There was no law about it, the British were given permission to stay after the Natives met them. The rest of the U.S. was taken ultimately through war. So we wouldn't be illegal immigrants, but rather the conquerors of that part of North America.

Why are people so rabidly supportive of unlimited immigration? You can't say a word about stopping illegal immigrants without the flood of, "You dirty ignorant, American, you were British 200 years ago!" comments.

How people got here centuries ago is not relevant to people illegally crossing the border in present times. Personally, I have no problem with immigrants, as long as they come in the legal way. However, allowing people to cross the border freely without any sort of official system being followed is a huge security risk and also presents other more administrative problems. God forbid anyone dare suggest tighter regulations on immigration though.

/Rantover. Sorry about that, in response to the actual topic,

Yeah, U.S politics seem to never change. We have the usual breed of candidates all toeing their respective party lines, the usual voters who either treat it like a popularity contest or pick whoever is most like themselves, and of course the usual media which is 90% liberal + Fox News which is forever alone on the conservative side.

It's a total mess. The real question: How do we even begin fixing it?

Except Asians. Asians are a great minority. So content and calm. They contribute to society, just look at the Asian steorytype!

Every Asian I've met in the U.S. is awesome, you have a point, Kellen.



Personally, I have no problem with immigrants, as long as they come in the legal way. However, allowing people to cross the border freely without any sort of official system being followed is a huge security risk and also presents other more administrative problems. God forbid anyone dare suggest tighter regulations on immigration though.

Yep. I don't like it when people think like that. They'll respond to me like "Oh, but look at their living conditions in Mexico and Central America." How about you look at the god forsaken law. Look at what these illegal immigrants are bringing into the U.S. People think they just want to get out of their way of living, but instead they're bringing their way of life into the U.S. Now granted, when I say "they," I am sure that not all illegal immigrants are involved in this, that there are plenty of nice people in that group. But that doesn't excuse them of the crime they committed by coming here illegally. But, none of that matters now, since our glorious president set out to make 5 million illegals U.S. citizens. How about that, rewarding people for doing the wrong thing. Great f*cking job. What does that say to the people coming here the right way? Seriously, I feel bad for them, to have to resort to jumping the border to escape from bad living conditions. But letting the problem come into us is not the solution. If people truly feel bad for Mexico and Venezuela, how about getting the government to go into these countries and help to stop the problem. Outside of U.S. borders. But then people will say "That would cost too much money." If you're worried about money, then shut the f*ck up about helping another nation's people in any way.

/Sorry, I had to rant, too.

tl;dr version: Illegal immigrants are bad, granting them citizenship is worse. Not fixing the border control at all will not stop the anything.

PS: We have laws already in place that would help the border situation greatly, but nobody enforces them.

Thanks Obama.

But that doesn't excuse them of the crime they committed by coming here illegally. But, none of that matters now, since our glorious president set out to make 5 million illegals U.S. citizens.

This is probably one of my biggest problems with the other side's argument. "Oh, they just want to be law-abiding,tax-paying citizens like everyone else!." If they didn't even respect the law on their way in, why should we expect them to respect the law once they're here? The logic doesn't add up.

The idea of a quota on how many people can arrive here is stupid and unneccesary. Part of the problem is the GIGANTIC GOVERNMENT BUREACRACY that delays people months and even years because the immigration service is so backed up.

The reason we have a system of immigration is so the terrorists, nutcase serial killers, cartels, and more crime doesn't get into America. If you sped up the process of letting people in with more people then we wouldn't have all these good, honest people just looking for a better life mixed in with a bunch of gun toting cartels.

Mexico has lost 150,000+ people in the mexican war on the cartels since 2004. Americans get upset when a few thousand people die on 9/11. We need to put the damn national gaurd on the border to keep the violence (which the illegal immigrants are trying to escape anyways) down south. Then we need to double the rate at which we take in LEGAL immigrants.

TLDR: Put damn tanks and jet fighters on the border but make it faster for the non criminals, non terrorist affiliated, non cartel alligned people in.

Edited 6/18/2015 02:18:35

What exactly will jet fighters do in this situation?

You win this, Nikolai.

Edited 6/18/2015 02:25:42

damn it, it's election year again, isn't it?

I'm afraid so. The good news is, Obama can't be president anymore. The bad news is, somebody is going to replace him. It's a lose/lose situation we're in. Again.

thanks for the medal. As for not having a choice I totally think Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Ben Carson or Rand Paul would be pretty good presidents.

Hmm both primary fields are pretty disappointing so far. For the Democrats, Hillary's basically a shoe-in- she's got the strongest lead a non-incumbent has ever had in a primary, and her most serious challenger (Warren) isn't even in the race. For the Republicans, you've got the exact opposite- no candidate in a clear lead, although Jeb Bush looks like he'll probably pick it up by the end. But you're starting to see fragmentation in the Christian-conservative coalition from the '90s, which is a good thing because it probably means party realignment in the near future- it'd be interesting if the Republican party picked up Hispanic-American voters beyond just Cuban-Americans, because that would make future presidential elections seriously competitive and maybe even get rid of the Republicans' need for gerrymandering and exclusionary turnout-based politics (like voting restrictions). The youth vote also doesn't look as certainly Democratic anymore, which is great.

That said, it'd be nice if we could get rid of first-past-the-post and become an actual multi-party democracy. I'd love to be able to vote for actual leftist candidates.

Since immigration policy seems to be the topic of discussion here:

We don't just have an immigration system to keep the terrorists/drug cartels out. We have it for economic reasons. For example, this year thousands of American students graduated from college with degrees in economically sought-after tech fields, like Computer Science and Electrical/Computer Engineering. These are highly-skilled workers and, as you would expect, earn high starting salaries- often something in the six figures straight out of college (since they tend to work in areas with high cost of living, like New York City and the Bay Area).

But tech companies, on the other hand, want immigrants. Facebook and Google would love to extend certain visa programs like H1-B to get more skilled foreign-born laborers. They often claim that there's a shortage of good programmers.

However, the reality is that there's a shortage of good programmers willing to work for peanuts. Then you get a man from India, China, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, etc., coming in willing to do for $40/hr what a graduate from MIT/UCSD/USC/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley/UT/etc. might end up doing for $70-$90/hr, and the problem becomes apparent. As a country, it would be a horrible lost investment for us- so much money spent on education only to graduate and end up losing your job to someone who'll work for less money (since they plan on leaving the country or are just getting screwed over by an exploitative company). Beyond that, there's also the issue of cutting corners- the Berkeley grad will almost undoubtedly churn out higher-quality work than the foreign laborer, simply because Berkeley is a kick-ass learning environment for EECS that really has no match outside the country.

Economically, there aren't just "hard-working" immigrants and "thugs." There's cheap labor, too, and we don't want cheap labor to ruin our economy. Instead, we need to be selective (although we need something more efficient) so we get more people like, say, Luis von Ahn who add unique value to the American eocnomy and need to be put in great research environments for the betterment of the country.

I feel like a lot of you have an extremely poor image of what an "immigrant" looks like- it's not just drug cartels and lawn-mowers. Economically, the question is far more complex than "what would Jesus do?"

Edited 6/18/2015 04:04:27

I'm leaning towards Marco Rubio or John Kasich myself, from what I've heard so far.

Yes. We need to destroy first past the post and the electoral college.

Quick lesson though : average Americans don't actually vote for the president.

knyte- I was arguing the stance most citizens have, and most citizens think about the morality of the situation. You are correct, though. A surplus in immigrants brings down the economy's strength, and it would take years for it to recover.

I feel like a lot of you have an extremely poor image of what an "immigrant" looks like- it's not just drug cartels...

There are more Hispanic gang members than any other race/ethnicity in the U.S.



Illegal immigrants are, in fact, a problem on the crime-scale of things, too.
But, like I said, when I say "they" or "illegal immigrants," I am not trying to group them all together.


source:

http://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/survey-analysis/demographics

Genghis- Another problem I forgot to mention in my first rant on this thread.

average Americans don't actually vote for the president.

Edited 6/18/2015 04:37:13

America was supposed to be another Imperialistic European empire. It got lost around 1804.

Vote for Dill Clyntin!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeHUl_xKb3Q

The U.S. was an empire for a while. There's the obtaining the mainland as it is today, there's Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam and other tiny islands.

But we have lost a lot of it. btw 38% of Americans identify as Conservative and only 24% identify as Liberal. This has been the trend since 2009.

I think that we will have anther republican president but we need a "good" one. We don't want a president that will put boots on the ground in Syria. We don't want one that will reboot parts of the Patriot act. We don't want one that will put the NSA on steroids.

What America needs is a Conservative-Libertarian president/political party. A very limited government type candidate.

Edited 6/18/2015 05:46:33