Occupy Wall Street Protests

Ahh its all about the illegal immigrants.

Extremely accurate and humorous.

Whenever young people begin to do anything, Republicans instantly go into hyper grumpy old man mode.

Get off my lawn and get a job you bunch of damn hippies!

No, Flav. We're not saying it's entirely the fault of illegal immigration. Immigration is a good thing if it's legal and everyone is paying into the system.

I'm referring to Volkom's comment on how he would rather just deport "them" not the overall issues.

Edit: I was just trying to understand why he said that when his parents are immigrants. Makes more sense to me if he was talking about illegal immigration.

Do illegal immigrants make enough money to make a significant payment into the system? Wouldn't they just get all that money back? If they were made legal citizens then they would also have to make at least minimum wage instead of the wages they actually work for now. They made a movie awhile back about what would happen if all the illegal immigrants in America got booted out of America and what that would do to our coutnry. Lets face it illegals do jobs that legal citizens don't want to do and they do it for cheaper. We have to ask ourselves "Why would an employer hire an illegal over a legal citizen?" We pretty much create and maintain this "problem".

As for undocumented illegals getting college scholarships (Zarah's link) I really don't comprehend it. Unless this is only rewarding outstanding individuals and leads to them obtaining legal citizenship and then contributing to our society I see it as a waste. If they're not on a path to citizenship they won't be able to find a decent job here and one could argue that we educate them so they can bring a benefit to another nation and bringing nothing to us. I understand why its being put in place, to appease certain contituents, but I do not see the benefit of doing it unless this is creating some sort of benefit for the US.

Illegal immigration is hardly the route of all evil as many would suggest, but it is a situation that can cause moderate to high levels of stress both financially and culturally, especially in areas that they settle into in large numbers.

Living in Houston, I witness this everyday. The financial aspect is hard for a lot of people to apply to their regular lives, but the culture clash is easy to see and is what causes most peoples anger from what I can tell.

Now people that I know are saying that if only the protesters were Christians they'd be given jobs because the Lord provides. So I have people telling me to pray for a revival among the protesters.

I don't mean to make this a religious thread, but I think people who automatically think that the protesters are all atheist are completely missing the point. They aren't all jobless, they aren't all atheist, they aren't all young people, they aren't all old people. They really can't be all lumped together into one big group like that. And they don't want Bibles and hymnals, they want big corporations to stop cheating them. >.> That's just completely missing the point, I think.

Or maybe I'm missing the point. :/

You can see it in Austin too. :/ I'm pretty sure everyone in this state has seen it.


Does anyone else remember the day Hispanics had a walk-out in 2006? I think that was the first year they protested this way. I was working at a server during college, and we got along just fine without half of our kitchen staff. It was a little hectic in the beginning because nobody had any idea what was going on, but yeah...no. You make it seem as though people aren't adaptable.


Wow! Of course the Bible thumpers have to make this exclusively about God.

/sigh

http://www.businessinsider.com/matt-taibbi-has-some-advice-for-the-wall-street-protesters-2011-10

some good info i thought

Coming from that side, the people saying that are stupid. The Lord does provide but not solely on the basis of 'well if they were Christians they would have a job" We've had numerous people in our church have job problems. He'll make sure they won't starve, and maybe even help them grow, but having faith isn't a guarantee of a struggle free life. I'd go out on a limb to say 95% of professed Christians have it all wrong.

Illegal immigrants do pay into the system.

CBO research has estimated that between 50 and 75 percent of illegal workers work above board, and in addition to state and federal withholding they have around $7b a year in Social Security contributions that they're not eligible for that pad the rest of us.

Even assuming they don't pay those taxes and work under the table, they pay sales and excise taxes to the tune of an estimated $428 billion dollars per year.

I don't support illegal immigration, but we can't pretend that they don't pay into the system. I agree that it's primarily a culture clash, and between immigrants don't want to assimilate (which is understandable but problematic) and the fact that they are abusing the system in order to be here, it's easy to see why people take exception to them.

Deportation will never be a feasible answer though. There are ~12m illegal immigrants in the US, or roughly 4% of the 300m US population. It would be the equivalent of deporting the 7th most populated state in the country (which I happen to live in, strangely enough) or the combined populations of the 10 least populated, more if you assume that even a percentage of them make it back in to be deported again. It could be tried as a deterrent, but it logistically can't work.

Putting them in prison like Arizona is an even worse idea, since it spends more resources than they used out of prison and decreases their per capita contributions to the economy. The idea is so ludicrous that even most anti-immigration politicians won't touch it, unless they happen to be getting lobbied (or in the case of AZ, having their bills drafted) by privatized prisons at the time.

Thanks for the clarification and stats, Solara.

Deportation and imprisonment is probably just as much a drain on our wealth (well, lack there of now) as keeping them here. I just wish that people would go about the process the legal way, like many other immigrants, and assimilate.

I guess we can be happy that we're not facing the same immigration problems as Europe.

shouldn't we figure out why they are leaving their country in the first place?

LOL! In our case, it's because South and Central America are black holes. In your case, it's because the Middle-East is a black hole.

clarify pls what makes them a black hole.

The Human Development Index...

Link.

Wiki Link, if you need it.

ah thx, i'll read it tomorrow.
but there is another question wouldn't it be cheaper for the high HDI nation to help the lower to become high to prevent that their people leave their home nation, as paying for the "damage" they are causing?

if it seems like this is meant in an insulting way, then it is because of my english skills.nothing is meant as an insult or inhumanitarian.

Well, assuming the nation that is receiving humanitarian aid doesn't have a corrupt government, yeah, that could work, but haven't we seen plenty of examples of why it wouldn't just in the past decade?

No problem. I understand. I can see where my commentary can be perceived as "biting" sometimes. /shrug Text simply doesn't convey the emotion or lack there of behind it.

Be that as it may that they may actually pay into the system, but wouldn't it be better if a legal american had the job and then in the second case, in addition to sales taxs etc, they'll be paying state and federal taxes? I mean, you could swap around who has these jobs and I think that in the end it'll always be better for a legal american to have it as opposed to an illegal american; in effect, they're not really helping yar?

depends on the job and individual, and if the said illegal sends the money out of the US or not.

Of course it'd be preferable to have those jobs available for citizens, like I said, I don't support illegal immigration. I do support acting based on facts and working towards reasonable outcomes, which the current major proposals fail to do.

Going after the immigrant is a waste, they have nothing to lose, which is why they risk everything coming in the first place. Doing it in the current climate is just vacates low wage jobs held by the people we catch, which the next wave comes in and fills while the people we kicked out come back as well. The best way to deal with illegal immigration is by removing their incentive to be here, namely jobs. I know it's anathema to the Republican party to suggest holding businesses accountable, and Democrats are too scared of annoying their brown base to propose anything meaningful about immigration, but it's the best way to approach it.

Stricter oversight, whistle blower incentives, and harsher penalties(fines, revocation of tax incentives, etc) for businesses allowing undocumented/mis-documented workers would make it financially undesirable for businesses to hire illegal immigrants. Once they lose more in penalties by not hiring Americans/Legal immigrants than they gain in paying undocumented workers lower wages, those jobs will open up for legal citizens.

When current immigrants are unable to find work, they're forced to return home to support the family they previously supported with wages earned here. That creates a disincentive for the next wave of immigrants, and over time lowers the total amount of immigration to a manageable level. Then things like deportation become feasible, because you can begin to expect a net decrease, instead of tossing one group out while the next is on their way in to replace them.

The flip side of this is that decreasing the supply of illegal labor by any method may drive those businesses away, so they can just pay those same people less than minimum wage on the other side of the border instead. Even without fines or penalties, they double their per employee labor cost when they have to start paying US citizens $7.50 an hour for work immigrants did for $3.75.

I guess my question to that is why weren't Americans hired in the first place then? I would assume the most likely answer is that its cheaper on the employer or those are just who they want to employ (by they I'm mainly referring to family members and those currently in the states fighting for illegal immigrants rights.) Would three illegal jobs end up being only one American job? Would you really want to do their job?

I'm not really fighting for illegals here just more curious than anything.

its what emoticons are for!!
>:D

Thought I'd share this little gem since this would be the thread for it. Made me lol pretty hard.
http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/12/342314/fox-news-poll-backfires-70-percent-support-occupy-wall-street/

Oh snap..... Looks like the results of the next election are in!

ON second thought, I'm sure the activists got a hold of that poll, fox news viewers cant even work a computer anyway....

And 4chan