According to Chairman Stewart, he supports more legal immigration both in skilled and unskilled areas. Additionally that Stewart acknowledges that there is a national immigration problem and not solely in the area of enforcement is a step in the right direction. The fact that our immigration policy is reviewed about once a decade indicates there’s a problem. We have fluctuating job markets that need addressing from year to year. Consider, how could a policy implemented during the ‘dot-com’ bubble still be relevant today? That immigration policies aren’t reviewed more frequently is a big part of the problem.
I would however strongly disagree that the undocumented are any more likely to commit crimes than the average citizen. Of course, one inevitably will point to the 20% housed in the local jail as ‘evidence’ that this is the case. However, those statistics were compiled after they have begun detaining ‘illegals’ so using those numbers present an inaccurate picture.
And just to be accurate, Federation for American Immigration Reform(FAIR) has be named a HATE GROUP and the President of Help Save Manassas – Greg Letiecq has been named a NATIVIST.
undecided,
If your concern is that illegal aliens abuse our social services, all I can say is that we only have ourselves to blame for that. We don’t have to offer social services at all. If we abolish the social services tomorrow, the immigrants will shrug their shoulders and move on. Will we? In this respect at least, they’re more american than we are. They come from places where you sink or swim on your own…nothing is guaranteed to you…and your destiny is in your hands.
undecided…are you telling me that social services are inefficient? that they don’t scale well to meet sudden new demands? Ya don’t say!
Reasonable people can agree that it is the nature of social services to be somewhat inefficient. It’s kinda weird to see people scapegoating immigrants when the system itself is the problem. The immigrants can’t even vote. We have all the power, they are powerless (as the resolution so richly exposes). Yet they are still scapegoated.
If the social services are the problem, then that is where we should focus the efforts. Perhaps more creative enforcement of zoning laws, or abolishing the social services altogether. Anything is better than moving closer to a police state.
The current immigration system is abusive to the immigrants. It’s also abusive to americans who are put between a rock and a hard place. But that doesn’t excuse those americans pulling out this huge club called immigration law and clubbing the immigrants and their children over their heads with it.
I don’t believe everyone who is opposed to illegal immigration is a bigot but many are. Neither do I believe that all police are abusive but many are. Those are words you put into my mouth. I can’t be responsible for what you read into what I say.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2008/020408_shoot_americans.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc
Mackie:
You said: “I don’t believe everyone who is opposed to illegal immigration is a bigot but many are. Neither do I believe that all police are abusive but many are.”
Now you are putting words in my mouth. I said “everyone who is FOR THE RESOLUTION… not opposed to illegal immigration. HUGE difference, but nice try.
Yet you called out both cops (abusive – PWC cops specifically), and those opposed to the resolution (Nativists)- as a group… Thats called “Stereotype”.
I can only hope that some of you will recognize that you are equally guilty of that which you accuse others of. I don’t hold out much hope though. Denial is what, step 2?
I guess the bottom line is that the resolution is staying! If you don’t like it, write your congressman.
Peace.
Mr. Stewart is probably afraid that his association with ‘other’ folks will destroy him politically if he doesn’t stay the course. Perhaps he is wise to have those fears. Certain people can do him more political harm in 5 minutes that I could do in five years.
That’s really a shame. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just step up to the plate and do the right thing. Instead we have discovered that the Emperor has no clothes.
AnonforNow,
So glad you decided to speak up!
undecided said on 24 Apr 2008 at 12:40 pm:
kgotthardt – so now we are enslaving the immigrants?
When we use them for our economic gain and toss them away at our own whim, when we do not protect them the way we do other people in our country, when we ignore the contributions they have made to our society, when we label them criminal, dog food, and cock-roaches….yes, we have enslaved them.
Decided,
I think you’re starting to split hairs here. We can point fingers and name call all day long and, while enjoyable, it doesn’t really get us closer to a solution. I addressed your concern about the burden on social services. I was hoping you would respond to my comments…
Hmmmm….. “the luxury” to break the law. Interesting perspective from one who has complaints about other lawbreakers. Typical of that ilk. Just typical. Debate concluded.
Mackie, I am apalled that you would put a person’s personal name up on a public blog. What if some lunatic angry at a post or just angry in general decided to take that anger out on an individual you singled out? Do you not see that is endangering someone with callous regard. Do you not feel that if someone posted your personal identityy, that might be a danger to your life and liberty?
No one but the person themselves has a right to make a name public on an advocacy blog with high running emotions and angry people debating controversial but essential topics.
Admin, I would respectfully request you delete that post, to protect a potentially innocent person from harm, whoever “advocator” is or whatever he has done to make mackie angry enough to post such a thing.
Michael,
Advohater outed himself by choosing to implicate himself in the writing of the resolution. Get mad at him for divulging that info, not mackie. Or, better yet, be disgusted with the rhetoric this guys rants about.
As far as name calling is concerned, everyone can take a lesson from the Supreme court and remove any references to gender, religion, racial or ethnic group advocacy, privilige, denigration, adulation, insult and praise. The law allows nothing but neutrality in race, religious, gender and ethnic group advocacy issues.
Segregating “individuals” into groups is the political decay we have sunk to in a display of our ignorance at the lowest level yet in society issues. Individual rights concepts have morphed and decayed into a decadent and illegal concept of group rights advocacy, diversity advocacy and special privilige advocacy along racial, gender, religious and ethnic group lines. That is what went wrong with the great work done by individual rights advocates in the 60’s and 70’s, people have morphed it into something really ugly, factional, seperatist, self-segrating, fracturing, and wrong in every interpretation of “individual” rights laws and concepts.
Anyone who thinks along the lines of group advocacy needs a re-education on civil and individual rights concepts and the US Constitution, and Supreme court rulings.
This is why people who argue this way make no sense, the modern social engineer is so wrong, and the modern activist for group rights so dangerous because they only protect and defend an illegal and lame concept that no longer protects individuals from harm, discrimmination, privilige, and hateful arrogance against racial, religious, gender and ethnic groups.
I’m not mad at anyone, I just think his personal name should be protected as much as I believe yours should be. I am willing to bet the admin thinks so too.
I don’t support his rhetoric, any more that I support the rhetoric applied against him. I condemn them both when it is uncivil and malicious.
Michael,
The Civil Rights Movement was based on your catchy “group rights advocacy” phrase. Women’s sufferage was based on “groups rights”. There is nothing wrong with advocating equality for specific groups, especially when there is proof they have been legally disenfranchised.
I don’t need you to be “re-educated” Michael, but thanks for the suggestion.
Also, to suggest that calling out behvior and words that are racist in their intent, equal in rhetoric is completely unfounded. I refuse to allow words the KKK and Neo-Nazi’s use in their hate propoganda to go unchallenged. Words like “invasion, cockroaches, rats, criminals, dirty, stupid, morally inferior, etc” are all used by those groups and people who blog on BVBL and by Advohater. “we will repell this invasion” , that WILL not go unchallenged by me. Michael, calling hate speech, “hate speech”, is NOT the same as the hate words themselves. That is like saying, let’s see, can I think of an example. Oh, yes, like when some guy in a club called me a “kike”, my reply to him went something like this” you are a dirtbag, wonder if you’ll repeat that when I come back here with my boyfriend, who is a bouncer here, and all his buddies”. Michael, my rhetoric was not equal to his, I could not allow his hateful words to be met with my silence. It is hate that must be repelled, not illegal alien invaders.
corr: “I dont’ need to be re-educated”
Mackie: I read your post, and found it having nothing to do with what I was talking about. social services are provided to us by taxes we pay. We elect the officials who develop and maintain these services. If I pay the taxes and vote, I do expect something in return. I figured we all learned this in High School. I pretty much stopped reading you comment all together when you typed something about illegals being more american then we are. You nor anyone else addressed any of my questions with anything solid.
Juturna – ummmm – what debate? – You said a smart-ass comment, and I threw one back at you. At least in my smart ass comment, there was a point – Illegal alieans never had to pay the exuberant fines, when legal citizens did.
Decided,
I did address your concerns over the strain on social services and you ignored it because you have no adequate response. Now that I think of it, all of your posts seem to be devoid of substance. You play semantic games (who said what when) instead.
Michael,
Just to clarify…
Advocator = Robert L. Duecaster
He has clearly outed himself on the bvbl blog. I don’t mind if you out me if you can.
Elana, you are so, so wrong about the intent of the Supreme court law.
It inherently MUST remain neutral, otherwise any “group” can claim they have a right to be special, simply based on the numbers they have as a minority status. Every time you allow a number to drive the equation (my 10 people don’t have the same job your 20 people have), and then you argue that 5 more of your people deserve the job more, because of the race, religion, gender, or ethnic group they belong to, you just stepped into the pile of manure that everyone hated when 20 people of one race or ethnic group, got those jobs because of the race, gender, religion or ethnic group they belong to and self-identified with as “superior”. The Supreme Court ruled, and the constitution backs (which is why you need a re-education), that those 20 people cannot have that job just because they belong to some racial, religious, gender or ethnic group, but they also declared that those 5 people of you self-identified “Group” advocating race, religion, gender, or ethnic group could not demand it either based on your race, gender, religious or ethnic group. The only guarantee you were given and could advocate under law was that as “individual of 30 people, you could not identify your race, gender, religion and ethnic group as more or less inferior, but you could only identify yourself as an “individual” amoung those 30 other individuals and you could all compete based on skill, performance, intellect, ability, and not gender, race, religion, or ethnic group to get that job. NONE of you could have privilige over the other and NONE of you could discrimminate against the other. Futthermore you cannot claim that “one of each kind” must be selected, because as soon as you do you discrimmnate against any number of indoviduals how happen to have more than a “minority” number of people in their population distribution” and you now give unfair advantage to any group of minority numbers to displace majority numbers in thosse 30 individuals based ENTIRELY on their race, religion, gender or ethnic group.”
This Elana is an illegal concept. It goes not guarantee equal opportunity, and tries to manipulate equal outcomes, besed entirely on gender, race, religion and ethnic group.
It is new-age social engineering wackiness like this that people think is thre same as the equal rights movements of the 60 and 70s but it is not.
Peoiple like you who think like that, need to move beyond such racist, gender priviliged, religious group priviliged, ethnic group preference thinkiing and move into the 21st centry of individual civil rights laws.
Their are no group rights, only individual rights. This is so hard for self-identifying, self-agreggating, self-advocating “minority” groups or gender, religious, racial, ethnic advocacy groups (you mentioned in your posts) to understand and comprehend.
The law is NEUTRAL.
THe “One of each kind” social engineering monstrosity is the “diversity” and “inclusion” concept social engineers who realized the law did not give them preference as minorities, recently invented to illegally and covertly end run the current Supreme Court law so they still get some advantage based on the race, gender, religious or ethnic group they belong to.
Mackie I’m not trying to out you, I’m simply trying to protect the identity of a person from being some anarchist’s target. I would protect you from this as well.
admin will you please if you have time delete the two posts indentifying personal names on your blog? If this individual is threateded, it is possible there is some liability here.
Elana, just to correct a misinterpretation, my statement about name calling was to name-calling and group labeling in general, to the out of control problem of racial, gender, religious, ethnic group self-identification, self-segregation, self-adulation, arrogance and superiority in particular, not some verbal attack you may have made against rhetoric. I too believe bad behavior should be called out. When you see it please call it!
Elana, do you know where your concept breaks down? Define “equality”. Equality is not equal numbers, it is “equal opportunity, but not equal outcome”. That is a Supreme Court law. It is the right of only “individuals” to be treated equally under the law, the same law must apply the same to all. It is neutral, with regard to race, religion, gender, and ethnic group. That is the legal definiton of “equality”. It has nothing to do with numbers or racial, ethnic, religious or gender “balancing” or “one of each” concepts so many of you believe SO strongly and illegally in.
Elena, sorry it looks like an “a” to me, my 51 year old “military pilot” eyes don’t work anymore. My spelling is bad for the same reason, but who really cares, only the content matters to me.
Michael,
Trust me , there have been many botched spelling of my first and last name, and recently, at lot worse than than accidental misspellings! Honestly, I am having trouble following your stream of consciousness 🙂
I will make my response fairly simple. Of course we all have individual rights, however, when one is an individual AND also part of a discriminated group, that group falls under certain protections, i.e. the Civil Rights Act or Womens’ Sufferage. The premise of our democracy is that we are all equal under the law, but the reality of our times, still, is that there are many who may find themselves disenfranchised based on their skin color, gender, age, or sexual identity.
That is true, but you cannot correct that by using numbers balancing, that is illegal. You can only correct it with equal opportunity and equal law applied to all. Every one has to compete equally or you give one “group” preference over another. What you are referring to has long past, get with the current concept of fairness and equality, protected by law.