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Originally Posted by Cody C
We let them stay in a house... PAYING TAXES on said house for SEVEN YEARS; This proves that the rightful owner of the house does not want it any more and the AMERICAN who has been squatting gets it.
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That's not an American phenomenon, and has nothing at all to do with whether the occupant is an American. That's British common law, which states, in principle, that any person may attempt to make such a claim. And the taxation is wholly separate from the issue of occupancy. Your claim to the property is not contingent on paying the back taxes (in most jurisdictions, at least). But the point is that even though we can probably consider it a crime, it's not treated in the same manner as an ordinary crime against property. It's intended as a counterexample for the supposition that every crime demands a swift response to counteract it.
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Originally Posted by Cody C
We have the world's most successful economy because we do things a certain way. Illegal immigration stands to change that. Have you ever stopped to think about the REASON we only want skilled workers? It’s because our lower-to-middle class is made up of 60% unskilled workers. We have enough, and when you add more... you get people without jobs. Have you ever been to Mexico? Do you understand that there is as much opportunity to work down there as there is up here? We paint Mexico as being an economic hell-hole, when it really isn't. People that migrate illegally are looking for an easy way out. They don't want to work to become an American citizen, but they want to reap the benefits of being one. That doesn't seem right. (And I assure you, sir, that I am no jingoist.)
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Alright; maybe you're not necessarily a jingoist, but you're going too far in attributing America's success to its "certain way" of doing things. (By the way, recall that you've also got 300 million people. When you look at
per-capita GDP, on a working-time- and cost-of-living-adjusted basis, you're 4
th.)
Fundamentally, there's a problem with American labour, and with American companies: the workers want often wages that the economy can't support. (It's not exclusive to America, but it's certainly prevalent there.) Basically, if you want to earn $35/h, you need to contribute a proportional amount to the GDP. If you're not doing that, then your personal compensation represents a drag on the economy. This is neither the exclusive domain nor the fault of unskilled labour, though. America needs all sorts of labour that can do the job cheaper, or more productively. The thing is, cheap labour drags down wages—on one hand, the Mexican displaces an American, because the Mexican costs less to employ. On the other hand, by dragging down the wages in that industry, it is in a better position to compete with rivals overseas. Consequently, it can actually cause growth in that sector, restoring jobs (albeit at the lower pay scale). This is a simplification, covering only one facet of a big problem. But it's not insignificant, and represents a very good reason why immigrants in general can be good for the economy as a whole. Of course, American workers hate it, and since they, and not the Mexicans, vote for the government, is it any wonder that the U.S. government takes the stance that it does?
As for the surplus of unskilled labour, the cynic in me is coming out again: isn't there a surplus because in general, it didn't take much skill to earn a handsome wage? But with the competition from overseas increasing substantially in the last few years, shouldn't the focus be on training the workers who want to earn more with specialized skills (to be productive at a higher rate), rather than just paying them more, and hoping that the productivity will improve because of it?
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Originally Posted by Cody C
Sometimes when I think about a national language, I think that we aren't that far from the faceless mass of people portrait is so many sci-fi movies, but when I look at communication, as a whole, has helped the world... I can't imagine anything but good coming from a shared language.
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The issue isn't really with outsiders needing to learn English as a
de facto language of society. It's with the potential for the government refusing to provide essential services in a way that is accessible to everyone (aliens and citizens alike); they're the government—when we need the official word, we turn to them, so it's only reasonable that they make substantial efforts to permit everyone access. It's also with the way that this movement gets tied to the same people who, to be blunt, don't like Mexicans (or perhaps foreigners in general)—that's correlative, not causative, but in the event that there is a firm link between these things, it's unconscionable to let even one iota of racial prejudice dictate policy in America.