Hiding in the 40-page wasteland of paranoia and conspiracy theories that the Texas Republican Party published as its platform is a strange gem. On page 38, wedged between a recitation of Republican delusions about Benghazi and newly draconian language on immigration sits this:
The Republican Party of Texas endorses and supports the Proposed Congressional Apology to the Chinese Americans for governmental actions that denied equal rights to and adversely harmed the Chinese in America.
How that immigration “apology tour” plank made it into the platform one can only guess. Clearly, the platform itself is less a statement of the party’s core proposals than a collection of sweepings from the convention floor. There were bound to be some anomalies. That said, this little ignored provision may be surprisingly timely, even prescient.
The last time we updated our immigration scheme Reagan was in the White House. Nearly half the world, including Nicaragua, was controlled by Communists. Guatemala and El Salvador were battling Communist guerrillas. You still needed a border stamp to cross any European national boundary. We lived in a world in which both capital and labor faced serious constraints when they attempted to travel the world.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was a good idea, but it was largely a failure. The Act sought to limit the incentives to illegal immigration, impose an appropriate set of punishments on those who had flouted immigration laws, and along with those punishments, establish a path to legitimacy for those who deserved it, described as “amnesty.”
It did not make any attempt to create credible paths for legal immigration, a step desperately needed then and even more critical now. More importantly, the only really effective component of the Act was the path to citizenship. Efforts to create meaningful deterrents to hiring illegal workers were watered down beyond enforceability. Criminal penalties on employers could only be imposed under standards impossible to prove. As a result, the Act functioned as nothing more than a one-time amnesty, deferring our immigration policy challenges.
Beneath all the paranoid rancor over illegal immigration from Latin America sits an uncomfortable fact – there is no organized method of legal immigration to the US. Unless you have family here or you can get an increasingly precious corporate sponsorship, you are not coming to America without breaking the law. That is a problem and that problem is not close to being addressed.
The 1986 reforms did not even attempt to create any paths to legitimate immigration. It was an issue too contentious to address. We are still living under a bizarre, racist and ultimately pointless regimen of immigration quotas first devised as an anti-immigration tactic in the 1920’s. In 1990 we raised the cap on annual legal immigration to a whopping 700,000. That’s it. A nation of more than 330,000,000 million people with the most dynamic economy on the planet permits fewer than a million people to immigrate here legally every year.
We need immigrants. Immigration is fuel for a dynamic economy. We need doctors, scientists and computer programmers, but that’s not all. Skilled immigration will not meet all our needs.
We need the kind of people willing to trek across a desert to make a better life for their families. No one started their life as a doctor or scientist. This country was not built on boutique immigration. It was built by tough, sometimes desperate people who would work hard in pursuit of a dream. We will do ourselves a terrible disservice trying to cherry-pick immigrants.
To benefit from immigration we need a system that extends legal protection to migrants and accepts enough of them to meet our economic demands. Without access to the protections and accountability that comes from legal, documented status, immigrants undermine our labor markets and strain public services. With the right levels of accountability and without nativist efforts to hold down numbers, a freer system of documented immigration could bring massive economic improvements.
How many immigrants can we absorb each year? Ask yourself how many new businesses and taxpayers we can absorb. How much economic growth can we absorb? The logical flaw is embedded in the question itself. The assumption that immigration is somehow dangerous and destabilizing is one of the most maddening falsehoods that still lingers in our political ecosystem.
Won’t immigrants “take” American jobs? We set a fixed annual quota on the number of people we will accept as immigrants each year, but there is no fixed number of jobs in our economy. Jobs are created by ambitious people, many of whom create their own work. Republicans tend to be remarkably optimistic about the power of markets to regulate themselves until the subject pivots to immigration.
If we had a system that made it very difficult to hire illegal migrants and made it very easy for ambitious people to come here, why wouldn’t markets decide the right level of immigration? The answers people give to this question can tell an interesting, sometimes dark story.
We cannot muster the political willpower to build a sensible, pro-immigration legal framework because our talk about American principles too often outruns our faith in them. In their platform, Texas Republicans are finally ready to apologize to the Chinese for the ways we punished their efforts to come here and help make us rich and powerful. The same document seeks to impose a similar regime on Latin American migrants, driven by the same delusions, catering to the same racist fears.
What will the 2080 Texas Republican Party platform say about Rick Perry’s trip to the border? Lo siento, amigos.
We do not have to wait for history to judge us. We could decide to do something now.
Chris Ladd is a Texan living in the Chicago area. He has been involved in grassroots Republican politics for most of his life. He was a Republican precinct committeeman in suburban Chicago until he resigned from the party and his position after the 2016 Republican Convention. He can be reached at gopliferchicago at gmail dot com.
GOPLifer 
In other news from north of the border, I saw this article featured on the front cover of Maclean’s. I offer it without editorial comment other than to say that it is troubling in several ways. http://macleans.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
The link gave me 4 stories, but I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s the Iraq one. Yep, very troubling, but I have to wonder if trying to hold together that illogical construct that is Iraq is nothing but an exercise in futility. I’m wondering if a good faith bargain with the Kurds is our best option. They can have their often-promised-then-conveniently-forgetten-about state if they help whack ISIS (or ISIL or whatever the scumbags call themselves).
Since today would have been Jack Kemp’s 79th birthday, a reminder of a time when Republicans actually offered solutions.
“Americans and immigrants share the same values of work, family and opportunity. There is no reason to fear the newcomers arriving on our shores today. If anything, they will energize what is best about our country.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/jackkemp/2006/07/17/immigration_reform_will_help_keep_this_nation_strong/page/full
Des, he’s just another damn “limp wristed” (let’s start THAT hubbub again) RINO! We need more Todd Aiken, Richard Mourdock, Ted Cruz, Chris McDaniel, David Brat (what an apropos name)…
Amazing how prescient Kemp was in 2006. What a great loss. Didn’t agree with him economically but a great humanitarian for social justice.
Conservatives agree with that statement 100%. No proof otherwise.
Illegal immigrants are still immigrants, kabuzz.
Speak for yourself…
I think what is being left out of the conversation to an extent is what can America do to address the underlying problem at the boarder now. I am not for nation building or interference in a countries fate, but didn’t we build this to some extent? Shouldn’t we help some of our neighbors ( offer the help if they ask ) to stabilize their country ? Help the economy and security in South America and illegal immigration should naturally decline. Just asking.
Reparations??
No, i was just reading about a $270 million aid package to El Salvador . We either gonna spend money here or spend money there. Best to tackle the problem in their country instead of the border. Get this the US is with holding the aid package and won’t release it unless El Salvador buys Monsanto GMO seeds. Corporate blackmail gotta love it.
So will Monsanto become the United Fruit Company for our era?
Um, your title to this latest entry is quite a bit false. The Chinese that came here during the mid to later 1800s came here legally. Once here, they were exploited to build the railroads in the West, a new class of people that were basically, if not officially, slaves. It wasn’t until the 1880s that the federal government created immigration laws, largely because of Irish and German immigrants. But granted, it was aimed directly at the Chinese, and it almost completely cut off the flow of Chinese immigrants. So no, the Texas GOP hasn’t made any apologies to illegal immigrants in supporting the fedral apology to the legal Chinese immigrants.
Another point you got wrong … again … that you consistently get wrong … is the claim that current immigration laws are racist in nature (though it was the left that passed them, signed by a former liberal, a real neo-con, so maybe not so “former” at that). Our immigration laws apply to all races, even caucasions from Europe and Canada, so that pretty much kills that claim (even though it would benefit my position that it is the left that is full of racists).
My lady has a coworker that immigrated from south of the border and has recently earned her citizenship, so that also kills you claim that there is no legal path to immigrate to the U.S. and of you claim that our curent laws (written and passed by the left) are racist and aimed at keeping people from south of the border out.
Now, once we get past your errors and the flying spittle of bigotry, anger, racism and hatred, we could actually discuss immigration reform.
The quotas are probably much too low and should be increased, maybe double the limit or even up it to 2 million per year. And we could issue more work visas for ex-pats from other countries that have no intent of immigrating.
We do need to secure the border, but as somebody else pointed out (I think it was either Bart or Fifty) we should deny any government services or handouts to illegal aliens and we should crack down on those that aid and/or employ illegal aliens. Even you made that point in this latest blog entry. Deny them the benefits of being here and they will leave and many will not even come here in the first place. We wouldn’t need a militarized border or wall except o keep drugs and cartels out, and if we were to repeal prohibition not even that would be an issue.
As my dear lady often points out to me, our non-enforcement of immigration laws, lack of deportation, allowing people to employ and house (rent or otherwise) illegal aliens and the idea that amnesty is just around the corner if they get here fast enough encourages illegal immigration. We need an executive administration, executive branch, that will enfore federal laws.
And by saying that, I even include the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. I hate the fact that there is assumed and automatic guilt of a crime without due process. Many here on your blog and elsewhere support it, even when it means people go to prison for years on end. But it is the law, and like police officers, the president doesn’t get to make law, change law or nullify law. We, the people, need to see that it is changed.
Jesus, Sternn. Go look up the history. I can’t be responsible for everything on my own.
I did look up the history before I posted my comment because I wasn’t sure about it. The first laws that prohibited immigration were passed in 1875 barring immigration of prostitutes and convicts. The Chinese exclusion act was passed in 1882, which was well after most of the Chinese immigrants came here and were exploited to build the railroads in the West. That exploitation is what the apology was about.
Do you have sources that say otherwise? If so, please post them.
This is part of what the apology is for:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=4055
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/24/local/la-me-paper-son24-2010jan24
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-03-14/when-chinese-immigrants-came-from-mexico
http://www.academia.edu/2941275/The_Chinese_Exclusion_Act_Securing_the_American_Borders_Through_Political_Movements_and_the_Social_Political_and_Economic_Complications_that_Ensued, starting around p. 12
http://preview.tinyurl.com/lyfyxco
And so on, and on, and on. Not that it matters.
Cappy’s self induced myopic closed world continues. It IS an apology to the illegal Chinese immigrants because there was virtually no legal immigration avenue for the Chinese all the way through 1965 with the passage of The Immigration and Nationality Act that lifted racist per country quotas that specifically excluded Chinese and Africans. We are not talking about just the first Chinese exclusion laws. There were many flavors of Chinese exclusion laws all the way through the last half of the 20th century. And as Chris noted they kept coming anyway, under the radar and a significant proportion would have been legal immigrants if they hadn’t been singled out for exclusion by race.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
Ah, so I was incorrect about it being an apology for the exploitation, but instead an apology to those that immigrated legally yet were not allowed any path to citizenship, though as long as they had their papers they were allowed to stay. Since your claim through the title was that it was an apology to illegal immigrants, the Chinese, my search of the history was on actual immigration laws and when it would be legal or illegal for Chinese to immigrate. You weren’t real clear about what you are talking about, maybe being intentionally vague because the reality didn’t quite measure up. Also I could have done better research into what the apology was about instead of focusing on immigration laws.
Not allowing the Chinese (legal) immigrants a path to citizenship would equate to people coming here from other countries, after having been issued a Green Card and coming here legally, not ever being allowed to work toward citizenship if they so desired. Yep, that would be and was wrong, but it still doesn’t measure up to the claim of the title of the entry that the “Texas Republicans apologize to illegal immigrants”, so my point on that stands.
There was an interesting point about the period between 1880 and 1882, a period between where the exclusion act was in the works and when it became official, where Chinese immigration grew to a flood trying to get in before the doors were closed. Sort of like people trying to get in now while democrats are kicking the amnesty plan around and before anything is really done to deal with the illegal immigration problem, immigration laws and enforcement (as if that is actually going to happen).
The links from you and Bubba also point out that quotas by country were eliminated decades ago, so again, as I said, our current immigration laws are not based on racism.
I do thank you for the links and additional information. There are many laws on the books that have their foundations based on racism, and some are a bit racist in practice. But those are never really discussed by very many people, right or left. On the other hand, some states are taking it up on themselves to start working to undo those laws and restore some of our liberties and rights. I wonder how the leftists here feel about that since they are always on and on about how federal law trumps state laws? Think you will ever do an entry about that sort of thing?
What Nazi flag?
What happened to Bubba’s post about Captain Semantics (very funny) and Cap’s supposed display of the Nazi flag (NOT funny, because it’s not true). My reply has been orphaned.
Nazi Flag? I missed something. Oh well, back to grilling and cooking for the week.
And yes, Bubba, I “conveniently” ignored your mention of the Confederate flag. I’m such a shyster! No wonder Cap and I get along so well.
Obama miscalculated this crisis and what his words caused. Even the Washington Post, an avid Obama supporter has turned on him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/border-crisis-scrambling-the-politics-of-immigration-policy/2014/07/12/78b6ab16-0920-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html
According to Chris, the dem’s and GOP are haters of brown.
Maybe there should be a web site for those who want to sponsor a family . I was thinking about that last night. Four, and if I want, five bedroom house with just the wife and I plus the daughter in the summer. I am not a Christian man, my wife is Christian , the question is, what is the humanitarian thing to do? I have the room, should I put my wife’s faith and my sense of morals to the test? Or just continue on with life as a bystander.
Texan there is an effort by an avowed atheist teaming up with Catholic Charities to collect donations for the kids in various relief centers in Texas. It started for just Dallas (and as a counter protest movement to the gun fetishers claiming to block buses in Dallas) but she has expanded to San Antonio and El Paso. You can message her about offering shelter also. She should have the right contacts. Best of luck. We donated several backpacks because they seemed most in need of that at the time. It’s unfortunately on Facebook only of course.
https://www.facebook.com/events/892367167444016/permalink/895938570420209/#!/events/892367167444016/895357917144941/?notif_t=like
History has already judged the Texas Republican Party, and it has contributed to the most toxic obstructionism in U.S. memory, caused the downfall of the Middle Class in America, and darkened the future of this country for decades to come.
Get ready to fence yourselves in – – It’ll save them some money…
I bet you see black helicopters and little weird people too.
I do.
“I do.”
All too true. The “black helicopters” were actually dark Army green surplus with infra-red equipment.
Now we have drones for local law enforcement.
But hey, it is all about the commerce clause and assumed guilt, automatic guilt, that people like HT and many others support.
And then there are people like lomamonster that blame the right for things the left has done.
This is the world as many have made it, especially the way the left has made it. How do you like the world that you have made?
I love my life and my world. Man Cap I was responding in jest and you took it to the deep end. Well done.
Texan, the U.S. Supreme Court actually ruled on those “black helicopters”. Sometimes those conspiracy theories are not just theories. I dismissed Fast and Furious, the gun-walking program under the Obama administration, as some whacky conspiracy theory the first time I heard about it. D’oh!
Cool! I am gonna turn on all the lights in my basement and a few other heat generating devices . That should get their attention. Then after the false raid on my house, I will seek litigation.
I don’t think you have anything to worry about on that point. I guess I wasn’t clear enough when I said the supreme court ruled on the subject, but the court ruled against those “black helicopters” as unreasonbale searches.
Still, tell me that a militarized police force with drones, or even the Patriot Act, doesn’t bother you. It bothers me and I work with the police, keeping some of the equipment functioning. Namely the computers in the offices and cars and some with the servers on the backend. Those computers in the cars and servers include the ALPR (automatic license plate reader) systems, among other similar things.
If’n you be a-thinkin big brother ain’t a-watchin, you done better go and think it again. What I know doesn’t even scratch the surface, and I ain’t even done gone and said even close to half of all what I be a-knowin.
It scares the living shit out of me Sternn, the militarization of police forces across this country is rather alarming.! You will get no argument from me on that point.
Texan and I agree on something. That is scary. :p
This got buried in a previous post that was in the process of playing out, but it’s very relevant, so I’m reporting:
So here is a blast from the past, the attempted immigration reform of 2007 (cosponsored by McCain and Kennedy). I’ve been quite clear that I was never a fan of GW Bush, but his backing of this bill is something I list as to his credit.
http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Immigration_Reform_Act_of_2007
Now there are ideas here that I could quibble over- I’ve already stated that I think the proposals for the DREAMers are too lenient and how I would change them. I also think the idea releasing a detained alien with a notice to appear is wishful thinking at best. Nevertheless this was one of the more sensible things put forward as a solution, but these days we just can’t have nice things.
I think this 2007 attempt is a good starting point for 2014. What would people change? What parts would you keep?
I have to ask if you are one of those who also believes that NO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS receives free (actually taxpayer funded) heath care (i.e. Medicaid), Education (i.e mandated specially trained and size controlled classes with “critical needs” stipends, and Social Security (Disability included)? Do you state that the people being “Damaged” the most are “gray-haired Tea Partiers needing rascal scooters” as the lack of low-paid, low-educated immigrants because of these expenses are LESS than their great boost to the “working population”? Last time I checked, we had NO shortage whatsoever of those type job applicants in this country. Or are you inferring that the vast majority wanting to immigrant here are NOT the low-wage (if not under-the-table) low educated?
I should add that the chart I linked to below showing the recent increase in Hispanic immigration was because that was the group the thread targeted, not me. The other numbers are “all race inclusive” for those who, rather than discuss their objections to the actual numbers, launch the knee-jerk response of “RACIST” commences. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually discuss subjects without the vitriol that accompany every political issue anymore?
Illegal immigrants do receive “free” healthcare in the form of charity care at local hospitals. In Harris County, some of this is paid for by the HCHD property taxes. Illegal immigrants pay property taxes either because they own property or (more likely) as an implicit part of their rent. Immigrant children are educated in public schools, which are paid for by property taxes. I’m sure there are some illegal immigrants that are defrauding SS in some way, but they pay far more into the SS system (that they will never receive) than any benefits they receive as a group.
There are quite a lot of highly skilled individuals who would like to come here are are unable to do so, or so put off by an immigration system that assumes they are criminals.
JG, when a citizen uses false SS cards or DL, they call it identity theft and very punishable. Nice that you try to dress it up.
JG, HCHD spends over $100 Million per year providing “free health care” for the “uninsured”. According to David Lopez, HCHD, CFO, the majority are illegal immigrants and they are suing the state to increase Medicaid funding currently being spent on Medicare for private hospitals to avoid a huge shortfall.http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Public-private-Texas-hospitals-spar-over-Medicaid-3451564.php
sorry, that $100 Million spent on Illegal Immigrants by HCHD was in 2007 it was $130 Million in 2010. At that rate 10 million more per year, it should hit $170 million this year. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Migrant-health-care-Who-pays-the-bill-2243020.php Now add all of the other costs and tell me about their property tax input.
[Sigh] Kabuzz, Dems want looser immigration controls because they think that it panders to ethnic minority communities that disproportionately vote Dem. Except that they also count on union support, and unions basically don’t like immigration because of the perception (partly true) that immigration suppresses wages. Repubs want stricter immigration controls as part of their nativist hard-on-crime schtick. Except that a lot of big spending business groups like the perceived suppression of wages that come from immigration – particularly the illegal kind in which the labor pool has utterly no leverage.
So, we have a situation in which the GOP wants (and gets) strict immigration laws with unrealistic caps and no reasonable way for someone to follow the rules and hope to get in. Dem unions are pleased. Then, nobody actually enforces these laws. Seriously, how hard would it be for the SSA to send back an alert that the SSN they just got a FICA check from doesn’t exist, or belongs to someone who was 6, or died three years ago? That it doesn’t happen, suggests that nobody is Washington, right or left, is actually all that upset with illegal immigration in practice, as long as they can claim to be against it publicly.
This is not rocket science and has existed for 30 years, if not more. Learn the motivations and you can perhaps not seem like such an naif in this discussion.
HCHD exists to provide health care for the uninsured. $100 million goes for illegal immigrants? So be it. HCHD took in $510 million in taxes last year. The non-illegal clientele of HCHD doesn’t live in River Oaks either. They pay their property taxes and whatever else they can. I’m really not that worked up about it.
JG, your 10:49pm post from July 12 is excellent and pretty much sums up our immigration problem. However, I do take issue with your casual dismissal of identity theft and fraud. This is not a minor offense. It causes untold grief for the victim.
Also, you seem to think a wait of several “months” and several visits to immigration and attorneys’ offices are unfair and pose undue hardship, when a wait of YEARS is the norm. As Lifer rightly pointed out, immigration should be about bringing in more than just professionals.
Thanks, Tutt. I’m not dismissing identity theft, but I don’t think day laborers and dishwashers are the major problem. They aren’t taking out credit cards and loans in the names of the SSNs they steal, unless you think that a big proportion of our illegal immigrant population are Russian hackers.
“The other numbers are “all race inclusive” for those who, rather than discuss their objections to the actual numbers, launch the knee-jerk response of “RACIST” commences. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually discuss subjects without the vitriol that accompany every political issue anymore?”
Yep, it would. But I don’t see anything like that coming from the left, especially not from Lifer.
First off, Fly and Chris have to understand no one on either side of the aisle is against immigration. Any other statement is just hyperbole and nonsense.
This issue was addressed in 86 but the only part that made it through was the amnesty. Now here we are again and we as citizens are to just repeat that process again? Isn’t that insanity?
The conservative viewpoint on this issue is simple. First demonstrate that the authorities know how to enforce the laws on the books. Close businesses down that hire illegals, deport those that come over with expedited hearing and no releasing them to appear at a hearing. You show us how serious you are, then we will get on board for step two of the problem. What to do with those that are here.
Fly, Chris’ post does seem like an open borders philosophy. The old saying of ‘work the problem or the problem will work you’ is here. This humanitarian crisis is being caused by the left side of the aisle just about guaranteeing amnesty.
And of course, one democratic leader handles this by giving out Lollypops.
No one is against immigration, yet we still haven’t fixed it. You might also want to note that NOBODY here is advocating for a repeat of ’86. The post is pretty clear about what was lacking during that reform attempt.
Enforcing current laws is totally useless when the current laws are inadequate to addressing the current situation. But that kind of blind insistence does explain why the system still isn’t fixed, despite no one being against immigration.
Why would we enforce laws that were never intended to be enforced?
JG, good question; better question: Why do we pass laws we don’t intend on enforcing? This fact doesn’t help those who believe more government is the solution to everything.
We Americans have this bizarre love-hate relationship with immigrants. On one side of our mouths will we celebrate the “great American melting pot”, and on the other side gripe about the current wave of newcomers. If you look through history you’ll see that the complaints are nothing original.
Is this advocacy for open borders? No, so anyone preparing to toss out that accusation can stuff it. What I do advocate is to get real about immigration (new blood is good for this country) and retool the process to reflect the realities of the 21st Century. We need the honest discussion about who do we allow in, for what reasons, and how do we do it.
I’ll beg to differ in that Chris should have said ““there is no organized method of legal immigration to the US [that is adequate for dealing with the current situation]. Of course, not quoting the next sentence that did qualify that statement a bit is distorting the meaning.
“there is no organized method of legal immigration to the US.” I beg to differ.
http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-naturalization
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/02/04/ii-recent-trends-in-naturalization-2000-2011-2/
Go back and read through those links. Also, try to immigrate here or ask someone who has.
Let me say it again, there is no organized method of legal immigration to the US. We have an antiquated series of bizarre, sometimes tortuous methods by which a very few, very lucky people can, if they have family here or are refugees, immigrate. It often takes decades. It can five years or more for people who are actually married to a US citizen and you really should see what those people experience.
Here’s a pretty thorough description of the process, not that it sheds much light. The immigration process is almost impossibly bizarre, http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/how-united-states-immigration-system-works-fact-sheet
As you review the process, see if you can find the method available for immigrating here when you don’t have US citizen-family and can’t get sponsored by a company for an H-class visa.
I’ll wait right here.
Our immigration process is appalling. And ironically, the people who are being damaged the most by our broken immigration system are the same white-haired screaming Tea Partiers who are depending on a declining working-age population to pay for their rascal scooters.
“We have an antiquated series of bizarre, sometimes tortuous methods by which a very few, very lucky people can,” According to Yahoo news “Immigrant Population at Record 40 Million in 2010”. Yahoo! News. October 6, 2011. The number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007.
“Nearly 14 million immigrants entered the United States from 2000 to 2010.,and over one million persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008 alone” What do define as “very few”? 10 Million, 20? 30? 40? Hope i didn’y keep you waiting for the facts about how nobody but a “few” can immigrate legally here. We must disagree on what that means.
So what?
I’m watching this right now with a student who works for me. She’s from Peru and married a U.S. citizen a few months ago. It took 6 months to get her provisional green card (“advanced parole”). This is just an acknowledgment that she’s following the rules so that she can travel out of the country if needed. She’s months, at least, from the permanent green card. Just getting this far has required an immigration lawyer and literally a dozen trips to an INS office. We certainly want to keep the likes of her out of the country – she just finished her Ph.D.
One of my grad school friends/classmates came from Canada. She did marry a fellow student (an American) and have to jump through all those hoops. She also had to turn down a pay raise one year because of the screwy tax laws on foreign residents that would have made it into a pay cut.
“so what”? Something very poignant about that as a reply to calling over 1 million each year being called “very few”.
Our government never did and never will do anything fast. That is a dream. Oh my God! She has to wait months? How can she survive?
“streamlining the process” is almost a “given” when talking about anything having to do with the federal government. “Creating a pathway to citizenship” for those already here is rewarding those who have shown blatant disregard for our laws. Where else is this done? They deserve NO special provisions nor disqualifications from any streamlining reforms made for EVERYONE who wishes to become a US citizenship. I believe it falls under the “equal justice under the law” I read on the front of the SCOTUS building. (you know the one wher our senate majority leader thinks Clarence thomas and 4 other old, white men rule). http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/09/reid-were-not-gonna-let-five-white-men-have-the-last-word-on-hobby-lobby/
Fly, your Canadian friend must be selfish, finagling with her salary in order to keep more of her earnings versus sharing them with government.
Bart, get a clue. Chris is saying you never were good at math which you have proven yet again. But we all knew anyway.
And yes bart we know you don’t care that you won the birth lottery out of sheer dumb luck so you are privileged to be a citizen and screw everyone else.
Too bad you won the birth lottery. We don’t need your types that if born in Guatemala, you would just accept abject poverty, shortened lifespans, and your children being raped or murdered and pressed into gangs or the drug trade. Or an able bodied person that selfishly prefers to golf rather than remain a productive member of this society and country.
We actually need more of the strivers who care so much about their families and bettering themselves they will do anything for their kids, financially, physically, or otherwise, and work themselves to the bone under the most arduous circumstances for almost nothing to better themselves and their children.
Now which group made this country great bart? I think you are just a lifelong slacker who is jealous of looking bad in comparison to the real backbone of this country.
Yes and bart will retort with patting himself on his back about how much he “donates” to make his church pretty. Whatever. And bart you never responded back on whether your church has a separate donation box dedicated to just helping the needy. Like those “evil Mooslems” do in their mosques that you myopically deride. Your hate of all things that are “different” others is about the only thing you do that is inclusive.
well, so much for not having the vitriol this thread. I may not be the greatest at Math, but I know over a million a year is not “Very few”. Actually, My daughter and son-in-law just took their four kids (three adopted African-American and two Hispanic adoptees from “street kids” our church ministers to on Montrose) down to Guatemala to serve as Missionaries trying to help that country improve rather than just taking their young people away. Bubba, I’m prayin for you. It’s Sunday. take a “sabbath” from all the anger and hate for awhile will you?
Should have said, “Three adopted: ONE African American” for the mathematically pedantic.
As for “Myopic” Could you tell me what religion uses their temples as storage houses for Rockets again?
Hey bart keep posting and proving your ignorance mathematical and otherwise. You apparently don’t understand percentages still. What is one million as a percentage of 330 million as Chris noted? No cheating and letting anyone else answer for bart.
And apparently 3+2= 4 for bart.
Jeez bart. And what Mosque in the US harbored rockets bart?
And where is your denunciation of terrorism and murder by Catholics, a PRIEST no less.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0824/Did-a-Catholic-priest-assist-an-IRA-murder-in-Northern-Ireland
Fucking consummate hateful hypocrite.
Pray all you want, you KNOW even YOUR God doesn’t love all your nasty racist hate.
Pretty sure Allah/Yahweh/God don’t like your online bullying and “bearing false witness” either bart-1/seriouscynic/usincrisis. Charlton Heston is looking down in shame on you too bart.
Only in bart’s all around ignorant world is basic ACCURATE second grade math “pedantic”.
And then he “corrects” himself and arrives at 1+2=4.
We are glad you never were a NASA engineer bart not that it could ever be possible. I’m sure they take mathematical accuracy as more than just “pedantic”
Keep posting away bart. There is absolutely nothing on TV right now and this is way more entertaining to watch.
Their first child is theirs biologically for those who couldn’t figure it out on their own. I didn’t specify US. So you never did answer my question did you. Just the usual insults and obscenities. (Yawn.)