85 Thoughts to “9500Liberty Interviewed By Fox Business News”

  1. Elena

    GainesvilleResident :

    GainesvilleResident :

    Witness Too :I meant to say early 2008. Of course by Sept. of 2008 we were more worried about global trends than local ones.Here is another case to consider in Riverside, NJ. They had their local economic meltdown a year ahead of ours, and they repealed their immigration laws as a result just like we did:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/nyregion/26riverside.html

    They had their economic meltdown earlier because the local economy that employed all these people tanked earlier. NY Times article completely distorts the whole thing, as anyone who lives in that area and knows that area well will tell you. My relatives who live nearby in Burlington will tell you the real story, and it has not a whole lot to do with immigration. Just because the repealed their immigration laws does not mean those immigration laws caused any economic meltdown. They really were doing anything they can to bring people back into the town – to try and breathe some kind of life back into it after all kinds of people, not just immigrants, lost jobs and left the area due to the closing of huge factories that used to support things like the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for example.

    And also, and this is important – I’ve read several reports of how the local gov’t was inundated by e-mails on the “get rid of the resolution side” by groups in who wanted it voted down – who were far far away from that area. This is just like what was claimed was done here in PWC by FAIR, except it was by people on the opposite side. The local gov’t caved in by the deluge of e-mail, only to find later on that most of that wasn’t even from people living in NJ, let alone within the town! It would be interesting to see if people though that was fair.

    Where did your read that? I was very involved in that struggle to change the probable cause portion of the resolution and I am not aware of that circumstance of outsiders sending a deluge of e-mails.

    No one, yet, is able to respond coherently to Alanna’s post regarding the “evidence” of economic meltdown and criminal chaos during our “boom” time in PWC. In fact, evidence would suggest the exact opposite. So tell me, WHERE can you find me FACTS about the impending demise of PWC due to “illegal immigration”?!

  2. Elena

    Ah yes, there are “good” immigrants and “bad” immigrants? Hmmm, Jews, Italians, Irish, etc were the “bad” immigrants while English immigrants along with Nordic immigrants were the “good kind”? Oh, wait, THAT would sound prejudicial and in the 21st century that simply doesn’t exist anymore, we live in a color blind world….BAWHAAAA

  3. Mando

    @Poor Richard

    Interesting book for the most part. Their counting system is simple and intuitive while ours is confusing and cumbersome. Thus, they pick it up and can do mathematics at a much earlier age.

    @GR

    I know your frustration.

  4. Mando

    Elena :
    Ah yes, there are “good” immigrants and “bad” immigrants?

    Who said that?

  5. Mando

    Elena :
    No one, yet, is able to respond coherently to Alanna’s post regarding the “evidence” of economic meltdown and criminal chaos during our “boom” time in PWC. In fact, evidence would suggest the exact opposite. So tell me, WHERE can you find me FACTS about the impending demise of PWC due to “illegal immigration”?!

    To summarize:

    Economic crack. Loose lending standards. Boom. Reality. Bust.

    The economic demise was in its non-sustainability.

  6. Witness Too

    What do you make up foolish notions like immigrants who don’t have a pot to piss in watching high speed internet videos if it’s not to carry water for Greg Letiecq and Corey Stewart, who caused your myopic obsession with all things immigration and forced our government and police force to share that obsession for a year? I just don’t understand your continued obsession. The only people being judged at this point are those two politicians and their helper John Stirrup.

  7. Mando

    I’ll also add, tax paying residents cashed in during the boom and sold their houses at quadruple their value to who knows who, but they filled up quickly with multiple residents with questionable tax status. This also puts a strain on local coffers. Another economic failure.

    Good for the former residents (they cashed in and got out of Dodge), bad for the residents that decided to stay.

    You could look at the whole debacle that way. Those that profited off of illegal aliens made out like bandits and lived high on the hog. Those that didn’t, well, didn’t. Once the tide turned and reality hit we see many satisfied residents but a small cadre of those that are just plain resentful. Makes one wonder if they were part of that “high on the hog” group?

  8. Mando

    You know Witness Too, even though it’s irrelevant to the discussion, youtube isn’t the only way to get the word out.

  9. Elena

    Mando :

    Elena :Ah yes, there are “good” immigrants and “bad” immigrants?

    Who said that?

    This offensive conversation some people are having here involving the good immigrants who happen to be Asian. Ever heard of the “chinese exclusion act”. I guess 125 years ago the Asians were not seen as the hardworking group you are suggesting they are now. My point is that there is ALWAYS a group that is less then at some point in time in history. Right now, its Latino’s, in 100 years, who knows, maybe it will be whites. There always seems to be someone to blame, interesting, how history has an obnoxious way of repeating itself.

  10. Poor Richard

    My point is certainly not to “vilify” any group, but to ask some tough questions.

    Why do some immigrant groups quickly succeed and others don’t. The hard
    (not PC mumbo-jumbo) fact is that a school filled with recent Asian immigrants
    will quickly excel while one with recent Hispanic students most often will not.
    Why? What are the differences? What are the lessons to be learned?

    As for the Sun article, I found it germane that the immigrant experience
    has always been challenging – today is no different and there have always
    been Greg L.’s, A cautionary tale of foaming mad dog prejudice – not
    reasoned thought.

  11. Mando

    @Elena

    Cultural differences aren’t offensive. They’re reality.

  12. Elena

    Once again, did the “other” immigrant groups, like the Jews, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, etc etc all quickly succeed? Probably not, or else all these groups would not have faced the same villification as the Latino population.

  13. Mando

    You’re overlooking economic differences of now and a century ago, population sizes, and scope of immigration. We didn’t share a border with any of those countries the immigrants were coming from either.

    Also, nobody is vilifying Latinos. Enough with the hysteria.

  14. Witness Too

    Mando, I’m glad you are swearing off hysteria. If you will instead look at the economics of the situation, I’m sure we will find some common ground on this issue. We have to put the well-being of the country above any preferences of racial quotes some hysterical and formerly hysterical people may have. It’s the economy, silly, to put an old phrase more nicely.

  15. How different groups do in school is directly proportional to how the parents value education. I wish American kids did as well as Asian kids.

    I once knew a man from Korea who gave his son a spanking every time he made a B. 🙄 Seriously. Many Asians send their children here to get an education. The children often live with an aunt, uncle or other relative. Asians have a long tradition of valuing formal education.

    Other groups find other skills and attributes more desirable. Many immigrant groups did not put emphasis on education the way Asians have both in their own country and here.

    I would say the comparison simply is not fair. Different groups value different attributes. As I recall, the Irish, the Italians and the Poles didn’t come to this country at the height of the immigration wave having a strong educational background. Contrast that to the Jews who arrived often with a high level of education.

  16. Mando

    Witness Too :
    If you will instead look at the economics of the situation

    That’s pretty much all I’ve been looking at. I never profited of the situation, but many did. I can understand those with the profit motive but I cannot emphasize with them in this case. Well, except those that sold their homes for quadruple their value. I was an idiot for not cashing in on that. I would’ve hated seeing my home turned into a flop house, but cash in the bank probably would have overcome that eventually.

  17. hello

    @Elena
    So is it love/hate with Fox? In programmer terms:

    IF Fox shows something I agree with
    THEN
    Show it
    ELSE
    Hate on them and call them Faux news

  18. Poor Richard

    The great commodities in the 21st century are knowledge and skill — the
    more the better. Your race, religion, national origin, gender, shoe size, etc.
    are secondary. What do you bring to the table to help our country?

    Even fifty years ago, a strong back and hard work could lead to a decent
    working class life – you added to our common good – you didn’t subtract.
    Those days are now over.

  19. Twinad

    Well said in #59 Elena! Also, what about the studies that have shown Latino immigrants start businesses at a higher rate than immigrants of other nationalities and American’s? I know I have read numerous articles on this very topic and the statistics are compelling. It frustrates me that illegal immigrant often = Day Laborer. They are such a small fraction of the whole “illegal immigrant” pool and not representative of what most immigrants come here to achieve. They come here to build a better life, not the same life they left behind! That’s what I’ve seen up close anyway.

  20. Poor Richard, we will always need plumbers and electricians. The plumbers are the ones driving the cadillacs when the college boys can’t get a job.

    Each wave of immigrants has found success here, otherwise they not keep coming in waves. What do you all think that these immigrants do? Twinad is correct. Not all immigrants are up that the Coverstone 7-11.

    Immigrants have to do things a little differently. My husband’s mother’s parents were immigrants. Her father died when she was a toddler, of the pandemic flu. The mother who had come to America as a child continued on and raised 4 kids. My mother in law was academic so all the others poured money into her education. She graduated from Smith College. Her sister worked as a cafeteria lady. Only in America could the daughter of an Irish and German immigrant grow up, graduate from a women’s Ivy League type school on money brought in from sewing and working in a school cafeteria.

  21. Poor Richard

    Yes, we will always need skilled plumbers and electricians and many have a
    good immigrant story somewhere in their heritage. My grandmother managed
    a school cafeteria in the Depression and found a way to serve breakfast to her
    town’s most needy kids – out of her own meager income ( the school would
    only serve a very modest lunch). She was one generation out of Germany.
    But what was happening before the recent recession was unsustainable.
    Schools, medical facilities, public safety, housing and patience were all at
    the breaking point. Too many new immigrants without skills or education
    to support themselves or anyone else arived in our community, with the
    Federal government, charged with keeping this from occuring, putting their
    head in the sand and forcing local jurisdictions to manage the problem
    by themselves.

  22. Poor Richard

    “Immigration in Lincoln’s day was open and legal. Now it is overwhelmingly
    illegal. They make the decision what is best for them; America no longer
    makes the decision what is best for it.

    You know the facts. Immigrants are here in huge numbers, unlawfully
    … they swell the cost of local life – emergency rooms, schools – which
    has an enormous impact on local taxes. There are jurisdictions that feel,
    and are, overwhelmed. And no one will help them.

    America has, since 1990, experienced the biggest wave of immigration
    since the great wave of 1880-1920 and we have never stopped to absorb it.
    One wonders why we don’t stop illegal immigration now. Stop, absorb,
    settle down, ease the pressures. Get a handle on it.”

    Peggy Noonan WSJ op/ed (11-25-2006)

  23. JustinT

    Glad to see ya’ll are at least on the right track, talking about the economic contributions and economic costs of immigrants. I think if you look back at American history, the only ones who have a right to complain about immigration our the Native Americans. If we accept the fact that there was a great injustice there that can never be undone, then the nation that was born of this tragedy turned out to do a lot of good in the world. Immigration is what made that possible. If we’d sealed up our borders in 1800 we’d be a third world country today, probably colonized two or three times over by nations with larger populations and thus larger economies that can support larger military forces. All this fighting is really about race IMHO. I would say it was childish if it wasn’t mostly old folks you see at the Tea Parties.

  24. JustinT

    Richard and M-H, it just depends on what kind of economy we want to have: a shrinking economy or a growing one. If we want a growing economy we need people to continue coming here. There are a lot of jobs that we need people to do to keep the country going. If no one in the nation had a strong back, as you say, we’d just collapse. If the working class stayed working class and never had a chance for upward mobility, well, it wouldn’t be America, and yeah our economy would suffer because children of the working class end up being the knowledge and skills people.

    Sure, we can get knowledge and skills people from immigration. We should do that too. But we need the strong back people a lot more. Hopefully our education system will be rescued and we’ll be able to generate more of our own knowledge and skill people. But if we don’t have a growing economy (i.e. if we don’t have enough immigration), we’re in for a rough ride, fall of the Roman Empire style.

  25. Wolverine

    Out of curiosity, let me throw something a bit different into this debate just to see how many mini-hurricanes it might create. Here is scenario —anecdotal admittedly:

    My community is served by a company contracted to pick up the trash twice a week. For too many years to remember, those trash trucks were manned by Black males, aided in the summer on occasion by young White males seeking funds for college. They did an excellent job. Of a sudden, about three years ago, at the height of the movement of Latino immigrants into this community, the Black males disappeared. Poof! Gone! Replaced by Latinos. I remember wondering just where all those Black men might have gone.

    Not anecdotal: We live next to a major city and several close-in suburban counties where the unemployment rate for Black males below the age of 25 is absolutely horrendous. Yet, when you pass a construction project or road crew just about anywhere in my area, the majority of workers by far are Latino.

    As a genealogist and family historian, I am currently working on charts for eleven different families simultaneously, all of whom first emigrated to America between 1850 and 1892. In most cases, the first arrivals came to an America where jobs were going begging. Companies advertised in Europe for immigrant workers to fill the jobs in new steel mills, coal mines, railroads, and other enterprises. States and territories advertised across the European Continent for people to come to America and populate the farm belts of the Midwest and the Great Plains. The advertisements I have seen were very near to a promise that every man could make his fortune in America through hard work. Please come!! In essence, not enough available labor for too many jobs in a country growing and building at a rapid pace.

    Now, when I look at the very high and seemingly chronic unemployment in many of our major and sub-major urban areas and in rural areas of the Old South and Appalachia and then I look at the wave of immigrant labor from south of the Border (along with the idea that these people are seeking a better life), I have to wonder if we are not at somewhat of a polar difference from 100-150 years ago: too much labor chasing after not enough jobs. It seems to me that somebody must be getting cut out of the deal.

    This brings me into a conflict. Should I support the efforts of those newly arrived to seek a better life for themselves, or do I have a moral obligation to focus my support on those whose ancestors were in this country far longer than my own and who have suffered so much at the hands of the rest of us. I wonder whatever happed to things like LBJ’s Job Corps and our periodic efforts at job training and encouragement to youth in the city ghettoes and the pockets of rural poverty. Why is it that the fellow driving that grader at the Mixing Bowl is a Latino and not a Black chap from the inner city in Washington, D.C. or some poor White kid from Eastern Kentucky. Yes, yes, I know all the arguments about employers trying to find the cheapest labor possible etc., etc., etc. But I cannot help wondering if we have not taken on somehow a tremendous new burden (recent immigrants) when we have not done nearly enough to elevate large numbers of our own people out of poverty, not with welfare but with the pride of work and “making it”?

    Just a few thoughts about something which has bothered me for a long time now — ever since my trash men vanished.

  26. Wolverine, I don’t know but you pose some good questions. Was the job market in trouble 3 years ago or is that a new phenomena brought on by the collapse of the real estate, and financial markets?

    It seems like all was well before that. If there were no jobs, why did immigrants keep pouring in here?

    I seriously believe our immigration policies ought to reflect a temporary guest program and be flexible enough to react to job needs, even if it has to change yearly as far as quotas and who gets let in.

  27. I forgot to mention that at least 2 of the trash companies in this area went belly up. I think that at least one of them lost too much with uncollectibles. When people leave in the middle of the night or even suddenly, the trash company is just one of those that get stiffed. Untility companies got hit also. However, they have a lot more power than a mom and pop trash service.

    A third one recently went south but that one was the second wave. Company B bought company A. Now Company B has sold out. So that’s a total of 3 companies since 2007 right here in county Manassas. (to quote Lafayette)

  28. Lafayette

    Thanks for the quote Moon. It’s very troubling to me when I think about the how the trash companies have been hit, and hit hard. I would also, add one of the trash companies avoided cutting off service to houses with unpaid balances. They did this because they knew what the trash NOT getting picked up would mean for the community. One of these trash companies were not just left with the balance of one quarter, some times it was two or three quarters.

  29. Poor Richard

    Wolverine #75 offers some good historical observations – America was in
    control and immigration decisions were made with national goals in mind.
    We needed new labor for our growing industrial base and newly opened
    farm land. Now we don’t.

    We seek individuals with knowledge and abilities to match the skill sets
    required in the 21st century – not the 19th or even the early 20th.

    Even large diverse companies learn to “right size” as they evolve or they suffer
    the consequences. Nations are the same.

    Our current failed immigration “policy” amounts to a one way ticket
    to third world status at best, or at worst, national suicide.

  30. Rick Bentley

    “Should I support the efforts of those newly arrived to seek a better life for themselves, or do I have a moral obligation to focus my support on those whose ancestors were in this country far longer than my own and who have suffered so much at the hands of the rest of us.”

    The choice on this question made by each of our political parties, and their members, and the shallow reasons for that choice, disturbs me deeply and has shaken my belief in our nation. The American lower class has been abandoned.

  31. Rick, do you not think some sort of reform is needed?

    Tell us what has changed in your neighborhood specifically to make it now seem livable.

  32. Rick Bentley

    In my neighborhood? Less people walking around at all hours, people whose identity and past offenses are not known. Less cars, parking available nearer to the block one lives on. No sign of the gang-oriented graffiti that I witnessed one youth spray-paint, then run into the woods near my house. Nobody’s showered on my lawn lately or tried to siphon my gas. Most of all, less noise. Before there were constantly cars booming Spanish music driving by all the time.

    Consequently, legal residents are staying put, and paying “normal” taxes per capita, and I assume the area has a chance not to become a permanent urban ghetto.

    Do I think reform is needed? Yes, in terms of :

    A. Reforming our ability to prosecute employers who thrive on illegal labor – using e-verify or some other system to remove their plausible deniability

    B. Reforming our government officials’ ability to ignore the law. Holding them accountable – such as this President and DHS leader who play political games with the issue instead of upholding their oaths of office. An honest advocate for the American people could never be named to that position; instead we get a**-clowns like Chertoff who use their office to support Amnesty because “gosh-dang it, I don’t know what else to do” in the current political climate.

    Bush and Obama, from my view, have both deliberately undercut their oaths of office and are both worthy of contempt.

    In terms of some “comprehensive” solution that actually rewards lawbreaking, not at all. That’s the opposite of what’s needed.

  33. How about the thread from last week? Don’t you think part of that reform should be balancing our laws so one doesn’t undermind the other? The Dept of Interior and DHS shouldn’t be at odds with each other or sending each other bills.

    I think Napolitano is acknowledging problems more so than past DHS secretaries.

    CIR doesn’t all translate to ‘amnesty.’

    Just out of curiosity, how did you know who was legal and who wasn’t? I was in a job that was pretty tight with immigrants. Unless they told me, I had no idea who was who.

  34. Rick Bentley

    “how did you know who was legal and who wasn’t”

    I don’t. But I’m intelligent enought to know that when you have a sudden influx of unassimilated people, so unassimilated that they speak no English and live on foot, coming out of nowhere at a time when cameras demonstrably show people streaming across our border … and if that’s not enough evidence, something as innocuous as the “Rule of Law” resolution throws people into a tizzy.

  35. Rick Bentley

    When I then read a newspaper story saying a carful of illelgals was caught in Ohio with flyers in Spanish drawing a map from Mexico to Manassas … BTW they were let go and may live here now … that something real is going on with illegal aliens coming to live in Manassas.

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