powerless to stop it.

The Indians lived in harmony with the earth; we simply raped it.

The Indian way of life is depicted in Don Stephens book, "Bear Killer". A great book.

Native Americans did not originate here, either. They immigrated from Asia, according to a recent study based on DNA analysis. But they do have the best claim to "original settlers," at least.

What was done to Native Americans by European settlers, first by Spaniards (my people) and then the English followed by others, is unpardonable and well documented. But native Americans are human beings not that different from the rest of the human race, alas, in its many wonderful variations of color, race, religion, and rich culture. They are children of good and evil like the rest of humanity and have not escaped the capacity for boundless good and unspeakable evil that is the sad hallmark of our humanity.

As to the illegal immigration question, both Republican and Democratic administrations share equal guilt in their unwillingness to address the problem. We can debate the wisdom and advisability of open borders, but neither our laws not those of other wealthy sovereign nations allow them. Not open to honest debate is the fact that amnesty, by any other name, does not work and encourages further illegal immigration. When Reagan provided amnesty to some 3.5 million illegals in the U.S. at the time, essentially resetting the number of illegal immigrants to "0," we experienced the explosion of illegal immigration that leaves us today with somewhere between 11.5 and 14 million people. (No one knows the actual number since we purposely do a terrible job of tracking illegal aliens.) Any amnesty will simply further motivate another generation to come illegally and bid their time until some other foolish politician dusts off the failed idea again.

Like it or not, we have standards for legally immigrating to the U.S. and both Rs and Ds have ignored those standards because it suited them (Dems want more illegals because they are overwhelmingly Dems and Reps want more illegals because they provide cheap labor.). Bush and Obama could BOTH have stopped illegal immigration in its tracks by executive order were they inclined to do so by requiring eVerify be used as a mandatory prerequisite to hiring anyone in the U.S. (eVerify is a federal database that can vet the legal status of any applicant in seconds). Both refuse to do so, leaving us with a system in which anyone can manufacture false documents and apply for a job, and employers have no liability as long as they duly copy and keep on file copies of whatever false documentation is proffered by applicants and is not patently fraudulent, such as a passport from The Magic Kingdom issued by Goofy (passports, drivers' licenses, social security cards, tribal birth certificates, birth certificates, etc., etc., etc.)--most of which any of us can buy in any city with any sizable illegal population both readily and inexpensively, or produce ourselves with a scanner, color printer, Photoshop and perhaps a cheap laminating machine for good measure.

If criminal and civil sanctions for hiring illegals were enforced, illegals would stop coming. At least the flood would turn to a trickle and law enforcement and border patrols could then stop even that.

I support LEGAL immigration being an immigrant myself who stood in line for years even though my dad had skills as a world-class machinist that this country sorely needed then and now. We paid dearly for the privilege of coming here in time, fees, paperwork, and criminal and health checks. Illegal immigrants who cross the border at will jump the line with impunity and expose us all to well documented health risks and increased criminal activity. These are facts, not opinion.

Mexico complains loudly about our attempts to keep Mexican illegal immigrants out while they provide free pamphlets to their citizens that amount to a "how to" manual on immigrating illegally and avoiding detection while in the U.S.; and they prosecute strictly (and victimize often, according to international civil rights organizations) illegal immigrants in their own borders. And while they strongly criticize U.S. policy at every turn, those who criticize Mexican policy in Mexico are subject to arrest. Put that in your collective peace pipes and smoke it.

My heart goes out to the vast majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S.--by no means all of which are "brown people" as we are often told, or workers who take on jobs that Americans are unwilling to do. Hispanics make up more than 50% of the illegal and legal immigrant population, about 50% from Mexico alone, but there are increasingly large numbers of illegals from Europe and Asia as well. White people and Asians can no more come to the U.S. legally than brown people--a fact no one seems to notice or much care about.

Moreover, the reality of the illegal alien workforce is very different from the cliched notion of exploited migrant workers from Mexico and Central America. There are significant numbers of engineers, lawyers, doctors, and other highly paid skilled workers doing work that unemployed and underemployed legal residents would be very happy to do. But worst of all is the fact that legal residents and U.S. citizens must wait upwards of ten (yes 10!) years to be reunited with a son or daughter that they want to bring to the U.S. from another country and who patiently abide by the law and wait their turn in line while others brazenly break the law, cut the line and then have the temerity to loudly and often obnoxiously lecture us on our racist, unfair, unenforceable immigration policies. (To say nothing of the uncountable number of fraudulent marriages that some groups of people have found a perfectly viable, effective way of flaunting the law. Come here illegally, snatch a citizen, or, failing that, pay one to marry you and stay here with some minor inconveniences while ICE does its investigation and ultimately awards you legal resident status. Then divorce and repeat the process with someone else.)

Nor are we alone in this as a "progressive" country unwilling to enforce its own laws. Spain which now struggles with record unemployment rates that approach 30% (more than 50% for young Spaniards) has been allowing unfettered immigration from North Africa for decades. The endless stream of illegal workers and flotillas of boat people from Africa--most as hard working and honest as our own illegal immigrants here who search for nothing more than a better life--have made a bad situation intolerable not just for Spain, but for the rest of the E.U. where these illegal migrants head without the annoyance of border guards or passport controls when they obtain documentation of their residence in Spain.

Of course, not all illegal immigrants search for a legal, honorable better way of life--not in Spain and not in the U.S. Drug dealers, violent criminals, terrorists, organized crime and others who pose very real, tangible and obvious risks to civil society and public safety use the open borders to facilitate their antisocial activities. Gosh, who would have thought they might do so?

I have written elsewhere, including in two recent scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals on the subject, that proximity to the U.S. cannot be the the primary means for granting access to the American dream. There are millions upon millions of decent, hard working, LAW ABIDING people with real skills and no communicable diseases that the country needs, including farm workers, household workers, doctors, engineers, machinists, mechanics, technicians of all types, nurses, and theoretical physicists to name but a few. There are also countless victims of violence, political persecution, religious persecution, misogyny, and survivors of all sorts of examples of humanity's inhumanity waiting in line for refugee status that may save their lives. We need more of the former and latter, not an endless stream of people who for whatever reason place their self interest above the law and above that of others who are patiently, often desperately, waiting in line and playing by the rules they contemptuously flaunt.

Every society has both the right and the obligation to secure its borders to protect its people from public enemies, criminals, and those who pose unreasonable health risks or exact an unreasonable cost to the public treasury. That may not be true in a perfect world, or in La-La Land, but it is true everywhere else on planet earth.

Thank you Victor for this informative report.

Whew! A forum member with a broader perspective than my own, though I did touch on the Eastern European illegal immigrants. While I don't disagree with many of Victor's conclusions regarding immigration, I still hold that this complex situation came to a high pitch because of Mexican and S. American immigrants, legal and illegal. being highly visible at the time the U.S. went into its financial slump under the Bush Administration.

A major decrease in immigration from Mexico has taken place as employers began following hiring mandates and deportations increased. Lawn maintenance businesses are having trouble filling the jobs previously filled my illegal immigrants paid under the table.

Skilled jobs in this country are being filled with immigrants from other countries in the sciences, mathematics, technology, nursing, medical and more. I don't understand why more people here are not getting the education to enter those very lucrative professions. It may be related to the high cost of education and the lack of funiding for retraining the unemployed.

7/17/2012

Victor...........BRAVO....

I couldn't have said it better, if you go to

the beginning of this thread there's a CNN article

on Central and South American Illegals ad the horrors

they go through in Mexico, it'll chill your blood !

Cheers........Joe...

This thread prompted me to consider the sins of our forefathers and how we tend to forget.

Estimates:
Two studies have been conducted that attempt to
number the natives killed by the United States. The first of these was
sponsored by the United States government, and while official does not
stand up to scrutiny and is therefore discounted (generally); this
estimate shows between 1 million to 4 million killed. The
second study was not sponsored by the US Government but was done from
independent researchers. This study estimated populations and population
reductions using later census data. Two figures are given, both low and
high, at: between 10 million and 114 million Indians as a
direct result of US actions. Please note that Nazi Holocaust estimates
are between 6 and 11 million; thereby making the Nazi Holocaust the 2nd
largest mass murder of a class of people in history.
REF:
American Holocaust:
D. Stannard (Oxford Press, 1992) - "over 100 million killed"
"[Christopher] Columbus personally murdered half a million Natives"
God, Greed and Genocide: The Holocaust Through the Centuries: Grenke (New Academia Publishing 2006)
Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies: Cesarani, (Routledge 2004)

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Native_Americans_were_killed_by_the_US_government#ixzz20xklmVNi

Holocausts continue to this day. The numbers are not so great, however it does not erase the fact. Palestinians are systematically being killed and the numbers are yet to be calculated. It is easy to point fingers and condemn the people of a country whose government killed people while we tend to forget the sins of our ancestors. Should we assume the guilt of atrocities committed before we were born? If we are not guilty, then why does the stigma still exist in other lands?

Abe, do these figures include native Americans who were killed in battle and/or epidemics? While this was their land, and the Europeans were the invaders, I don't see how the battles could have been called "mass murder." We would need to see a comparison of how many settlers died at the hands of the natives to get a clearer picture as well. This is a two-sided issue, it seems to me.

You know me well enough to know that I don't condone the obvious massacres, the removal of natives to reservations, or the mandatory schooling which was designed to destroy the culture of the native children in order to make them "more acceptable." And yes, these horrible things did happen, and any number of victims killed in any atrocity is too many. Any attempt at genocide in any form is deplorable, and yes, it has happened in many times, including our own.

It is extremely tragic that so many native Americans died from epidemics of diseases brought here by the European settlers, but those settlers were ignorant of the consequences. They had no way of knowing that it would happen. Tragedy, yes; murder, no.

"Should we assume the guilt of atrocities committed before we were born?"

Of course not, nor of any wrong-doing done by our ancestors.

"If we are not guilty, then why does the stigma still exist in other lands?"

Perhaps to the same thinking that led to the concept of The Fall, which is not an idea limited to the early church reformers. The phrase, "The sins of the fathers are visited on the children" is not a Biblical phrase, at least not using those precise words. That particular quote comes from Pericles.

Wherever we find shame and guilt, we will find the projection of blame onto others who serve as scapegoats.

The term, "scapegoat", apparently does originate in the Bible - in Leviticus, where the practice of decorating a goat with garlands of flowers, which represented the sins of the community, and whipping the goat before chasing it out of the community and into the wilderness was practiced alongside the ritual slaying of a similar animal.

The concept itself, I am sure, goes much farther back in our development as a species.

Human beings are violent creatures. The best way for us to control that trait is to acknowledge it, and admit to having that tendency as a part of our inherent make up.

Captain James T. Kirk once said that the best any one of us can do is to wake up each day and say, "I will not kill - today."

Insofar as "The Holocaust" is concerned, I don't think it can be compared to the situations (plural) that happened between indigenous Americans, North and/or South and European Explorers and settlers, over a prolonged period of time, and what happened in Germany over a period of a few short years. I do not think we should forget that it happened. At the same time, I do not think that the everyday citizens of Germany - then or now - should be held accountable for the actions of a few central members of the Nazi Party, any more than I think that all Americans, then or now, should be held accountable for what happened at Sand Creek or Wounded Knee.

I suppose that as long as we feel a need to atone for whatever "sins" we think we have committed, we will feel a need to find scapegoats to project our guilt on to so that we can go about our daily lives with a bit less fear of reprisal - temporarily at least.

Ann

7/17/2012

We'll see in October if this comes true or not ? If it

does come true I can see the whole government being

voting out of office for good..

Cheers..Joe..

Ann,
I agree with you. No I don't think descendants are guilty nor should they be held accountable for what happened during the lifetime of their ancestors. You mentioned Germany and that happened to be my reference. They still suffer from the events that happened during Hitler's regime. They are made to feel guilty and are expected to continue to pay retribution. This must end.
I feel sad for the Native Americans who lost their land and their lives. We find this happening today in Palestine and most don't want to acknowledge it or discuss it since it is a politically sensitive subject, but it is happening.

How many people must die for it to be called a Holocaust? I don't know. As you said, even one life it too many. Numbers however, get attention. To a parent, the life of a single family member is a tragedy. Land grabbing continues. Power hungry political leaders wreck havoc even on their own people.

We can't change the world. All we can do is live our lives and do unto others as we would have them do to us. The part we play seems miniscule, but it can make a difference. We can make a difference at the voting booths as well as speak out against injustice. How to do that without offending anyone is seldom possible. Saying nothing changes nothing.

Thanks for your input.