**** the immigrants!

[Andrew DeFaria]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 23:53:42 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

> If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck. You can look somebody you respect in the face and say with a straight face that you never, ever, broke any rule? Like going over the speed limit? That's a duck, too... and there are quite a few of those ducks. Did I say that? No. So why do you put words in my mouth?

What did you not say? What did I put in your mouth? (Heavens forbid that I ever get that near your mouth!

The claim above is that I says I never, ever broke any rule. I never
said that.

In any event, yes, I've sped. Got caught too. Suffered the consequences. Why then shouldn't immigrants? Did I ever say they shouldn't? Would be nice if you could back that up with a citation, in case you think about anzwering with "yes".

The next portion of the above cite says "Like going over the speed
limit" to which I answered yes I've sped and paid the price.

If immigrants who violate our laws are simply forgiven, then if an immigrant speeds and gets caught should they not be made to face the consequences?!? Your position is totally inconsistent! Now what position do you read out of questions? Could it be that you are so full of prejudice that you only need a question of mine to start thinking all kinds of things you think I think?

The topic of discussion here is illegal immigration. Please make an
effort to stay on topic. I post saying that If it looks like a duck and
quacks like a duck then it's a duck, referring to the fact that illegal
aliens are criminals (to which other picky people pick nits about the
word crime). You post saying, effectively, that people break laws all
the time. My response it targeted and oriented to the topic at hand,
illegal immigration so I say that any violations of any laws by any
people should be enforced. Which part of this are you having difficulty
following?

Kind of shows that you actually didn't read my previous posts. If you had, you could know by now more about my position than this.

You can also make an effort to explain your position, or you can, as you
have here, choose to continue to leave us in the dark...
--
Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went
nuts.

[Archmedes]

On Fri, 07 Nov 2003 07:41:26 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

The topic of discussion here is illegal immigration. Please make aneffort to stay on topic. I post saying that If it looks like a duck andquacks like a duck then it's a duck, referring to the fact that illegalaliens are criminals (to which other picky people pick nits about theword crime).

Actually, when talking about laws and using legal terms it makes sense
to me to at least not use wrong language. I'm not saying that
everything should be legalese, but if you _know_ (and you should by
now) that there are basically two main types of laws (criminal and
civil), that there _is_ a crucial difference, and that criminals are
people _convicted_ of violating a _criminal_ law, you shouldn't call
anybody a criminal who doesn't fit that definition.

Which is the law, BTW, that you so cherish: it is against the law to
call somebody a criminal who doesn't fit the above criteria. If you
did that in public to somebody, he could actually sue you. The illegal
immigrants you're talking about can't do that, but this doesn't make
it any better.

Do you think of yourself as a criminal? According to you, you did
break the law on occasion (like most people). You call everybody who
breaks the law a criminal ("if it looks like a duck..."). The logical
combination of these two statements of yours would be that you call
yourself a criminal.

You post saying, effectively, that people break laws allthe time.

Is that wrong?

My response it targeted and oriented to the topic at hand,illegal immigration so I say that any violations of any laws by anypeople should be enforced. Which part of this are you having difficultyfollowing?

None, as stated multiple times. Which part of "none" do you have
difficulty understanding? The question here is not "whether" but
"how".

Kind of shows that you actually didn't read my previous posts. If you had, you could know by now more about my position than this.You can also make an effort to explain your position, or you can, as youhave here, choose to continue to leave us in the dark...

I'll do that, again. Every soul lost in the dark is worth the utmost
effort to bring the light to it...

In my book, law enforcement is about efficient prevention of illegal
actions, not about satisfying some need of revenge of some people. Now
in order to see the efficiency of your action, you have to look at the
reasons why people break laws and the effects of any possible
enforcement actions, mainly on those reasons.

In most cases the reasons are economical. Which also means that when
we look at an illegal immigrant, we almost always have a co-law
breaker: the one who employed that person. This employer is the one
who creates the reason for which people come here: making a decent
living. So as long as law enforcement actions are targeted at illegal
immigrants rather than the people who employ them (and give them a
reason to come in the first place), you don't really touch the cause.

Now looking at the effects... You take illegals and deport them. So
what? That doesn't prevent much. The rate of the ones we catch is too
low (and I've earlier mentioned a few methods how we could increase
the rate, but those are measures people don't really support) to make
a dent. And those illegal immigrants have very little to lose. This
the crucial thing you need to understand. That's why law enforcement
targeted at them is very inefficient -- law enforcement is only
efficient when people have actually something to lose.

Now the employers of illegal immigrants do have something to lose. And
the fact that employing illegal immigrants for substandard rates is
profitable could be changed by targeting them. This is a simple
economic excercise. We increase the risk of getting caught and
convicted (different from the illegal immigrants, these people
actually could go to court and get convicted), and increase the
possible penalty -- say, paying all social security taxes they would
have paid if they had employed legal residents for the going rate,
paying the difference in rate into a fund, paying for the deportation,
and since paying often gets circumvented by simply going bankrupt,
doing community service for a few years --, and we start working on
something actually useful.

In a sense, the illegal immigrants are foreigners and as such not
really required to know our laws. (I know you can object here, and I
agree with that, but I'm trying to make a point of degree.) OTOH, the
employers are usually at least residents, often citizens, and them
breaking the laws is more serious in my book. (Besides that enforcing
the law with them is more efficient.)

Of course, all that doesn't really work on the real causes. But that's
a different story... and well beyond law enforcement.

(And BTW, as an aside, when looking at law enforcement statistics, you
see that the USA in general doesn't really use efficient methods in
this area. The prison population is way higher than in any comparable
country, and the crime numbers are not lower -- if they aren't much
higher. So there's something going wrong here. Which may indicate that
law enforcement is not as straightforward and simple as some want to
look at it.)

[Andrew DeFaria]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

Actually, when talking about laws and using legal terms it makes sense to me to at least not use wrong language. I'm not saying that everything should be legalese, but if you _know_ (and you should by now) that there are basically two main types of laws (criminal and civil), that there _is_ a crucial difference, and that criminals are people _convicted_ of violating a _criminal_ law, you shouldn't call anybody a criminal who doesn't fit that definition.

WRT illegal immigration, whether illegally admitted, overstayed visa or
committed criminal acts while here, the punishment is all the same - get
out!

Which is the law, BTW, that you so cherish:

It's not that I "so cherish" it any more than you have such disdain for
it. I just think that laws should be enforced. What do you think?

it is against the law to call somebody a criminal who doesn't fit the above criteria.

Really? Please cite a reference (if you can).

If you did that in public to somebody, he could actually sue you.

For what? Telling the truth? Listen we are talking about actual people
who have violated the law and hence are criminal in the common
definition of the word. I highly doubt that the general public can be
compelled to use a legal dictionary nor punished for not using it.

The illegal immigrants you're talking about can't do that, but this doesn't make it any better.

Nor could you. If you violated a law, say a civil law, and I state you
are a criminal then go ahead and try to sue me - you will fail.

Do you think of yourself as a criminal?

Have been.

According to you, you did break the law on occasion (like most people). You call everybody who breaks the law a criminal ("if it looks like a duck...").

Yes I have broken the law. I am a criminal. I have paid the price and
suffered the consequences as proscribed by the law that I violated. Now
why can't the immigrants do likewise?

The logical combination of these two statements of yours would be that you call yourself a criminal.

Ah, well duh, yes. What's your point?

You post saying, effectively, that people break laws all the time. Is that wrong?

Well, ah, duh, of course it's wrong! That's why it's against the law.

My response it targeted and oriented to the topic at hand, illegal immigration so I say that any violations of any laws by any people should be enforced. Which part of this are you having difficulty following? None, as stated multiple times. Which part of "none" do you have difficulty understanding? The question here is not "whether" but "how".

The question that's been ask is whether. Some suggest that they should
not be enforced. So then you agree that illegal aliens should be removed?

Kind of shows that you actually didn't read my previous posts. If you had, you could know by now more about my position than this. You can also make an effort to explain your position, or you can, as you have here, choose to continue to leave us in the dark... I'll do that, again. Every soul lost in the dark is worth the utmost effort to bring the light to it... In my book, law enforcement is about efficient prevention of illegal actions

Ah, not really. Law enforcement entails enforcement of the laws. Pretty
simple eh? Now prevention is indeed a good thing, but it's not law
enforcement.

, not about satisfying some need of revenge of some people. Now in order to see the efficiency of your action, you have to look at the reasons why people break laws and the effects of any possible enforcement actions, mainly on those reasons.

Fine, don't let these illegals in in the first place. But what are you
gonna do with the illegals already here. The law says remove them.

In most cases the reasons are economical. Which also means that when we look at an illegal immigrant, we almost always have a co-law breaker: the one who employed that person. This employer is the one who creates the reason for which people come here: making a decent living. So as long as law enforcement actions are targeted at illegal immigrants rather than the people who employ them (and give them a reason to come in the first place), you don't really touch the cause.

Illegal immigrants come in many varieties. Working illegally is just one
of them. What about people who enter illegally? What about people who
simply overstay their visa? What about people who break the laws when here?

Actually, before most immigrant work illegally they have already commit
violations of law. Often they've illegally entered. Other times they've
presented false documentation in order to obtain work. In actuality they
are not supposed to even try to work. It is not the job of US business
to perform enforcement of the law. Still the government has burderned
businesses with the responsiblity of policing and looking for illegals.
They have codified that into a law but I believe that that law should
not be as such - that the government should be doing that. Yet that's a
whole 'nother argument.

Now looking at the effects... You take illegals and deport them. So what? That doesn't prevent much.

Sure it does. It demonstrably prevents them from continuing to abuse the
system. If enforcement is swift and thorough then it also serves as a
deterent.

The rate of the ones we catch is too low (and I've earlier mentioned a few methods how we could increase the rate, but those are measures people don't really support) to make a dent.

All this says is that we currently are failing to enforce the law. The
solution is to up it!

And those illegal immigrants have very little to lose.

They stand to lose that which they seek to gain. Considering many will
risk their very lives to cross the border, knowingly illegally, I'd say
they have very much to lose. They have little to lose because
enforcement is lax. If enforcement were not lax they'd have much to
loose. If enforcement is lax then you self-fulfill your prophecy.

This the crucial thing you need to understand. That's why law enforcement targeted at them is very inefficient -- law enforcement is only efficient when people have actually something to lose.

See above. Law enforcement is independent to having something to lose
and even so there is much to be lost.

Now the employers of illegal immigrants do have something to lose. And the fact that employing illegal immigrants for substandard rates is profitable could be changed by targeting them.

Yes let's not target those who have actually broke the law rather let's
target those who have money, regardless of whether or not they broke the
law. Amazingly circular logic. Troublingly wrong, IMHO.

This is a simple economic excercise. We increase the risk of getting caught and convicted (different from the illegal immigrants, these people actually could go to court and get convicted),

It should not be different. If we actually get them to court and convict
them (and follow through on punishment) then the deterent is in place -
otherwise it's not. I assure you that illegal aliens can and do go to
court (immigration court) and get convicted and punished. We just need
to do it more.

and increase the possible penalty -- say, paying all social security taxes they would have paid if they had employed legal residents for the going rate, paying the difference in rate into a fund, paying for the deportation, and since paying often gets circumvented by simply going bankrupt, doing community service for a few years --, and we start working on something actually useful. In a sense, the illegal immigrants are foreigners and as such not really required to know our laws. (I know you can object here, and I agree with that, but I'm trying to make a point of degree.)

Yes I disagree. As is often said "ignorance of the law is no excuse".
But aside from that, these people who sneak across our borders do indeed
know that what they are doing is wrong. Or do you dispute that?

OTOH, the employers are usually at least residents, often citizens, and them breaking the laws is more serious in my book. (Besides that enforcing the law with them is more efficient.)

Breaking a law, be it resident or alien, is equally serious.

Of course, all that doesn't really work on the real causes. But that's a different story... and well beyond law enforcement.

You neglect to address overstays, illegal entrants and law breakers who
are here legally.

(And BTW, as an aside, when looking at law enforcement statistics, you see that the USA in general doesn't really use efficient methods in this area. The prison population is way higher than in any comparable country,

WRT illegal immigration this is moot. The illegal immigrant does not
spend years and years in prison here (or at least they are not supposed
to). Instead they are shipped out. So processing illegal aliens should
not really effect prison population's or at least not for that long.

and the crime numbers are not lower -- if they aren't much higher. So there's something going wrong here. Which may indicate that law enforcement is not as straightforward and simple as some want to look at it.)

Your claim of high prison population, high crime numbers may just as
easily indicate efficient law enforcement and defficent prevention.
--
Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we
supposed to do, write to them? Why don't they just put their pictures on
the postage stamps so the mailmen could look for them while they
delivered the mail?

[Kitty]

You are correct, and if we were in a court of law, absolutely correct.
But, we are not. We are in a news group. Call these people what you will,
cite other issues as you wish -and there ARE other issues involved-,
however, none that change some facts about these criminal illegal
immigrants.

1) They lie and break our laws to get here.
2) They are takers, not givers. From our government, from citizens
looking for work, from welfare, from...need I go on?
3) Their attitude is accompanied by their elbow. They come, thinking that
they have some right to impose on anyone and anything that gets in their
way. They DO NOT come, by and large, to fit in, or to join what is already
in place here. Hence, because they are willing to impose, and we pretty
much, are soft enough not to understand the attitude we are confronted
with, are willing to move over, make room, put up with THEIR language, even
consider printing crap in a second (or more) language(s) in order to
accommodate their whining about it.

After watching our politicians pander to these people, I have lost any care
for them. Normally, I am willing to pitch in and help out. BUT, when I am
met with the attitude, over and over, that I HAD BETTER do so, I get my
back up, and start asking questions. The end result is that I AM willing
to call them criminals. I am willing to take on the likes of Chris Cannon,
and replace him with someone with a better attitude than he has. Hell, he
no longer even knows who voted him into office! I AM willing to call them
illegal aliens. I AM willing to call to task my local enforcement
agencies, and DEMAND that they start being part of deporting these ***
holes.

Had they come to join, I would not have a problem. BUT that is not the
case. They clearly have come to change us. So, to hell with them AND
their attitude!

I will get off the soap box for a bit....
KItty II

[Archmedes]

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 16:04:45 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

It's not that I "so cherish" it any more than you have such disdain forit. I just think that laws should be enforced. What do you think?

I think that laws should get enforced, or otherwise changed. I have
stated so multiple times. (And this will be the last time...)

Yes I have broken the law. I am a criminal. I have paid the price andsuffered the consequences as proscribed by the law that I violated.

Probably not all the time, only when you got caught. And I'm pretty
sure that the next time you break the law, you'll hope you won't get
caught, and don't turn yourself in. (In this respect, I just assume
that you are not different from me or anybody else I know.

How does that stack up with your opinion that all laws should get
always enforced? Are there not situations where you hope that a
certain law would not get enforced, at least not that one time?

You post saying, effectively, that people break laws all the time. Is that wrong?Well, ah, duh, of course it's wrong! That's why it's against the law.

I asked whether my assertion that "effectively, [...] people break
laws all the time" is wrong. Is it?

The question that's been ask is whether. Some suggest that they shouldnot be enforced. So then you agree that illegal aliens should be removed?

Removing illegals is one way to enforce this law. There are other
ways. So while I agree that the law should be enforced, the answer to
the "how" is a bit more complex. The question of limited resources for
law enforcement and the most efficient use of these is important in
this context.

(I also think that some parts of the law should be changed, but that's
not really important for the essence of this issue.)

In my book, law enforcement is about efficient prevention of illegal actionsAh, not really. Law enforcement entails enforcement of the laws. Prettysimple eh? Now prevention is indeed a good thing, but it's not lawenforcement.

For me, law enforcement means making sure that the law gets observed.
Is that not what you want? (A dictionary says "compel obedience" for
"enforce", which seems to support my understanding.)

Also in your arguments that followed this phrase, you seem to indicate
that you also see the ulterior motive of law enforcement to be
prevention of violations. You used the term "deterrent", for example.
Deterrent is prevention.

It's actually this idea of deterrent (that is, prevention) that is one
of the two basic pillars of punishment in law enforcement. The other
one is satisfaction, revenge. I don't think that the revenge one is
very helpful or necessary. That's why I look mainly at the prevention
(or deterrent) effect of law enforcement actions.

Of course one could say that we should do everything. But that's not
real -- we wouldn't want to spend all that money, we probably wouldn't
even be able to spend all that would be necessary and still survive on
the rest. So we define how much we want to spend on law enforcement,
and have to decide what exactly we do -- which also means to decide
which of the possible law enforcement actions we don't undertake.

And that decision should, IMO, mostly be taken based on the prevention
efficiency, or in other words, how efficient a certain measure is in
making sure that the law won't get broken again.

It is not the job of US business to perform enforcement of the law.
They have codified that into a law but I believe that that law shouldnot be as such - that the government should be doing that.

Do you say because you think that a law is wrong, it should not be
enforced? If not, this is not really material -- currently it is a
law, and businesses are required to require proper documentation from
any employee-to-be. (I don't quite see why they shouldn't be required
to do so. They need to file taxes for every employee, so they need to
have every employee's tax identification data. If somebody doesn't
have one, then there's something wrong. Doesn't need a law degree to
know that...)

All this says is that we currently are failing to enforce the law. Thesolution is to up it!

That's one solution. I doubt the efficiency of this solution, that's
all. IMO it would take law enforcement resource away from more
efficient measures, and result in more violations of the law. I don't
think there is a way we can find out whether I'm right -- we would
need parallel universes for that.

Yes let's not target those who have actually broke the law rather let'starget those who have money, regardless of whether or not they broke thelaw. Amazingly circular logic. Troublingly wrong, IMHO.

You know (you wrote it above) that the employers of illegal immigrants
break the law. Why do you say that they didn't break the law? Do you
propose to exempt them from proper law enforcement? If so, why them?

Actually, they usually have set up their operations in a way that they
don't have money. They make sure that all branding is done through a
company not associated with hiring the illegal immigrants, then just
go bankrupt with the business that actually hired them (which works
under contract of the brand owner business) when they get caught. Then
they just open a new business that takes over the same contracts, with
new illegal immigrants... Sounds pretty worthy of serious law
enforcement to me. That's why only financial penalties for the
businesses don't cut it -- they usually don't pay them anyway.

Your claim of high prison population, high crime numbers may just aseasily indicate efficient law enforcement and defficent prevention.

What is the purpose of law enforcement if not to make sure that laws
don't get broken? And wouldn't it indicate that there is something
wrong with the methods used if this goal doesn't get achieved
sufficiently?

How would you define the purpose of law enforcement -- if not making
sure that the laws don't get violated (which is essentially
prevention)?

[Archmedes]

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 04:31:59 GMT, Kitty II wrote:

Had they come to join, I would not have a problem. BUT that is not thecase. They clearly have come to change us. So, to hell with them ANDtheir attitude!

I've seen my share of people like this. But I've also seen immigrants
(legal and illegal ones) that do want and try to fit in, to do the
right thing, who think that the USA is the best that ever existed on
the face of the earth.

So I'm wary of such sweeping generalizations. In many cases they
simply are not true.

[Kath]

Whoah - Kitty! Do you feel better after that?!

For my part - I won't make a generalisation against illegal aliens
(I'm UK, so I'm not part of the PC police). What I will say, however,
is that I am certain it's because of their illegal entry to the US
that we people are in the K1-K3-AOS quagmire. Doors have closed to
those wishing to enter following the rules, (whatever rules they
decide to put in front of us) because people enter illegally and then
disappear.

I cannot blame some people in relationships for entering illegally or
overstaying - the BCIS/UCIS/INS/whatever they're called are making it
so that our time apart from our loved ones is as unnecessarily and
heart-wrenchingly lengthy. It's love and emotional reactions that
makes people remain with their partners/wives/fiances. Why do we have
to go through the pain of distance for this length of time? At the
very start, it's over-facing (6-9 months, or more for Nebraska?), in
the middle you're in limbo, and from what I can gather it's Extremely
difficult to get any answers about where you are within the hamster
wheel that is K1.

I am still undergoing tearful departures from my fiance at the airport
- it's awful.

What I will add, however, is that if couples can survive this ordeal,
they can survive almost anything. But the "processes" don't give us
all a chance. I am certain that this process has driven many couples
apart - different people can deal with it in different ways; some are
stronger but some, the more emotional of us, find it agony. The other
result is that people then feel resentment against an agency in the
country in which they want to live with their partner. It taints our
view of America, no matter how we want to package it. I feel guilty
every time I go through immigration visiting my fiance - for no
reason! They have the Innocent until Proven Guilty the wrong way
around.

Ever seen the film Entrapment? I would liken the marriage visa
process to the laser-guarded room. Once false move, and all alarm
bells go off and you're back two steps. When in fact, it was a stray
lock of hair in the beam.

I guess we have to deal with this - as it's the only way to be with
our loved ones, but why - why can't they make it quicker and easier
for those who are so obviously and evidently committed and devoted to
each other - and can prove it beyond reasonable doubt?

Speaking as someone in the UK with property, car, job etc - it's that
limbo period which is the worst. 3 month notice period, house to
sell, car to sell... at what point do I deal with all this? They
advise not giving up your job until you have the visa - but then I
have to wait 3 months to get there after my notice period? Yes, I
know that's only my situation - but others must have similar
concerns/worries. Think - if it takes 9 months (worst case, I
*hope*), that's a year before I can get there. Barely in time for the
Christmas after this. It's depressing, but there's someone truly
lovely rooting for me, who will be my reward at the end.

I do hope that *someone* in the US government takes this process in
hand - from my point of view, more for TSC, CSC and NSC (I cannot
comment on k3 or AOS as I haven't yet gone through this - K1 process
looming in the next couple of days).

My little soap box done for today.

Hang in there, people, I'm telling myself that every day.

Kath

[Mayo]

Andrew, you had made some earlier points in response to one of my
messages, I in turn responded to it but you probably never saw it. I
am really interested in your answer, so I am reposting it: (my
question just became more relevent given recent wal-mart news)

Andrew,

I guess you have a point, being here without a valid visa is against
the law, so is working without a work permit. And yes, people in those
categories (and many more) can be deported when found. Most countries
have those laws, no issues here from my part

I do make a distinction (and I believe US laws do as well) between
being here illegally and committing serious crimes (i.e. rape,
murder). But anybody who breaks the law is a criminal (maybe a
conviction is needed for that, otherwise anybody who speeded on a
highway will also be a criminal)

Following your point, what should happen to US companies and
businesses who hire illegal immigrants (be it to harvest, work in
factories, wash dishes, etc.), are they criminals too (they broke the
law, so according to your definition they are) - Please let us know
what your idea of an appropriate punishment is - Jail, payment of lost
wages to an unemployed American?
(This is a serious question, please either answer it seriously or just
ignore it)

I do maintain my belief that immigrants legal or not are good for the
country, they invigorate the economy, provide needed skills (from
dishwashing upwards), pay taxes (yes they do), spend money in US, and
in many cases serve and die in the military - Are the immigrants who
died in Iraq carrying out the orders of the President also criminals
(should their general be in jail for hiring them?)

Do you like Baseball? Are Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, and the many
other foreign players bad for Baseball - should they not be allowed to
play until all Americans who say they are baseball players play on an
MLB team? I believe that stadiums will be empty if that were the case

I do also agree that no system is perfect, US citizens wil be
unemployed no matter what, even if no foreign workers were allowed.
You have to recognize that this is true, even if you don't agree or
like it

[Andrew DeFaria]

Mayo wrote:

I do make a distinction (and I believe US laws do as well) between being here illegally and committing serious crimes (i.e. rape, murder).

Well I do view immigration violations as serious, not as serious as rape
and murder, but serious nonetheless. And there is also a large class of
illegal aliens who do indeed commit more serious crimes than just
illegal work/entry. They get involved in drugs, domestic violence, etc,
probably in porportion with the legal population. Then again they are
already operating outside the law so sometimes that causes them to get
into even more trouble to start with (no legal recourse causes them to
sometimes be more desperate and commit more violations).

But anybody who breaks the law is a criminal (maybe a conviction is needed for that, otherwise anybody who speeded on a highway will also be a criminal)

Well before a conviction, technically, they are an alleged criminals ;-) .

Following your point, what should happen to US companies and businesses who hire illegal immigrants (be it to harvest, work in factories, wash dishes, etc.), are they criminals too (they broke the law, so according to your definition they are) - Please let us know what your idea of an appropriate punishment is - Jail, payment of lost wages to an unemployed American? (This is a serious question, please either answer it seriously or just ignore it)

Perosnally I feel that, aside from active recruiting of illegals from
their country of origin, businesses should not be held liable at all(!).
I know you'll find that shocking. Effectively this is because I believe
it is not the job of business to be compelled into law enforcement.

However that's the libertarian in my talking. I recognize and admit that
as the law stands they are liable and that they should face prosecution
as the law proscribes. I'm not certain what an "apropriate punishment"
should be because #1 above, I don't think that they should be punished.
However I agree that they should be punished in accordance to the law as
it stands.

I do maintain my belief that immigrants legal or not are good for the country, they invigorate the economy, provide needed skills (from dishwashing upwards), pay taxes (yes they do), spend money in US, and in many cases serve and die in the military - Are the immigrants who died in Iraq carrying out the orders of the President also criminals (should their general be in jail for hiring them?)

Did they violate a law? If so then yes they are criminals. US citizens
are also good for the country. And likewise if they violate a law they
should be prosecuted and punished as the law proscribes.

Do you like Baseball?

Not really a baseball fan or fanatic.

Are Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, and the many other foreign players bad for Baseball - should they not be allowed to play until all Americans who say they are baseball players play on an MLB team? I believe that stadiums will be empty if that were the case

Depends. Have they violated laws? If so then they should face the
punishment, no? Or are they hear legally?

I do also agree that no system is perfect, US citizens wil be unemployed no matter what, even if no foreign workers were allowed.

Whether or not a US citizen is employeed is irrelevent to the issue of
violation of the law and application of the proscribed penalty.

You have to recognize that this is true, even if you don't agree or like it

I need do no such thing sir. While no system is perfect, making it less
perfect by ignoring the rules doesn't seem to me to be an effort of
striving for perfection, rather it is the opposite.
--
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?

[Citizen Outkast]

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 04:31:59 GMT, Kitty II <Kitty@INet.com> did say
unto me:

You are correct, and if we were in a court of law, absolutely correct.But, we are not. We are in a news group. Call these people what you will,cite other issues as you wish -and there ARE other issues involved-,however, none that change some facts about these criminal illegalimmigrants.1) They lie and break our laws to get here.2) They are takers, not givers. From our government, from citizenslooking for work, from welfare, from...need I go on?3) Their attitude is accompanied by their elbow. They come, thinking thatthey have some right to impose on anyone and anything that gets in theirway. They DO NOT come, by and large, to fit in, or to join what is alreadyin place here. Hence, because they are willing to impose, and we prettymuch, are soft enough not to understand the attitude we are confrontedwith, are willing to move over, make room, put up with THEIR language, evenconsider printing crap in a second (or more) language(s) in order toaccommodate their whining about it.After watching our politicians pander to these people, I have lost any carefor them. Normally, I am willing to pitch in and help out. BUT, when I ammet with the attitude, over and over, that I HAD BETTER do so, I get myback up, and start asking questions. The end result is that I AM willingto call them criminals. I am willing to take on the likes of Chris Cannon,and replace him with someone with a better attitude than he has. Hell, heno longer even knows who voted him into office! I AM willing to call themillegal aliens. I AM willing to call to task my local enforcementagencies, and DEMAND that they start being part of deporting these *******s.Had they come to join, I would not have a problem. BUT that is not thecase. They clearly have come to change us. So, to hell with them ANDtheir attitude!

I can only talk about what I know, and I've seen quite a few
things that disgust me about the entire situation.
The first being, of course, that those of us doing things the
legal way are smacked around, ignored, and made to feel like
second-class citizens by our own government. We practically have to
beg and plead at the feet of USCIS and kiss its toes for even the
simplest little "mercy" in letting us be with those we love.
Meanwhile, illegals pour through our borders unchecked each day with
nothing done to stop them. For the past two years, I've been saving
money up for a house, and each year I've had to take a hit in the bank
account to pay USCIS, to pay for plane flights, hotels, and all the
other expenses that are part of this time-consuming and punishing
process. The illegals, however, pay for jack sh*t. This "punishment"
against citizens doing things legally, in part for the actions of
illegals, burns me. Our government, however, will do nothing to change
it.
Secondly, not all illegals are the "hard-working,"
"gosh-honest" souls that some try to make them appear. In my area,
there are quite a few stories of illegals driving around with fake
licenses, no car insurance, and committing crimes. An illegal gets
drunk and drives, and smashes into somebody, and nothing happens to
them. Oh, they make be fined or ticketed, but since they don't bother
to pay, it doesn't really do anything. And yes, there are citizens
doing the same stuff, and if I was in charge, their punishment would
be as harsh as necessary to curb or stop such reckless behavior.
People have to admit that while there are illegals who are fleeing
from some dirtball country to try and better themselves, there are
just as many looking for a free ride with the attitude of "screw you
all" and doing whatever they can to avoid the law while getting all
the benefits of being a citizen. And yes, despite what those who are
blind to the real world say, illegals can and do get false ID's to
collect welfare, unemployment, and everything else they can. I could
drive less than an hour to a certain location and do that if I wanted
to.
In Atlantic City, I have a couple of relatives who work with
legal immigrants, and this is almost worse. They are all from India,
Pakistan, or some other nation nearby. Trump is given a break from the
government for each one he hires, and those that he hires don't pay
income taxes. Yes, they would have to pay sales tax, but so what? I've
been regaled with descriptions of these people, and how they use their
tax-free income. Do they send it away to their families back in their
native land to help them? There were a couple who did, but the vast
majority didn't. They instead spent it on themselves. They drive
around in cars I can't afford, wear tons of gold jewerly and expensive
clothes, and have called the U.S. citizens that work with them
"******s" for having to pay income tax. It's amazing how generous the
U.S. can be towards everyone but its own citizens, isn't it?

[Mayo]

So should the illegal immigrants who served in Iraq be deported? They
followed the President orders but where in the US illegally (FYI by
law they can apply for citizenship)

If they died, should their families be deported?




Andrew DeFaria <Andrew@DeFaria.com> wrote in message news:<6ff9a$3fafd2b7$44a7886c$28590@msgid.meganews servers.com>...

Mayo wrote:

I do make a distinction (and I believe US laws do as well) between being here illegally and committing serious crimes (i.e. rape, murder).

Well I do view immigration violations as serious, not as serious as rape and murder, but serious nonetheless. And there is also a large class of illegal aliens who do indeed commit more serious crimes than just illegal work/entry. They get involved in drugs, domestic violence, etc, probably in porportion with the legal population. Then again they are already operating outside the law so sometimes that causes them to get into even more trouble to start with (no legal recourse causes them to sometimes be more desperate and commit more violations).

But anybody who breaks the law is a criminal (maybe a conviction is needed for that, otherwise anybody who speeded on a highway will also be a criminal)

Well before a conviction, technically, they are an alleged criminals ;-) .

Following your point, what should happen to US companies and businesses who hire illegal immigrants (be it to harvest, work in factories, wash dishes, etc.), are they criminals too (they broke the law, so according to your definition they are) - Please let us know what your idea of an appropriate punishment is - Jail, payment of lost wages to an unemployed American? (This is a serious question, please either answer it seriously or just ignore it)

Perosnally I feel that, aside from active recruiting of illegals from their country of origin, businesses should not be held liable at all(!). I know you'll find that shocking. Effectively this is because I believe it is not the job of business to be compelled into law enforcement. However that's the libertarian in my talking. I recognize and admit that as the law stands they are liable and that they should face prosecution as the law proscribes. I'm not certain what an "apropriate punishment" should be because #1 above, I don't think that they should be punished. However I agree that they should be punished in accordance to the law as it stands.

I do maintain my belief that immigrants legal or not are good for the country, they invigorate the economy, provide needed skills (from dishwashing upwards), pay taxes (yes they do), spend money in US, and in many cases serve and die in the military - Are the immigrants who died in Iraq carrying out the orders of the President also criminals (should their general be in jail for hiring them?)

Did they violate a law? If so then yes they are criminals. US citizens are also good for the country. And likewise if they violate a law they should be prosecuted and punished as the law proscribes.

Do you like Baseball?

Not really a baseball fan or fanatic.

Are Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, and the many other foreign players bad for Baseball - should they not be allowed to play until all Americans who say they are baseball players play on an MLB team? I believe that stadiums will be empty if that were the case

Depends. Have they violated laws? If so then they should face the punishment, no? Or are they hear legally?

I do also agree that no system is perfect, US citizens wil be unemployed no matter what, even if no foreign workers were allowed.

Whether or not a US citizen is employeed is irrelevent to the issue of violation of the law and application of the proscribed penalty.

You have to recognize that this is true, even if you don't agree or like it

I need do no such thing sir. While no system is perfect, making it less perfect by ignoring the rules doesn't seem to me to be an effort of striving for perfection, rather it is the opposite.

[mrtravel]

Mayo wrote:

So should the illegal immigrants who served in Iraq be deported? They followed the President orders but where in the US illegally (FYI by law they can apply for citizenship) If they died, should their families be deported?

Which illegal immigrants that "served" in Iraq?
Illegal immigrants can't be in the US military.

[Andrew DeFaria]

Mayo wrote:

So should the illegal immigrants who served in Iraq be deported? They followed the President orders but where in the US illegally (FYI by law they can apply for citizenship)

Well you answered the question yourself there. If the law says they can
apply for citizenship then they can apply for citizenship.

If they died, should their families be deported?

Technically, I believe so.
--
Why are they called stairs inside but steps outside?

[Oliver Costich]

On 10 Nov 2003 09:17:26 -0800, mario_segal@hotmail.com (Mayo) wrote:

Andrew, you had made some earlier points in response to one of mymessages, I in turn responded to it but you probably never saw it. Iam really interested in your answer, so I am reposting it: (myquestion just became more relevent given recent wal-mart news)Andrew,I guess you have a point, being here without a valid visa is againstthe law, so is working without a work permit. And yes, people in thosecategories (and many more) can be deported when found. Most countrieshave those laws, no issues here from my partI do make a distinction (and I believe US laws do as well) betweenbeing here illegally and committing serious crimes (i.e. rape,murder). But anybody who breaks the law is a criminal (maybe aconviction is needed for that, otherwise anybody who speeded on ahighway will also be a criminal)Following your point, what should happen to US companies andbusinesses who hire illegal immigrants (be it to harvest, work infactories, wash dishes, etc.), are they criminals too (they broke thelaw, so according to your definition they are) - Please let us knowwhat your idea of an appropriate punishment is - Jail, payment of lostwages to an unemployed American?(This is a serious question, please either answer it seriously or justignore it)I do maintain my belief that immigrants legal or not are good for thecountry, they invigorate the economy, provide needed skills (fromdishwashing upwards), pay taxes (yes they do), spend money in US, andin many cases serve and die in the military - Are the immigrants whodied in Iraq carrying out the orders of the President also criminals(should their general be in jail for hiring them?)

As long as you restrict your concept of "immigrant" to those you
mention below, there's no issue. Unfortunately, most don' fall
remotely in that category.

Do you like Baseball? Are Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, and the manyother foreign players bad for Baseball - should they not be allowed toplay until all Americans who say they are baseball players play on anMLB team? I believe that stadiums will be empty if that were the caseI do also agree that no system is perfect, US citizens wil beunemployed no matter what, even if no foreign workers were allowed.You have to recognize that this is true, even if you don't agree orlike it

What about the numbers of unemployed sitizens? You think that's
independent of immigration levels for unskilled?

[Kitty]

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:58:47 GMT, "Who Cares" <no@spam.com> wrote:

we can hold more than2 Billion people - 10 times what we have now!

Maybe we can. Just who the hell are you to tell us that we should? Does
this bother you somehow? Does this presumed fact make it somehow right
for another country's people to take advantage of this presumed fact?

Kitty II

[Graphic Queen]

On 11 Nov 2003 14:39:16 -0800, mario_segal@hotmail.com (Mayo) wrote:

So should the illegal immigrants who served in Iraq be deported? Theyfollowed the President orders but where in the US illegally (FYI bylaw they can apply for citizenship)

Tough. They are illegal and therefore should be deported without
question.

If they died, should their families be deported?

YES

Andrew DeFaria <Andrew@DeFaria.com> wrote in message news:<6ff9a$3fafd2b7$44a7886c$28590@msgid.meganews servers.com>...

Mayo wrote:

I do make a distinction (and I believe US laws do as well) between being here illegally and committing serious crimes (i.e. rape, murder).

Well I do view immigration violations as serious, not as serious as rape and murder, but serious nonetheless. And there is also a large class of illegal aliens who do indeed commit more serious crimes than just illegal work/entry. They get involved in drugs, domestic violence, etc, probably in porportion with the legal population. Then again they are already operating outside the law so sometimes that causes them to get into even more trouble to start with (no legal recourse causes them to sometimes be more desperate and commit more violations).

But anybody who breaks the law is a criminal (maybe a conviction is needed for that, otherwise anybody who speeded on a highway will also be a criminal)

Well before a conviction, technically, they are an alleged criminals ;-) .

Following your point, what should happen to US companies and businesses who hire illegal immigrants (be it to harvest, work in factories, wash dishes, etc.), are they criminals too (they broke the law, so according to your definition they are) - Please let us know what your idea of an appropriate punishment is - Jail, payment of lost wages to an unemployed American? (This is a serious question, please either answer it seriously or just ignore it)

Perosnally I feel that, aside from active recruiting of illegals from their country of origin, businesses should not be held liable at all(!). I know you'll find that shocking. Effectively this is because I believe it is not the job of business to be compelled into law enforcement. However that's the libertarian in my talking. I recognize and admit that as the law stands they are liable and that they should face prosecution as the law proscribes. I'm not certain what an "apropriate punishment" should be because #1 above, I don't think that they should be punished. However I agree that they should be punished in accordance to the law as it stands.

I do maintain my belief that immigrants legal or not are good for the country, they invigorate the economy, provide needed skills (from dishwashing upwards), pay taxes (yes they do), spend money in US, and in many cases serve and die in the military - Are the immigrants who died in Iraq carrying out the orders of the President also criminals (should their general be in jail for hiring them?)

Did they violate a law? If so then yes they are criminals. US citizens are also good for the country. And likewise if they violate a law they should be prosecuted and punished as the law proscribes.

Do you like Baseball?

Not really a baseball fan or fanatic.

Are Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, and the many other foreign players bad for Baseball - should they not be allowed to play until all Americans who say they are baseball players play on an MLB team? I believe that stadiums will be empty if that were the case

Depends. Have they violated laws? If so then they should face the punishment, no? Or are they hear legally?

I do also agree that no system is perfect, US citizens wil be unemployed no matter what, even if no foreign workers were allowed.

Whether or not a US citizen is employeed is irrelevent to the issue of violation of the law and application of the proscribed penalty.

You have to recognize that this is true, even if you don't agree or like it

I need do no such thing sir. While no system is perfect, making it less perfect by ignoring the rules doesn't seem to me to be an effort of striving for perfection, rather it is the opposite.

[Graphic Queen]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:45:32 GMT, mrtravel <postmaster@x.x> wrote:

Mayo wrote:

So should the illegal immigrants who served in Iraq be deported? They followed the President orders but where in the US illegally (FYI by law they can apply for citizenship) If they died, should their families be deported?

Which illegal immigrants that "served" in Iraq?Illegal immigrants can't be in the US military.

Apparently you don't keep up on the news very well. They have them and
one was found out.

[Graphic Queen]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 00:23:40 GMT, Kitty II <Kitty@INet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:58:47 GMT, "Who Cares" <no@spam.com> wrote:

we can hold more than2 Billion people - 10 times what we have now!

What an idiot you are. No more comment is needed because you have
already proven how utterly ignorant you truly are.

Maybe we can. Just who the hell are you to tell us that we should? Doesthis bother you somehow? Does this presumed fact make it somehow rightfor another country's people to take advantage of this presumed fact?Kitty II

[mrtravel]

Graphic Queen wrote:

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:45:32 GMT, mrtravel <postmaster@x.x> wrote:

Mayo wrote:

So should the illegal immigrants who served in Iraq be deported? Theyfollowed the President orders but where in the US illegally (FYI bylaw they can apply for citizenship)If they died, should their families be deported?

Which illegal immigrants that "served" in Iraq?Illegal immigrants can't be in the US military.

Apparently you don't keep up on the news very well. They have them and one was found out.

What do you mean "found out"?
Are you saying that he was not legal and this was found out?
If he illegally entered the military, and the military status gave him
citizenship, wouldn't that void the citizenship?

[Andrew DeFaria]

mrtravel wrote:

Apparently you don't keep up on the news very well. They have them and one was found out. What do you mean "found out"? Are you saying that he was not legal and this was found out? If he illegally entered the military, and the military status gave him citizenship, wouldn't that void the citizenship?

I vaguely recall a story about several troops that were found to be here
illegally but where already in the military and fighting (one wonders
how they get into the military illegal - if we were to follow the
thinkings of other posters here I guess we should sue the military and
put them in jail, however I digress) - one I believe died. The others
were granted immediate citizenship I think by an act of the president
himself or the Justice Department. Whichever agency it was it was made
legit by the government for their service and I'm OK with that.
--
2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.

[Graphic Queen]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 00:48:53 GMT, mrtravel <postmaster@x.x> wrote:

Graphic Queen wrote:

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:45:32 GMT, mrtravel <postmaster@x.x> wrote:

Mayo wrote:>So should the illegal immigrants who served in Iraq be deported? They>followed the President orders but where in the US illegally (FYI by>law they can apply for citizenship)>>If they died, should their families be deported?>Which illegal immigrants that "served" in Iraq?Illegal immigrants can't be in the US military.

Apparently you don't keep up on the news very well. They have them and one was found out.

What do you mean "found out"?Are you saying that he was not legal and this was found out?If he illegally entered the military, and the military status gave himcitizenship, wouldn't that void the citizenship?

He is not a citizen. They found out that he is an illegal alien.

[Archmedes]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 16:55:28 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

I vaguely recall a story about several troops that were found to be hereillegally but where already in the military and fighting (one wondershow they get into the military illegal - if we were to follow thethinkings of other posters here I guess we should sue the military andput them in jail, however I digress)

That seems to be targeted at me

If so, I just like to add that I am talking about the businesses who
make a business out of hiring illegal immigrants. The military doesn't
yet seem to fit that description.

(We may get there, though, with the rising need for a stronger
military, considering all the possible deployment locations... But I'm
sure the necessary laws would be created so that this will happen
legally

[Archmedes]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:41:54 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

>> So then you see nothing wrong with me wanting to see immigration>> laws enforced. Then why are we arguing (or are we arguing)?> The devil is in the details IIRC, it started with me posting some> opinions here and getting shredded.... Answer the question! Otherwise you are just being argumentive. Answer it for yourself! You asked "why are we arguing?" and "are we arguing?" I cant' answer that, and I thought you knew that. That's why I assumed that weren't really questions you wanted me to answer.That's not the question! The question is, and has been, do you think weshould enforce our current immigration laws and remove illegal aliensfrom the country?

Actually, and you can read that up above, your question was "why are
we arguing (or are we arguing)?"

But to answer your latter question, I don't have a problem with
removing illegal aliens. I just don't know whether I would want that
we spend all the resources I think would be necessary to do that.

IOW what do we do with the current violators? When you catch one, you deport one.You mean like fishing by standing on the shore and waiting for them tojump into your arms?

I have a question here. Currently, probably one of the most efficient
measures that brings illegals to light is through their employment.
Since you oppose that, what are your ideas how law enforcement
officers should find them? They can't go around and ask people for
their IDs...

We've been there before, and I think we have an agreement here. The question is how much of the limited law enforcement resources should get used trying to catch them all. At one point, you cited rape and murder as serious crimes, which seems to indicate that you still want some law enforcement resources dedicated to solving these crimes.Two totally different sets of law enforcement officers. Two differentbudgets, etc, etc.

Not quite. In the end, they all need to be paid for by the taxes that
we pay. They might be paid by different taxes (state, federal), but in
the end, it's still all from the one pot of taxes we have to pay. If
we increase the resources dedicated to one, either we increase the
taxes or we remove the resources from somewhere else. (Or, of course,
we increase the efficiency of the resources. I'd like to see how you
do that...)

We should put the appropriate law enforcement resources from theappropriate and proper agencies on the problem of illegal aliens. With agrowing number of illegal (now estimated at 7-8 million I hear) it'sclear to anyone that there is a big problem here.

This seems to be done. Or not? What else would the officers from these
agencies do?

None of this diminishes the fact that there is a big problem withillegals that is not getting any beter and that is failing!

No disagreement here.

You are the only person I've ever spoke to that thinks that enforcement== prevention.

Actually, this is not what I think. This is an ideal that I think we
should strive to achieve. Until then, only the purpose of law
enforcement is ultimately prevention.

Youcan look at say, fire fighters, whose primary job is fighting fires, butwho also perform many other tasks such as the proverbal getting the catout of trees or perhaps educating at schools about, yes, fireprevention. Yet I see nobody trying equate fire fighting with fireprevention (or arson investigation).

Let's look at the case of fighting fires.

We have whole government agencies that are concerned with fire
prevention. We have even fines for home and business owners who don't
take the required fire prevention measures. So we take fire prevention
quite seriously (albeit many people don't take it as seriously as they
should, especially here in So Cal).

We have some of that in law enforcement, but not really that
elaborate.

Then, when it burns, while it is burning, we have a second stage of
prevention. Fire fighters are mostly concerned with preventing
additional damage: to the building that is burning, to adjacent
buildings. They try to extinguish the fire to avoid that any more gets
damaged.

We usually don't have this stage in law enforcement, because we
usually don't have law enforcement officers at the scene while "it
burns", i.e. while the law gets broken.

To some degree, after the fire got extinguished, experts try to find
out how it started. This can lead to criminal charges, or to changes
to the building code or other fire safety codes, etc.

This is the equivalent to standard law enforcement work. This and only
this.

So yes, fighting fires is not so bad an analogy to what I think should
be done in law enforcement: we spend most of the efforts in
prevention, when something happens we try to catch it while it's
happening, and we check after the fact for reasons why it happened and
improve the prevention efforts accordingly.

Prevention is indeed a good thing. If you think that prevention shouldbe focused on then I submit to you that if that is indeed what they areattempting to do (prevent illegal aliens from entering and working inthis country) then it is failing horribly and perhaps we should switchback to just enforcing the law (IOW get the fishing pole out and stickit in the water!)

"If you think that prevention should be focused on [...] if that is
indeed what they are attempting to do"

I indeed think this is what we should be focused on, but I think this
obviously because I think we currently are not focused on it (that's
why the "we should" part). If we were, we probably would have fewer
problems.

So what is the purpose of the law, in your opinion? Isn't it the purpose of the law to provide justice? Isn't it a fact that the law changes all the time? Doesn't follow from that that the law is not perfect (but justice, as a principle is), and that we try to get as close as possible to ideal justice with real law?The law is not perfect. Still many people feel that the justice providedby the law is correct.

You didn't answer a single question of the ones above.

> You are probably right -- in theory. It seems that reality shows> that such improvements in efficiency go slowly. So I wouldn't count> on them for the near future. I find that things are achievable roughly in porportion to the belief that they are achievable. IOW if you believe it's not doable (i.e. "in theory") then you have condemned it to failure. I don't think so.You don't think what? You don't think that if one believes in their mindthat something is not possible that they will not tend to even try?

No. I don't think that it will have an effect on the person who does
something when I think that this person will or not succeed. I
explained that below in a few sentences, which you took apart and so
deprived you of the possibility to understand the context.

I don't see how what I think about efficiency of law enforcement could possibly affect the law enforcement officers.Then your thoughts should be dismissed(???)

No. In leading teams, I have made over and over the experience that
putting the expectiations right where the possibilities are is the
best recipy for a well-succeeded project and a happy team.

They work with their own measure of efficiency, which very well may be influenced by what they think they can achieve, but I deem it very unlikely that their efficiency gets influenced by what _I_ think about it.This is good! :-)

Of course it is. It is exactly the answer to your question above.
Maybe you do us both the favor and read the whole post before
commenting on single sentences.

What I still can't figure out is WRT the USCIS, why people always think that they are hopelessly inefficient and can never be fixed to be efficient. It's self fulfilling. Again, I don't think that there is a self-fulfilling thing going.I'm nearly convinced they are.

How?

I think we are talking about differrent officers.

It seems so.

I would not say, however, to "give up" on say drug smugglers just because we are not god at it, it's hard or it doesn't appear to be stopping them.Perhaps a bad example, however, illegal immigration is not drugsmuggling. OK change the above to say drunk driving or rape.

"Stopping them" (i.e. before they do it) is exactly what I mean. That
is prevention. The way you see law enforcement, it has nothing to do
with stopping anybody. It is merely doing something after the fact,
without any regard to the future.

I see a serious moral problem in prohibiting things that don't really affect somebody else. Why is it my business if somebody smokes pot? [...]Generally I agree with you. We can add to that prostitution, etc.However when the behavior does effect others (think drunk driving ordriving while stoned, or say stealing to feed your habit, etc) thensomething should be done. Granted there would be less problems if thingswere legal.

I'm glad when I find something that we can agree upon! In addition, I
think that the argumentation that a crime committed while drunk is
less serious than while sober (because the person wasn't really aware
of what he/she did) is completely bogus. I think that we should be
even more responsible for such crimes -- after all, when I decide to
get drunk or stoned, I have an increased responsibility to make sure I
don't bring anybody else into trouble, exactly because I know I will
be out of control. So yes, any crimes committed against others are
just as bad or worse.

It can be argued that illegal aliens are committing crimes againstothers (US citizens not having jobs - and yes there are Americans whowould take jobs that illegals have) as well as, and often forgotten ornot discussed even in this thread but a big problem nonetheless, alienswho commit crimes - real offenses - then continue to remain here whenthe law clearly states that they have worn our their welcome.

See, I have this idea about work visa. I think that between countries
with comparable economic level (for example the USA, Japan, the EU,
Switzerland, Australia) there could be a treaty that gives citizens
the right to live and work in the other countries, but no access to
social benefits. They would have to place a deposit with the
government of the country they want to go to that covers deportation.
When they go back without having gotten in trouble, they get it back.
If they get into any kind of trouble -- including requiring social
services --, the deposit is gone and gets used to pay for the
immediate deportation. Would be a good way to enable people to get to
know the world without all the bureaucratic hassles around it.

If an immigrant commits grand theft, domesitc violence or various drugoffenses, while the local or state law proscribes a specific punishmentthat that immigrant may serve the INA also specifies that that immigrantis removable. Are you in agreement that such an offender should besumarily removed? (In fact if an immigrant commits and aggravated felony- say bank robbery - that illegal is supposed to be taken from his jailcell (after convicted) and put into removal proceeding before he servesout his term. Do you agree with that too?). Because often such thingsare not happening!

Hm... it makes sense to let them serve their time in their home
country

But whether a name matches a SSN should be clear pretty soon.You mean in the Wal-Mart case?

No, I meant in the case of a small business that got a fake SSN from
an employee.

In any case, I think they are off the hook if they submitted tax statements about W-2 tax withholding with the SSNs they got from their employees.Who's off the hook?

The business owner.

At this point it would be the responsibility of the IRS to complain if the SSNs don't match the names -- I would think. IINL -- and I'm glad I ain't

Totally different situations here. Law enforcement officers arecompensated for working for the government. In the case of businessbeing enlisted to help law enforcement no compensation is given to thebusiness.

No compensation is given to the population at large that watches its
neighborhoods and help keeping them safe. That's an integral part of
overall security. No compensation is given either to home owners that
follow fire prevention regulations and clean up their brushes; you
could argue that this is the responsibility of the fire prevention
agencies.

OTOH, one can argue that it is the responsibility of the business
owner to make sure that no one without the proper permission works in
his business.

These do appear to be incidents of what you claim however I would notcall 30 a big numbers.

That's one guy, and that's 30 each time. That may make 3000 a year,
and with only a few hundred of such "businesses", that's millions.

Additionally this appears to be limited to farms,perhaps small farms, with few employees at best and that are close tothe Mexican border.

For what I understand, most of CA (and the other border states) is
"close to the Mexican border" in that respect.

But the vast marjority of the US is not close to theMexican border. These examples do nothing to address illegals in my area(San Jose) who work in all sorts of businesses such as Wal-Marts,K-Marts, car rental places, Home depots, gardeners, etc, etc.

How do you know this? Suspicion or convictions?

> If X only has the purpose to maintain X, I'd say that X is not> necessary. That depends on whether or not X is necessary. If X is necessary then it needs to be maintained, even if X is charged with the responsibility of maintaining X. If X is necessary, it is necessary for a purpose. Back to law enforcement, why is law enforcement necessary?Law enforcement is necessary to uphold the law. Law is necessary toallow peaceful co-existance.

So the reason is peaceful co-existence, or, more specifically, to
uphold the law. Well, this is what I've been saying all the time. Any
law enforcement measure should be evaluated with this in mind: how it
helps to uphold the law. Putting somebody in jail or deporting
somebody or fining somebody are law enforcement measures, and should
be measured by their effect of upholding the law, and if necessary,
modified to increase their efficiency towards that goal.

(Note that "uphold the law" is definitely future-oriented and
practically synonymous to prevention of future violations of the
law...)

No, the immigration rate of e.g. Germany is comparable to the USA. (The immigration rate per citizen is about equal, the rate per square mile is much higher in Germany.) Similar numbers you will find in most developed European countries.Interesting.

So many poor countries nearby, without natural borders.

Considering that these comments were in the greater context of violations of the law in general, it is being done here (prosecuting crimes and punishing violators with jail time).Illegal aliens don't get jail time per se, they get removed.

"Greater context of violations of the law in general"

The prisons are full -- fuller than in any other developed country. No other developed, democratic country has 1% of its citizenry in jail. There is either something wrong with the citizenry or with the rules that created this situation.We cannot necessarily say that. Perhaps law breakers or breaking the lawin other countries goes unpunished (I'm not really saying that as Idon't know but it's a possibility)

It is a definite possibility. Yet the crime rate is lower. Isn't that
an indication that the goal of upholding the law gets achieved better?
With less people in jail?

I wish to see the appropriate law enforcement and application of the existing laws. I am sure that if this was tried that the problem of illegal aliens would be substantially effected and that deterrence would result and the problem would be drastically reduced. It doesn't work well in the case of legal but criminal citizens.It does work.

Then why has the USA the highest prison population of all developed
countries and still crime rates that are not lower? I wouldn't call
that "working".

[Archmedes]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:19:34 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

I vaguely recall a story about several troops that were found to be here illegally but where already in the military and fighting (one wonders how they get into the military illegal - if we were to follow the thinkings of other posters here I guess we should sue the military and put them in jail, however I digress)That seems to be targeted at me If so, I just like to add that I am talking about the businesses who make a business out of hiring illegal immigrants. The military doesn't yet seem to fit that description.Whether or not they "make a business of it" if a business violates thelaw by knowingly hiring illegals then they should be held accountablefor such action in accordance to the law. The same standard should holdfor the government too, no?

If knowingly, and if the law applies to the government too, then yes.
And in that case, it would probably be not the government, but a
single responsible officer who knowingly did something against the
rules. I'm sure there are appropriate disciplinary and other actions
provided in the law...

[Andrew DeFaria]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

When you catch one, you deport one. You mean like fishing by standing on the shore and waiting for them to jump into your arms? I have a question here. Currently, probably one of the most efficient measures that brings illegals to light is through their employment. Since you oppose that, what are your ideas how law enforcement officers should find them? They can't go around and ask people for their IDs...

It'd work better than "standing on the shore and waiting for them to
jump into your arms". Why not?

Actually illegals, like other people, often have encounters with the
law, like traffic stops, etc, where an enforcement officer could surely
ask for ID. I think it exceptionaly counter productive to give illegals
valid drivers licenses as we are doing here in California.

Two totally different sets of law enforcement officers. Two different budgets, etc, etc. Not quite.

USICE != local police. They perform semi similar functions but they are
not the same. And the budgets are different.

In the end, they all need to be paid for by the taxes that we pay.

I thought that the USICS is more similar to the post office WRT it's
funding. Yes ultimately everything comes either from our pockets or the
printing of new money.

They might be paid by different taxes (state, federal), but in the end, it's still all from the one pot of taxes we have to pay. If we increase the resources dedicated to one, either we increase the taxes or we remove the resources from somewhere else. (Or, of course, we increase the efficiency of the resources. I'd like to see how you do that...)

Increasing the efficiency of the current resources is definitely doable.
A lot more than you seem to think. Government is horribly inefficient
wouldn't you agree? Why then do you think it would be hard to increase
efficiency? (Perhaps just hard for them to allow you to attempt to
increase efficiency).

We should put the appropriate law enforcement resources from the appropriate and proper agencies on the problem of illegal aliens. With a growing number of illegal (now estimated at 7-8 million I hear) it's clear to anyone that there is a big problem here. This seems to be done. Or not? What else would the officers from these agencies do?

I disagree that this is being done really at all. I know of an immigrant
who violated the law and was in jail. They were put on "INS hold" while
in there. They were supposed to be picked up by the INS when released.
When the time came the INS simply neglected to pick them up. What do you
call that?

You can look at say, fire fighters, whose primary job is fighting fires, but who also perform many other tasks such as the proverbal getting the cat out of trees or perhaps educating at schools about, yes, fire prevention. Yet I see nobody trying equate fire fighting with fire prevention (or arson investigation). Let's look at the case of fighting fires.
So yes, fighting fires is not so bad an analogy to what I think should be done in law enforcement: we spend most of the efforts in prevention, when something happens we try to catch it while it's happening, and we check after the fact for reasons why it happened and improve the prevention efforts accordingly.

I understand and admit that police officers also perform tasks designed
to prevent law. But when they are in "enforcement mode" enforcing the
law it is similar to when a fire fighter is in "fire fighting mode"
fighting fires. It is part of their respective jobs. The difference is
that the 7-8 million illegals out there are akin to the recent wild
fires in Southern California. It's happening currently and should be
address - not allowed to continue to grow in a manner to similar to
letting the fire go wildly. Sure containment is one thing that needs to
be done as well as preventing further growth. Even so the fire fighters
fought the current existing blazes. One difference though was that a
fire, contained, will eventually burn itself out. Illegals will not burn
themselves out.

Prevention is indeed a good thing. If you think that prevention should be focused on then I submit to you that if that is indeed what they are attempting to do (prevent illegal aliens from entering and working in this country) then it is failing horribly and perhaps we should switch back to just enforcing the law (IOW get the fishing pole out and stick it in the water!) "If you think that prevention should be focused on [...] if that is indeed what they are attempting to do" I indeed think this is what we should be focused on, but I think this obviously because I think we currently are not focused on it (that's why the "we should" part). If we were, we probably would have fewer problems.

What then do we do with the current violators?

So what is the purpose of the law, in your opinion? Isn't it the purpose of the law to provide justice? Isn't it a fact that the law changes all the time? Doesn't follow from that that the law is not perfect (but justice, as a principle is), and that we try to get as close as possible to ideal justice with real law? The law is not perfect. Still many people feel that the justice provided by the law is correct. You didn't answer a single question of the ones above.

The purpose of law is to establish the rules by which a society will
function. Law describe the acceptable rules of conduct for the society
and proscribe penalties for violations of the rules. Laws change as
societies preception of justice changes. Preception of justices changes
just like law. Used to be that women couldn't vote or people could own
slaves. Society's viewpoint of what is just changed and so did the law.

They work with their own measure of efficiency, which very well may be influenced by what they think they can achieve, but I deem it very unlikely that their efficiency gets influenced by what _I_ think about it. This is good! :-) Of course it is. It is exactly the answer to your question above. Maybe you do us both the favor and read the whole post before commenting on single sentences.

I do. Then only comment on the parts that I think are relevent. As for
the above I was making a light hearted statement that I think it's good
that law enforcement is not influenced by what you think. IOW I'm glad
we are not doing it your way. It was a light hearted comment, hence the
smiley. You just didn't get the joke.

> What I still can't figure out is WRT the USCIS, why people always> think that they are hopelessly inefficient and can never be fixed> to be efficient. It's self fulfilling. Again, I don't think that there is a self-fulfilling thing going. I'm nearly convinced they are. How?

It's quite simple actually. Human nature compels people to achieve but
only such things as they believe is possible. If you start off thinking
"Man there's no way this will ever work" then you tend to not give it
enough effort to start with. This lack of effort tends to cause you to
fail. You have never noticed this in your life?!? I'd be quite shocked.

WRT USCIS many people here, and indeed many in the USCIS itself, have an
attitude of status quo, "that will not work", "they are just inefficient
- deal with it", "You're doing a K1? Well expect it to take XX months",
etc. Such negative thoughts "set the standard" as you say but sets the
standard and expectation up for failure to start. Visionaries "think the
unthinkable", "challenge the status quo" and effectively "gets things
done". There are literally thousands of examples of progress and extreme
progress that have been made by millions of people who simply didn't
know that they couldn't do X or Y.

Let alone the fact that government and the USCIS is known to be
extremely inefficient. My qualms are people just accept this as a given.
I'm convinced that a "can do" attitude needs to be established in order
to pull such horribly inefficient organizations up by the boot straps
into the semblence of decent efficienty.

"Stopping them" (i.e. before they do it) is exactly what I mean. That is prevention. The way you see law enforcement, it has nothing to do with stopping anybody. It is merely doing something after the fact, without any regard to the future.

I wouldn't say without any regard to the future. Enforcement of the laws
has a strong deterrent effect.

I'm glad when I find something that we can agree upon!

So am I. I have no problems arguing vehetmently with another about a
point and then going out and having a beer together. Alas you appear to
be in Southern California and I'm in Northern so the beer is probably
out of the question...

In addition, I think that the argumentation that a crime committed while drunk is less serious than while sober (because the person wasn't really aware of what he/she did) is completely bogus.

I understand where you are coming from however there is a certain "not
in your right mind" that alcohol induces. It's a hard call but I
wouldn't say completely bogus. I might say "often abused".

I think that we should be even more responsible for such crimes -- after all, when I decide to get drunk or stoned, I have an increased responsibility to make sure I don't bring anybody else into trouble, exactly because I know I will be out of control. So yes, any crimes committed against others are just as bad or worse.

The crimes are just as bad, true. But should the punishment be? I don't
know. You could, for example, be getting smashed in the privacy of your
own home, not intending to go out and drive, then for some unforseen
circumstance, have to drive or go out. At the time you had to make this
decision you were already not in your "right mind". However I believe
that such a circumstance is rare.

It can be argued that illegal aliens are committing crimes against others (US citizens not having jobs - and yes there are Americans who would take jobs that illegals have) as well as, and often forgotten or not discussed even in this thread but a big problem nonetheless, aliens who commit crimes - real offenses - then continue to remain here when the law clearly states that they have worn our their welcome. See, I have this idea about work visa. I think that between countries with comparable economic level (for example the USA, Japan, the EU, Switzerland, Australia) there could be a treaty that gives citizens the right to live and work in the other countries, but no access to social benefits. They would have to place a deposit with the government of the country they want to go to that covers deportation. When they go back without having gotten in trouble, they get it back. If they get into any kind of trouble -- including requiring social services --, the deposit is gone and gets used to pay for the immediate deportation. Would be a good way to enable people to get to know the world without all the bureaucratic hassles around it.

Interesting approach. I think it assumes that the legal turned illegal
alien will comply with the immediate deportation. Then again if illegals
complied with such demands we wouldn't have a problem. Seems to me that
you are saying that immigrants from countries of comparable economic
levels can be trusted implying that immigrants from say poor countries
cannot be trusted. In general I'd say you are probably right but isn't
that discrimination? (not that discrimination does not happen or that
it's necessarily bad).

If an immigrant commits grand theft, domesitc violence or various drug offenses, while the local or state law proscribes a specific punishment that that immigrant may serve the INA also specifies that that immigrant is removable. Are you in agreement that such an offender should be sumarily removed? (In fact if an immigrant commits and aggravated felony - say bank robbery - that illegal is supposed to be taken from his jail cell (after convicted) and put into removal proceeding before he serves out his term. Do you agree with that too?). Because often such things are not happening! Hm... it makes sense to let them serve their time in their home country

I don't think there is a requirement to see that the removed alien is
placed in jail in the other country.

But whether a name matches a SSN should be clear pretty soon. You mean in the Wal-Mart case? No, I meant in the case of a small business that got a fake SSN from an employee.

In any case, I think they are off the hook if they submitted tax statements about W-2 tax withholding with the SSNs they got from their employees. Who's off the hook?

The business owner.

OK, so then we agree here too.

At this point it would be the responsibility of the IRS to complain if the SSNs don't match the names -- I would think. IINL -- and I'm glad I ain't Totally different situations here. Law enforcement officers are compensated for working for the government. In the case of business being enlisted to help law enforcement no compensation is given to the business. No compensation is given to the population at large that watches its neighborhoods and help keeping them safe. That's an integral part of overall security.

And there are no fines for people who do not watch the neighborhood either.

No compensation is given either to home owners that follow fire prevention regulations and clean up their brushes; you could argue that this is the responsibility of the fire prevention agencies.

Hmmm... Here there may be fines for non-compliance - I'm not sure.

OTOH, one can argue that it is the responsibility of the business owner to make sure that no one without the proper permission works in his business.

That's exactly the argument being made. I guess we can look at it this
way. If we require that the business owner checks ID to insure the legal
right to work (as is done now) then that's OK. But if the business owner
finds an illegal should he be compelled to turn in that illegal? It
would be efficient no?

These do appear to be incidents of what you claim however I would not call 30 a big numbers. That's one guy, and that's 30 each time. That may make 3000 a year, and with only a few hundred of such "businesses", that's millions.

Provided your other assumptions above pan out, yes.

Additionally this appears to be limited to farms, perhaps small farms, with few employees at best and that are close to the Mexican border. For what I understand, most of CA (and the other border states) is "close to the Mexican border" in that respect.

They probably do ship them up pretty far WRT CA due to the fertile land.
You don't find as many illegals in say Utah, I bet.

But the vast marjority of the US is not close to the Mexican border. These examples do nothing to address illegals in my area (San Jose) who work in all sorts of businesses such as Wal-Marts, K-Marts, car rental places, Home depots, gardeners, etc, etc. How do you know this? Suspicion or convictions?

I thought the charge we were talking about here was the active
involvment of actually recruiting workers from other countries to work,
not the illegal who happens to walk into the office and apply for a job.
I highly doubt say an independent CPA with 3 employees here in San Jose
takes trips to Mexico to find an office worker to perform meanial tasks.

Law enforcement is necessary to uphold the law. Law is necessary to allow peaceful co-existance. So the reason is peaceful co-existence, or, more specifically, to uphold the law. Well, this is what I've been saying all the time. Any law enforcement measure should be evaluated with this in mind: how it helps to uphold the law. Putting somebody in jail or deporting somebody or fining somebody are law enforcement measures, and should be measured by their effect of upholding the law, and if necessary, modified to increase their efficiency towards that goal. (Note that "uphold the law" is definitely future-oriented and practically synonymous to prevention of future violations of the law...)

I think we are just disagreeing with the deterrent effect of enforcement
of the law agains current violators. I happen to think the deterrent
effect is strong (provided law enforcement for current violators is
swift and assured). I think all you're saying is that you do not think
that the deterrent effect is strong enough and that we should
concentrate more on prevention.

The prisons are full -- fuller than in any other developed country. No other developed, democratic country has 1% of its citizenry in jail. There is either something wrong with the citizenry or with the rules that created this situation. We cannot necessarily say that. Perhaps law breakers or breaking the law in other countries goes unpunished (I'm not really saying that as I don't know but it's a possibility) It is a definite possibility. Yet the crime rate is lower. Isn't that an indication that the goal of upholding the law gets achieved better? With less people in jail?

The crime rate is the rate of known crime. If violations are routinely
ignored they are probably not included in the crime rate.

> I wish to see the appropriate law enforcement and application of> the existing laws. I am sure that if this was tried that the> problem of illegal aliens would be substantially effected and that> deterrence would result and the problem would be drastically reduced. It doesn't work well in the case of legal but criminal citizens. It does work. Then why has the USA the highest prison population of all developed countries and still crime rates that are not lower? I wouldn't call that "working".

Again, perhaps other countries do not report many violations. Or even
that other countries do not make certain behaviors illegal. There are a
lot of people in jail for drug offenses - in fact I hear claims that
most people are in jail because of such offenses - yet Demark has
legalized some drug use. That could skew figures somewhat.
--
The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets.

[Andrew DeFaria]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:19:34 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

> I vaguely recall a story about several troops that were found to be> here illegally but where already in the military and fighting (one> wonders how they get into the military illegal - if we were to> follow the thinkings of other posters here I guess we should sue> the military and put them in jail, however I digress)> That seems to be targeted at me If so, I just like to add that I am talking about the businesses who make a business out of hiring illegal immigrants. The military doesn't yet seem to fit that description. Whether or not they "make a business of it" if a business violates the law by knowingly hiring illegals then they should be held accountable for such action in accordance to the law. The same standard should hold for the government too, no?

If knowingly,

Kinda hard to do with the "don't ask - don't tell" mentality of the
military eh? :-)

and if the law applies to the government too, then yes.

I happend to believe that laws should apply equally to everybody,
including the government.

And in that case, it would probably be not the government, but a single responsible officer who knowingly did something against the rules. I'm sure there are appropriate disciplinary and other actions provided in the law...

Would you similarly say that if say it is found that only one hiring
manager in Wal-Mart were responsible for knowingly hiring illegals that
only that manager should face the punishment? Or should we go after the
bigger Wal-Mart because they got more money? I'm curious.
--
I played a blank tape on full volume. The mime who lived next door
complained. So I shot him with a gun with a silencer.

[mrtravel]

Citizen Outkast wrote:

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 14:49:02 -0500, c@y.com did say unto me:

It certainly surprises me to hear that there's any sort of income taxbreak received simply because one is a legal alien.

I can ask my sister's boyfriend, who still works with these people. From what I was told, they get the break because they are from a "poor" nation or something like that. Some kind of entitlement or break from being from a certain area/nation. They liked to parade around the fact that they got to keep much more of their money than the natural citizens, though. One guy who was legal (and a good person, at that) was deported for accidently not renewing some document, but he did have to pay tax since he wasn't from the same nation as the others. And no, it wasn't tax evasion, it was legal. Like I said, I'll see if I can get more information.

I am wondering if they are actually referring to the EIC (earned income
credit) which allows some low income people to not only not pay income
tax, but also get money back. This is not restricted to immigrants.

[Archmedes]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:25:31 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

I have a question here. Currently, probably one of the most efficient measures that brings illegals to light is through their employment. Since you oppose that, what are your ideas how law enforcement officers should find them? They can't go around and ask people for their IDs...It'd work better than "standing on the shore and waiting for them tojump into your arms". Why not?

It's prohibited by law, without probable cause (and having a face that
looks like, say, Mexican does not constitute probable cause . Police
in, say, Germany can do that, but not here in the USA. And it seems to
be one of the freedoms many US citizens are most proud of. (I actually
think it's not that big of a deal, and I wouldn't object to a law that
enables police to ask anybody for a proper ID, without probable cause.
But I doubt that a majority would agree with me.)

Actually illegals, like other people, often have encounters with thelaw, like traffic stops, etc, where an enforcement officer could surelyask for ID. I think it exceptionaly counter productive to give illegalsvalid drivers licenses as we are doing here in California.

Yes, this comes back to the fact that there is no ID in the USA that
states the immigration status. This would have to be a federal ID,
since immigration is a federal issue. But a federal ID isn't really
popular. Again, a result of something most citizens are proud of --
the strongly federative structure of the USA.

Increasing the efficiency of the current resources is definitely doable.A lot more than you seem to think. Government is horribly inefficientwouldn't you agree? Why then do you think it would be hard to increaseefficiency? (Perhaps just hard for them to allow you to attempt toincrease efficiency).

I agree that government in general is quite inefficient. How would you
increase efficiency, without resorting to a dictatorship?

I disagree that this is being done really at all. I know of an immigrantwho violated the law and was in jail. They were put on "INS hold" whilein there. They were supposed to be picked up by the INS when released.When the time came the INS simply neglected to pick them up. What do youcall that?

I don't know why they didn't come. Lack of resources maybe?

Let's look at the case of fighting fires.

[essential pieces snipped]

So yes, fighting fires is not so bad an analogy to what I think should be done in law enforcement: we spend most of the efforts in prevention, when something happens we try to catch it while it's happening, and we check after the fact for reasons why it happened and improve the prevention efforts accordingly.I understand and admit that police officers also perform tasks designedto prevent law. But when they are in "enforcement mode" enforcing thelaw it is similar to when a fire fighter is in "fire fighting mode"fighting fires.

In the snipped part, I tried to explain that this is not true. When
fire fighters are fighting a fire, they are still doing a preventive
job: they are trying to prevent the fire from creating more damage
than it already has. When the police is only enforcing the law as you
understand it, they are (according to your own admission) not
concerned with preventing anything.

The difference isthat the 7-8 million illegals out there are akin to the recent wildfires in Southern California. It's happening currently and should beaddress - not allowed to continue to grow in a manner to similar toletting the fire go wildly. Sure containment is one thing that needs tobe done as well as preventing further growth. Even so the fire fightersfought the current existing blazes. One difference though was that afire, contained, will eventually burn itself out. Illegals will not burnthemselves out.

I'm glad you mentioned the fires here. Much if not most (if not all)
of the damage was due to lack of prevention: recognize the properties
of the ecosystem and let smaller fires burn away the brush earlier in
the summer, know that fires in such an environment are inevitable and
not put dry wood on your roof, clean the brush around your house, etc.

They burned themselves out, but not forever. If the prevention
measures are not being taken, they will be back. You can count on
that.

In that sense, it is similar to the problem with illegal immigration.
Fighting the fires only gets you so far. Prevention is the real thing
to go after, that's where efficiency can be achieved.

What then do we do with the current violators?

As I said: when we catch them (like, as you suggested, when one has an
unrelated encounter with law enforcement), we deport them. Other than
than, we focus on solving the problem rather than trying to fix a
symptom.

> So what is the purpose of the law, in your opinion? Isn't it the> purpose of the law to provide justice? Isn't it a fact that the law> changes all the time? Doesn't follow from that that the law is not> perfect (but justice, as a principle is), and that we try to get as> close as possible to ideal justice with real law? The law is not perfect. Still many people feel that the justice provided by the law is correct. You didn't answer a single question of the ones above.The purpose of law is to establish the rules by which a society willfunction.

That's not really a purpose, it is a definition ("laws are the rules
by which...").

But independently of that, I guess we can agree that our ultimate goal
is that the laws are being observed as much as possible. Or not?

Society's viewpoint of what is just changed and so did the law.

That's what I meant with the law trying to approximate what we
perceive as justice. The idea that slavery was unjust was around long
before the law got changed. It probably even had a majority some time
before the law was changed. So the law came later than society's
viewpoint.

And like this it is all the time. The law is a fluid approximation to
justice, it is not what defines justice. Just because something is the
law doesn't mean it's just. We need to look at things independently of
the law and see whether we think they are just. Then we see what the
law says, and where there is a difference, there is a need to see
whether that difference is a singular instance or something regular.
If it is regular, there might be a need to change the law, to
approximate it better to what we perceive as justice.

You just didn't get the joke.

I actually got it, but I did feel that some of the previous comments
of yours just plain disregarded comments of mine. But it's not a major
deal, really. Both the length of the thread and the length of the
individual messages show that this is more a discussion that the
typical flamewar.

It's quite simple actually. Human nature compels people to achieve butonly such things as they believe is possible. If you start off thinking"Man there's no way this will ever work" then you tend to not give itenough effort to start with. This lack of effort tends to cause you tofail. You have never noticed this in your life?!? I'd be quite shocked.WRT USCIS many people here, and indeed many in the USCIS itself, have anattitude of status quo, "that will not work", "they are just inefficient- deal with it", "You're doing a K1? Well expect it to take XX months",etc. Such negative thoughts "set the standard" as you say but sets thestandard and expectation up for failure to start. Visionaries "think theunthinkable", "challenge the status quo" and effectively "gets thingsdone". There are literally thousands of examples of progress and extremeprogress that have been made by millions of people who simply didn'tknow that they couldn't do X or Y.Let alone the fact that government and the USCIS is known to beextremely inefficient. My qualms are people just accept this as a given.I'm convinced that a "can do" attitude needs to be established in orderto pull such horribly inefficient organizations up by the boot strapsinto the semblence of decent efficienty.

I just don't think that my attitude towards the immigration
bureaucracy would change their efficiency. Until I'm a citizen, I'm
not even a constituency of anybody who might want to get elected. Have
you ever applied for a visa that is more than a tourist visa? You are
in "no rights" land when applying for visa. The only attitude that
gets you anywhere is to do what they expect you to do and accept what
they do. You start complaining, and you may wait forever. And there is
no higher instance where you could go and complain or excercise some
pressure. What do you think you could do in such a situation?

Who can excercise pressure are the citizens, not the ones applying for
visa. But they are usually not very concerned, mostly not even very
informed.

Of course I think that government in general should be more efficient,
and that the immigration bureaucracy could be a lot more efficient. I
don't think that this had any effect whatsoever, though.

I wouldn't say without any regard to the future. Enforcement of the lawshas a strong deterrent effect.

And this is good. Inasmuch as it has, it often is good and efficient
to do so.

Alas you appear tobe in Southern California and I'm in Northern so the beer is probablyout of the question...

For the time being that's correct

I understand where you are coming from however there is a certain "notin your right mind" that alcohol induces. It's a hard call but Iwouldn't say cmpletely bogus. I might say "often abused".

Maybe... For example, killing somebody while driving drunk is more
than just an accident. This is closer to manslaughter, IMO. (But that
gets me into application of general legal principles to driving, which
is a whole different subject

OTOH, alcohol and its effects is nothing new. Some people get sleepy
and not very likely to do anything more stupid than vomiting on the
carpet. Others become regularly aggressive and it's very likely that
they will do something stupider than causing a carpet problem. I don't
see any excuse for such a person if actually something happens. If you
get dangerously out of your mind when drinking (or smoking, or
anything) -- either stop it, or make sure you do it in a safe
environment.

But maybe there are cases where it applies righfully (for me). Haven't
seen one yet, though.

The crimes are just as bad, true. But should the punishment be? I don'tknow. You could, for example, be getting smashed in the privacy of yourown home, not intending to go out and drive, then for some unforseencircumstance, have to drive or go out. At the time you had to make thisdecision you were already not in your "right mind". However I believethat such a circumstance is rare.

Don't know... I think this wouldn't qualify in my book. If you feel
that you might drive when drunk, you need to give your car keys away
to somebody where you can't get to them until you're sober. Or better,
don't drink to start with, if there is the slightest chance that you
might drive.

Or maybe make sure that you actually drive safe. I'm not really a fan
of making DUI itself a crime -- everybody is different, and some
people are probably less of a danger to the public with three beers
than others without any. But any accident while DUI should be punished
much more seriously, and getting the drivers license back should
require some serious commitment.

Interesting approach. I think it assumes that the legal turned illegalalien will comply with the immediate deportation.

Not necessarily. But say you have a court appearance for DUI. Until
found guilty you are assumed innocent, of course. But the moment you
are found guilty, the drill kicks in -- deposit gone, instead of to
the local jail you go back to your home country (prepaid and may
face jail time there, or another trial, to establish the punishment
that's appropriate there.

Then again if illegalscomplied with such demands we wouldn't have a problem. Seems to me thatyou are saying that immigrants from countries of comparable economiclevels can be trusted implying that immigrants from say poor countriescannot be trusted. In general I'd say you are probably right but isn'tthat discrimination? (not that discrimination does not happen or thatit's necessarily bad).

Discrimination in the sense of "making fine distinctions" is not
necessarily bad I don't think that it is any more discriminating
than immigration laws already are. For example, Germans have a visa
waiver -- they don't need a tourist visa (up to 3 months). Angola
probably doesn't have this privilege.

It's not a question of trust. It's a question of motivation. As a
German, I don't really have strong economic reasons to come here. So
there wouldn't be a strong flux in either direction. Mostly people
interested in the country, and possibly the fluxes in both directions
cancel themselves out over time. The provision that you don't have
access to social services is there to avoid freeriding on another
country's superior social services. You need them, you need to go
back.

This is different with most of the economic immigrants from poor
countries. With them, this wouldn't work and would create a strong,
onsided flux of immigrants. That's why the idea of economically
similar countries. As such, this idea really doesn't have much
relevance for illegal immigrants. Only a small portion of illegal
immigrants come from countries that would qualify.

I don't think there is a requirement to see that the removed alien isplaced in jail in the other country.

I don't think this could be enforced or even verified. That is up to
the home country.

No compensation is given to the population at large that watches its neighborhoods and help keeping them safe. That's an integral part of overall security.And there are no fines for people who do not watch the neighborhood either.

That's right; I missed this difference.

No compensation is given either to home owners that follow fire prevention regulations and clean up their brushes; you could argue that this is the responsibility of the fire prevention agencies.Hmmm... Here there may be fines for non-compliance - I'm not sure.

There are fines for some violations. Some violations can even lead to
forced closing of the building (if it is a business building
accessible to the public).

That's exactly the argument being made. I guess we can look at it thisway. If we require that the business owner checks ID to insure the legalright to work (as is done now) then that's OK. But if the business ownerfinds an illegal should he be compelled to turn in that illegal? Itwould be efficient no?

I think that this is probably up to the business owner -- if he
doesn't hire that guy. But he shouldn't hire him. And I think that is
what the current law says. I feel that this is ok.

Actually, here is a problem. A state ID or drivers license doesn't
tell anything about visa status or work permission. I remeber vaguely
that when I was here as a tourist for half a year many years ago, I
could have gotten a drivers license. I remember that I thought that it
would be a cool thing to have, but then didn't go through with it --
found better things to do

Comes back to the federal ID (something like an SSN that is a
reasonably fake-safe card with a picture).

But the vast marjority of the US is not close to the Mexican border. These examples do nothing to address illegals in my area (San Jose) who work in all sorts of businesses such as Wal-Marts, K-Marts, car rental places, Home depots, gardeners, etc, etc. How do you know this? Suspicion or convictions?

This was a real question.

I thought the charge we were talking about here was the activeinvolvment of actually recruiting workers from other countries to work,not the illegal who happens to walk into the office and apply for a job.I highly doubt say an independent CPA with 3 employees here in San Josetakes trips to Mexico to find an office worker to perform meanial tasks.

I think there are different levels. As it seems, few businesses where
these people actually work have an "operation" set up themselves. This
is "outsources" to "specialists" who just either bring them in, or
take them when they are already in, and bring them to the businesses.
I don't think it really matters whether they do it themselves or pay
somebody a "finder's fee".

I agree about the CPA, though. If he asked the person for ID and SSN
and submits tax reports properly under that SSN and the INS doesn't
complain about a fake SSN, I think the CPA has done his due diligence.

I think the businesses that do this are operations that require a lot
of simple, manual labor. It doesn't make sense to get involved with
that for one or two. But I'm sure that a lot of people hire nannies
and other domestic helpers purposely without asking for any
documentation, happy that they get such cheap help.

Now whether that's a good thing (from a human perspective) or a bad
thing (from a national-social perspective) is not an easy thing to
answer. But whether they often do it on purpose, I think that's easy
to answer.

I think we are just disagreeing with the deterrent effect of enforcementof the law agains current violators. I happen to think the deterrenteffect is strong (provided law enforcement for current violators isswift and assured). I think all you're saying is that you do not thinkthat the deterrent effect is strong enough and that we shouldconcentrate more on prevention.

Basically, yes. Furthermore, I think that prevention of violations is
the ultimate goal of any legislation, and that any measures should be
judged by their prevention effect.

Again, perhaps other countries do not report many violations. Or eventhat other countries do not make certain behaviors illegal. There are alot of people in jail for drug offenses - in fact I hear claims thatmost people are in jail because of such offenses - yet Demark haslegalized some drug use. That could skew figures somewhat.

I didn't really think of the reporting rate. But for violent crimes,
the ones that result in MDs or hospitals or mortuaries involved, I
would say that the reporting rate is pretty close to 100% in the
countries I'm talking about. So not much leeway here for reporting
differences.

One difference is probably that everybody and his aunt has a gun here.
And people are used to doing everything with their guns. So IMO it is
obvious why there are so much more gun-related crimes -- which tend to
be more violent than, say, fist-related crimes.

Another difference could be that people there in general are more
inclined to accept the priority of prevention in law enforcement
(rather than merely applying a "just" penalty), and that this has
found more place in official policies.

And you are right about the drug thing. Which gets back to the
question: is this a good law? Does it make us here in the USA safer
(to have all these people in jail for drug offenses)? I doubt it. I
don't see the purpose it serves.

[Archmedes]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 06:03:55 GMT, mrtravel wrote:

Citizen Outkast wrote:

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 14:49:02 -0500, c@y.com did say unto me:

It certainly surprises me to hear that there's any sort of income taxbreak received simply because one is a legal alien.

I can ask my sister's boyfriend, who still works with these people. From what I was told, they get the break because they are from a "poor" nation or something like that. Some kind of entitlement or break from being from a certain area/nation. They liked to parade around the fact that they got to keep much more of their money than the natural citizens, though. One guy who was legal (and a good person, at that) was deported for accidently not renewing some document, but he did have to pay tax since he wasn't from the same nation as the others. And no, it wasn't tax evasion, it was legal. Like I said, I'll see if I can get more information.

I am wondering if they are actually referring to the EIC (earned incomecredit) which allows some low income people to not only not pay incometax, but also get money back. This is not restricted to immigrants.

But this is only for relatively low incomes.

In any case, I'd like to know about this. It sounds too odd.

[Archmedes]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:28:17 -0800, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

If knowingly,Kinda hard to do with the "don't ask - don't tell" mentality of themilitary eh? :-)

Not everybody can come up with good rules. In their absence, you take
what you can come up with...

and if the law applies to the government too, then yes.I happend to believe that laws should apply equally to everybody,including the government.

This "equally" is often a problem. But where possible, of course.

And in that case, it would probably be not the government, but a single responsible officer who knowingly did something against the rules. I'm sure there are appropriate disciplinary and other actions provided in the law...Would you similarly say that if say it is found that only one hiringmanager in Wal-Mart were responsible for knowingly hiring illegals thatonly that manager should face the punishment? Or should we go after thebigger Wal-Mart because they got more money? I'm curious.

I don't think it matters who got the money for the criminal aspect of
it. I think if there is no evidence that the manager acted upon
request from another, higher manager, then he's the one who should be
on the hook.

Of course there is always the tax question. If they hired illegals,
they probably also evaded taxes. Or didn't file appropriate
documentation.