Interesting point....actually good point.

Whenever I have the choice I will reject a Chinese-made good and buy the American-made equivalent.

But it is getting harder and harder to make the choice.

There is, however, a big difference between the kind of corporate greed that brings us $100.00 TVasets made by Chinese slave labor at a cost of $10.00 and the kind of massive illegal immigration invasion that we are witnessing.

Illegal immigration beyond the very simplistic notion of "taking-away" American jobs.

Illegal immigration is all about with higher crime rates; it has to do with additional medical expenses, additional educational expenses, additional law enforcement expenses.

Illegal immigration has to do with the mindset of a people whose first act in our country is to commit a crime.

Illegal immigration has to do with foreign gvernments dumping their problems in our backyard.

Illegal immigration has to do with creating a permanent poor and uneducated (and often criminal and in bad health) underclass.

Illegal immigration has to do with the US having the right to protect its borders and determine who has the right to come and stay and who does not.

Illegal immigration has to do with your right, and my right and the right of every legal American to pick and choose who gets to live here.

Illegal immigration has to do with protecting the integrity of our culture (warts and all -- a society that allows its culture to be subverted will not endure long).

Illegal immigration has to do with businesses who don't like to play fair. Most businesses pay a higher "premium" to employ legal citizens. Businesses who regularly employ illegal aliens gain an unfair competitive advantage over those businesses that play by the rules.

And, interestingly enough, illegal immigration (or stopping it) has everything to do with protecting the rights of poor minorities who are here legally. As long as there is a constant influx of cheap labor from Mexico and elsewhere, poor minorities, with little or no education, will not have a chance to move up the ladder.

Why pay a legal Guatemalan $10.00/hour (plus benefits) when you can pay $5.00 (and no benefits) to an illegal one. As it is often the case, it is the people at the bottom of the ladder who get f***ed royally -- and they have the least ability to withstand the blow.

I hope this answered your question -- or at least caused you to examine your beliefs.

I answered your question assuming that it was asked in good faith and with the intent of stimulating reasoned debate.

Your response will let me know whether I was right or wrong in my assumptions. I hope I was not wrong.

My kids ride horses. Horses have to be trained to jump. It is not something that they like to do naturally -- carrots or no carrots.

Unlike many of the regular OD posters, preventing illegal immigration isn't a cause I champion.

However, I'm not sold on the Chinese goods analogy. The 'slave wages' mentioned may be a lot of money for the people who earn them. In all seriousness their other option may be sifting through the dump for anything they can eat or sell.

In a similar way, $50K might buy you a nice house in Kansas but may barely cover rent for a year in Manhattan. Is it wrong that the people in Kansas make less for doing the same job than the people in Manhattan?

It's simple. Just get the UN to pass a resolution requiring that everybody is equal and that there are no borders.

Then we can engage in a rousing game of non-competitive faux futbol and have a nice organic tofu sandwich.

Feel the love!

No...no...no.

Invade Mexico, make it the 51st state, make all Mexicans US citizens and ipso facto you eliminate illegal immigration.

Serious ?
 

Seems to me we’ve done a pretty good job of “training” the Mexicans that there are better things on this side of the fence. Otherwise, why the hell would they be coming over here? It also seems to me that if you want to stop the influx of Mexicans coming over/through the fence, you’d better put some focus on the folks over here with the carrots. You’d also better be looking at the big picture of things when you do. Coming down on the folks employing them will have some pretty big repercussions. If you can’t understand this…..I doubt you ever will……..

If you could just snap your finger and they’d all be gone. Don’t think for a second that you’d be OK with the economic results. And, don’t think for a second that all the jobs they left open would be filled with legal Americans that you seem to think are now waiting for the chance. Also - Many of those that would take some of the jobs, wouldn’t have them available for long.

BTW - We have a pasture full of horses here. My daughter has 3. My son has 1. My wife and I each have 2. None of them have been “trained” to jump anything. All but the Shetland will jump the fence (or plow through it. Ref. the tank of a Paint Horse she‘s on, attached) if we didn’t feed them where they are, and teased them with rolled oats or carrots on the other side of the fence. No (normal) horse will starve to death while looking at (and smelling) feed through a fence. None of ours will, anyway. Not sure what your kids are riding.

If you’re hungry enough - you wont either. And no one had to train you to climb a fence.

I didn't miss your point. We know we have trained illegal aliens to come over to our side of the fence.

I am willing to pay the additional "costs" of good if illegal aliens were no longer poicking fruits and vegetables. I will save it on the other end with lower costs for law enforcement, health costs and educational costs for illegal aliens.

Also, will enjoy driving in less crowded freeways. On the recent "no illegal workday" the L.A. area freeways were a joy to drive...far less congestion (like I used to remember).

My kids ride jumper-hunter class horses. One of them will be leaving for Colorado for a month to do some shows. You may own a lot of horses and that's fine, but I've been around them for a while and horses don't like to jump. You have to teach them to like jumping -- which they can do quite well once they figure out they can do it.

Great comments WVO!

This is really two separate issues. Illegal immigrants are here for an opportunity at better life than they can have back home. They can earn more and have greater opportunity at success. As long as these folks are willing to work, it seems many will hire them.

Products from China are popular because they assist folks to get a better value. Both Chinese products and illegal immigrants find commonality in a place that espouses value in work and in buying. Beyond that there is not much to compare between the two.

Now if we want to talk about the morality of a permanent under class and how Chinese products and illegal immigrants serve to perpetuate that underclass, that is a horse of a different color.

Ok - You didn’t miss any point. (and I did edit that line off the post pdq.) But you sure may not be looking at a very big picture. There’s a hell of a lot more to this country than LA.

I can see where there would certainly be some good (ok - GREAT) repercussions in the LA area. You guys have a mess with them out there, I‘ll agree. I respect your stand. But, it’s not that way everywhere they can be found. Keep in mind too, there’s a hell of a lot more going on with them here (in the US) than picking your fruits and veggies vs. cost of edu and law enforcement.

I’d like to see someone do a study on the effects, based on costs of law enforcement, education, etc. and balance it against the effects on food, housing costs, etc. And, do it across the country. Not just in LA. I know, we wouldn’t “make it up“ with anything around here. I don’t think the majority of the country would either.



Horses don’t like to starve either. Most will jump before they do. Trained or not. Like it or not.



Wish your kid luck in CO, from all of us here!!
Keep them in it. Whether it’s hunter-jumper class or range/cattle work and barrel racing - horses are great for kids of all ages. On that - I think we’ll agree.

An apple won't triple or anything that radical. Why triple? Why not eight fold or twenty fold? In any case that is called incentive to do something good for yourself.

Not saying it is the law therefore it is right. What has right and wrong got to do with it? It is the law, period. Yes, women and blacks weren't allowed to vote. However the law now says they can. Is that right? Some would argue it isn't. What then? Right and wrong are value judgements. Is it right that I should be inconvenienced at a store and have to show ID and what not because some others passed bad checks? Is it right that I have to be searched so throughly because 19 muslims rammed three planes into buildings? I'm not muslim. I'm not even middle eastern looking. Why did I have to take my shoes off, belt off, etc, etc when before 911 I never had to? If you want to talk of right and wrong, who judges what is right or wrong? You?

their morality or lack of it is not our concern. If we interfere, people will scream and yell. If we don't we are immoral. Can't win for losing.

The percentage of ILLEGAL workers in agriculture is small, the price effect of doing away with ILLEGAL workers would be tiny. I think you are confused thinking people are advocating kicking out ALL Mexicans.

And comparing to buying Chinese products is not apples to apples (no pun intended). Its called free trade and EVERY time in the past when somebody tried to invoke protectionist laws, the consumer gets hurt. Competition is what makes products better. And with which countries do you draw the line? Some would argue we should not allow German cars in, where would we be then?

That said, it is an unfortunate fact of life that when you deal with a country (China, India etc) whose government is on board for dumping cheap products to export, its not really free trade. Their government is taking advantage of their own peoples low standard of living with regards to wages.

There is no good solution to the trade issue, but it is not at all related to your immigration question.

What ?!?!
 

I can’t even come up with the words to describe how far off you are with this statement.

Obviously, you have never been to the agricultural regions of this country.

Maybe to the ag industry it is a large thing. How about to the economy as a whole? In either case, the principle is the same isn't it? Where are you going to draw the line between what is illegal and what is not? Should looting in say New Orleans be legal since many are doing it?

This is not as true as you think, and will be changing rapidly in the very near future. Read the book "China Inc." by Ted Fishman and prepare to be damn near terrified of the economic threat that China poses not only to the US but to the entire first world.

There isn't anything that any first world country can manufacture that China can't eventually manufacture better and cheaper. Every time we first-worlders marvel how inexpensively we can purchase just about anything now, its because the Chinese are driving the market and taking manufacturing jobs from the US, Canada, Europe, and just about every one else in the world. This trend will only continue.

China presently represents one of the greatest threats to the economy of the first world. As more manufacturing migrates there, the erosion of good paying jobs continues. The knowledge jobs are next, because China (and India) have gigantic and highly competitive university school systems and combine those training grounds with partnerships with all of the world's tech manufacturers, presently scrambling to set up research centres there. These two facts combine to give China an unhealthy control over both the development of products as well as the supply chains that connect to the first world. The Chinese are using the influx of foreign capital that comes iwth all of this to not only increase their competitiveness, but also to float the debt that much of the first world is currently accumulating. China holds a substantial percentage of US (and other foreign nation) government and private debt right now.

Give them 10 years and China will hold the US and other first world nations by the economic short and curiles. The one minor upside to this is that in order to look for work, illegal immigrants are going to have to find ways to get to China because many of jobs left here in North America will be the service/manual labour jobs that we presently don't want to do.