Will instead spend my tourist dollars in the south – Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Georgia….

Mew

having worked as a laborer in high school and knowing people who’ve designed and built their own homes. Every laborer on the last custom build I was aware of spoke Polish. (hey, Chicago has more Poles than Warsaw…)

What I’m saying, and you seem to have missed, is that if enforcement via the locals isn’t working, move it up to the State level.

Sure, the PAC can try to buy the Attorney General or Secretary of State but the Department of Revenue (State-level IRS) pretty much has to be apolitical – and any signs of favoritism for the builders is an opportunity for another candidate to make a stink.

Back when I was getting started, the builder told me about his drywall crew – all mexican, and they lived at the work site. They showed up in a van, parked in the garage, and lived and drywalled there for 3-4 days, then moved on. Never the same crew twice, and he was real clear that he wasn’t asking questions. I’m pretty sure it’d take an IRS (or SecState/AG) audit to catch him – but he was a small operator – one or two houses every 5 years.

What’s needed to turn this is to make the fines valuable enough to the cash-strapped States that the current Pols would rather turn on their “friends” than raise taxes…. or a new crop of Pols could point out the obvious and force out the crooks.

Mew

Red State is about changing the game.

One quibble – I don’t expect a politician with a seat at the table to do the right thing. I expect a young idealist who isn’t afraid to gut-punch the establishment to make a campaign issue of the kickbacks and payoffs. I expect a journalist who wants to take some scalps to report the linkages. I expect a state AG who smells s**t to try to clean house.

I know perfectly well this is idealistic. I get called an idealist or a dreamer on a regular basis. I don’t see the problem in demanding excellence, though – after all, that’s what’s demanded of me. (grin)

Mew

I get it, you’re doing some comedy schtick.

You’ve clearly missed the history of Chicago. St. Valentines Day has a somewhat different meaning around here.

Believe me, the Chicago Rules would solve the gang problem – they send one of yours to the hospital, send one of theirs to the morgue. You may have heard of “The Untouchables”, eh?

Okay, joke’s over.

Mew

We have never, in this country, tried an all-out “war on drugs”.

We never had an all-out “war on alcohol” either. What the movies didn’t show is that Capone et al were forced out of Chicago – violently, many bodies on both sides – and took over the suburb of Cicero, prior to the tax evasion charge. Cicero, to this day, has one of the most corrupt political systems in the state.

What I’m not seeing you get is that closing the border will help on a number of ills including illegal immigration, human traffic, and drug trade fronts.

If you want to argue moral reasons around this, and your entire argument thus far has centered on moral rather than legal, there’s a clear moral reason to seal the border to prevent stupid college kids ending up on coke or underage south american girls being forced into prostitution, leaving those alleged poor kids trapped on the wrong side of the border entirely aside.

Mew

I think the Arizona law is a good first step as it puts some teeth to the issue, and the State should see a benefit both in savings and in fines levied. Once the benefit (or, to be overly “fair” – the non-benefit) is clear, other States will likely follow suit.

The problem isn’t with the laws, it’s with the lack of enforcement. What Arizona really does isn’t to change the laws – it’s to change who’s doing the policing, removing it from the Fed, who are hamstrung by various political special interests, and putting it in the hands of local police departments.

IIRC, Arizona has some tough laws around hiring illegals – time will tell whether these are enforced or not.

Mew

The Buchanan-esque opposition, I mean.

Also, please cite precisely when an “educated conservative” government existed in D.C. with a sufficient majority in both houses and an agenda to resolve illegal immigration.

Yes, I believe that Cuba would have changed had Miami not acted as a pressure relief valve. Same for Mexico. It would have been ugly. Guess what, so were all revolutionary wars down through history – but some of them have worked out fairly well.

Further, you’re calculating a “handful” using God’s hands or something – official figures for illegal immigrants are well over ten million. Certainly had these ten million been required to either legally emigrate or to stay in Mexico, there would have been changes.

The funny thing that I find, when dealing with so-called “educated” conservatives is how much liberal crap they’ve taken for conservative thought.

Mew

Immigrant.

Illegal immigrant.

Refugee.

These are different words. They mean different things.

That you are using them as the same thing is just …

We’re not communicating. Communications would be if we all use the same terms and we agree on what they mean. As that’s not happening, I’m throwing up my paws and walking away.

Mew

So, if someone disagrees with your precious little view of the world, then they’re a “progressive” or a “troll”.

Don’t think so. I know who I am, I tried to have a conversation with you. My conclusion is you’re impersuasible – you’ve got an agenda and aren’t really interested in a conversation.

Good luck. You’re going to need it.

Mew

I think you have stated your views .. somewhere up-thread.

I don’t resent the H1B holders, by the way. Some of the most talented people I’ve had the pleasure to work with – and it’s been fun watching them adapt to America, and vice versa.

I do have a problem with the bureaucrats who were supposed to cap their numbers to prevent the kind of abuse that’s happening in the system. For example, paying $20k below “market” (and thus pricing the “lucky” H1B holder out of most of the housing in the area…) is an abuse… and if supply had been limited as the original law called for, it would be less rampant.

Where we part company seems to be on who should provide the compassion. Your posted position appears to be that government should provide some services (including medical, presumably education, police, fire, water, sewer … mosquito abatement ?) and my position is that government is the wrong provider.

Hospitals are closing across the Southwest because people (not just illegals) use the ER as a primary care doctor because the ER docs *must treat* without regard to ability of the patient to pay.

Police departments are stressed, schools are very stressed. (35+ kids per classroom…) All this comes out of the community pockets – and the money just isn’t there…. so it comes out of the Fed pocket .. and the Fed has its’ fingers in mine. (and yours)

I’m a generous person, but I feel I should have some control over what causes receive the fruit of my labor; it is the sweat of my brow that brought it forth, after all.

First, seal the border. Second, dis-incentivise the country through eVerify and related programs. Once that’s done, and schools and hospitals are less stressed (and taxes plateau – taxes never go down…) there will be more ca$h available for compassionate individuals and organisations to pay for “free” immigration assistance, to build hospitals and schools south of the border .. groups that will get much more bang out of a buck than government could ever hope to.

I think it’s more compassionate, in the longer term.

Mew

and how it compares to my own thoughts, some of which are elsewhere in this thread.

The basic goal is disincentivization – removing the no-risk-high-reward opportunities, both for those who employ illegals and the illegals themselves, and these go paw in glove.

Until a business owner would rather go under than hire an illegal because the risk in the latter is higher, there’s a problem – and to sum up what I’ve said, give the various State-level Department of Revenue (who, right now, are running in circles to cover the massive deficits) some nice fines to collect and this will become a non-issue.

The Department of Revenue, after all, already has the SSN or TIN for every State resident who files a tax return and crunching that list against the list that every business in the state that files a tax return to see if Business X is paying a non-real number is a relatively straightforward thing. Just running each number through eVerify would do it.

This won’t touch the underground economy, but that’s more in the State Attorney General’s court anyway.

Mew

Well, it’s a bribe, for one thing, so let’s start honest, eh?

As I said in my reply to your diary, I don’t object to the idea of a “bribe” to accelerate the process – government already has this for getting a passport, for example, so this would just be “haggling over the price”.

That said, I dislike some of the frills.

* This bribe should not be transferable, as that defeats the idea of “knowing who’s here”, which is a major objection to an open border.

* One of the requirements should be a sponsoring company or organisation with an open position as that would show the person as having some form of value. (and anyone who is willing to pay big bucks to jump the queue has the bucks to dummy this up…)

* The security check still has to be done. No same-day service, sorry, we *will* be looking at your background.

Other than that, no objection.

Mew

Potaeto, potahto, potatoe. Not the critical point.

I see your point on the wealthier Europeans wanting to have one of these in their “bug out bag” .. something likely to be front and center on some minds on the continent today.

I also see where transferable would make it easier for them…. but.

If you’ve got a cool million to blow, why not expatriate yourself to, say, the Dominican Republic – where a very nice lifestyle can be had dirt cheap – and apply to enter the U.S. from there. British Virgin Islands should be even easier – being a Crown territory, one would imagine European free-travel would simplify.

The point is, the government sucks at doing things fast – and the background check is the last thing we should be rushing.

Hmm. Compromise. Fed to build a lovely club resort on one of the US Virgin Islands or maybe Puerto Rico. (re-purpose a Navy base – they’ve always got nice officer housing and golf courses…) Fully staffed, all the amenities. TIGHT security. Nobody leaves. You pony up a million, you go straight there, no questions, and live in luxury (paid for by the million) until the checks are all completed.

Mew

Call it the cat’s retirement plan.

Mew