El Paso Times reports: Immigration-reform rally: Marchers call for president to present plan before April 30
EL PASO -- More than 1,000 people, many of them undocumented immigrants, joined together Saturday to urge President Barack Obama to get behind them so they can become U.S. citizens. "We are calling the president to present a specific immigration reform proposal in Congress before April 30th that will bring a solution," said Fernando Garcia, a coordinator of the rally. Law-abiding people who are working in America and contributing to the U.S. economy should be given a clear path to citizenship, said many of the marchers.
EL PASO -- More than 1,000 people, many of them undocumented immigrants, joined together Saturday to urge President Barack Obama to get behind them so they can become U.S. citizens. "We are calling the president to present a specific immigration reform proposal in Congress before April 30th that will bring a solution," said Fernando Garcia, a coordinator of the rally. Law-abiding people who are working in America and contributing to the U.S. economy should be given a clear path to citizenship, said many of the marchers.
"Immigrants come to the U.S. to improve their conditions and to try to contribute to the economy of the nation through their hard work, not to take other people's jobs," said Jesus Castellanos, who said he was in the United States illegally for decades before becoming a citizen during an amnesty period. He was among those who gathered at the University of Texas at El Paso and then marched Downtown to San Jacinto Plaza.
Groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which was not represented at the rally, counter that amnesty for millions of people who entered the country illegally would hurt the U.S. economy. The group said 25 million Americans are unemployed or working part time because only part-time jobs are available. Granting citizenship to undocumented workers would worsen the situation, the organization says.
Other organizations such as the Border Network for Human Rights and the League of Latin American Citizens backed
those seeking legalization. Other organizations such as the Border Network for Human Rights and the League of Latin American Citizens backed
The most common problem is that parents who enter the United States without proper documentation have children who are U.S. citizens by virtue of their birthright. People at the rally said current immigration laws are hurting families by splitting them. "Families are being separated and held in detention centers. We need to stop this," said Garcia, of the Border Network for Human Rights. Those who stood with him said granting citizenship to those already in America is simply justice.
"This country is made out of immigrants, and they are not the problem. They come here to work and support their families and most of the time they don't get the rights they deserve," said Pat Delgado, 65, an American who married a man from Mexico. Marchers waved U.S. and Mexican flags and colorful banners. A dance group performed a Mexican routine at the plaza, where emotions ran high.
"Events like this one are good for the community because they bring the people together to emphasize the importance of this issue and make their voices heard," said Angelica Ogaz, who said she is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. The El Paso march coincided with similar demonstrations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas and New Jersey.
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Law-abiding people who are working in America and contributing to the U.S. economy should be given a clear path to citizenship, said many of the marchers.
What a contradicting argument. If they are here in violation of immigration law and they are working and receiving a paycheck, then they are actually in violation of law, therefor they are not law-abiding. While some SS #'s may very well have been made up or fictitious numbers, that is still a Federal violation (misdemeanor - Class 4).
The most common problem is that parents who enter the United States without proper documentation have children who are U.S. citizens by virtue of their birthright. People at the rally said current immigration laws are hurting families by splitting them. "Families are being separated and held in detention centers. We need to stop this," said Garcia, of the Border Network for Human Rights. Those who stood with him said granting citizenship to those already in America is simply justice.
this argument alone makes the clarification of the 14th required, since they are now attempting to use the definition of the term "anchor baby" to grant them citizenship.
"This country is made out of immigrants, and they are not the problem. They come here to work and support their families and most of the time they don't get the rights they deserve,"
The US Constitution and the States Constitutions do not grant "rights" they protect Liberties. As immigration violators, their Liberties are not protected by the US Constitution. Their protections come from the State and "civil law". Even then, their benefits are limited as to State requirements of documentation in order to receive certain forms of state funded help.
Law abiding? They broke the law by breaking our immigration laws. After that many of them presented fraudulent documents to work or for other purposes. How is that law abiding?
They aren't here to contribute to our economy they are here for economic gain for themselves. Nothing noble about that. They do take American jobs and depress wages and for that they should gain citizenship? That is what these idiots call justice?
When Americans break the law they are separated from their families also. Should we stop incarcerating parents for their crimes just because they have children? The illegals at least have the choice to return to their homelands with their children and the family is still intact. Not so with American crime breakers. Why should our laws be bent for illegals?
So this country in its early years was built by immigrants. What has that to do with illegal immigration today?
Rights they deserve? LOL! They get all the human rights they deserve already. They have no right to make demands on our country after crashing our borders. The only right they have is swift deportation back to their homeland along with their families. So where is the separation of families in that?
This war has only begun. These illegal invaders are going home. There will be no amnesty no matter how many scenes they make and how many demands they make. Any American who sticks up for them needs to examine their loyalty to this country.
Immigration in 1798 :
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison against the "Sedition Acts" and "Alien Acts" of President John Adams - Journalists arrested for libel against President Adams - Deportation of Europeans
I am very happy to have found this site of Wendy McElroy with beautiful and intelligent references to History. How can we understand the present if we ignore the past ??
WendyMcElroy.com
A site for individualist feminism and individualist anarchism
Liberty for Women
XENOPHOBIA AND SUPPRESSING THE POLITICAL OPPOSITION
By Wendy McElroy
April 9, 2010
XENOPHOBIA AND SUPPRESSING THE POLITICAL OPPOSITION
http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3201
Some excerpts of a very long article :
In 1798, the threat of war with France loomed: immigrants from France and Ireland -- a nation aligned with the anti-British French -- were viewed with political suspicion. Accordingly, Congress passed four laws collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Naturalization Act required aliens to be residents for 14 years before becoming eligible for citizenship. The Alien Act authorized the deportation of "dangerous" aliens. The Alien Enemies Act allowed the arrest, imprisonment and deportation of any alien who was the subject of an enemy power. The Sedition Act provided fines and jail penalties for anyone who "shall write, print, utter or publish... scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress...or the President...with intent to defame...or to bring them...into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them...hatred."
The Acts had been pushed forward by the federalists -- those who favored a strong federal government and a loose interpretation of the Constitution: the federalists dominated Congress. One of their motives was to silence opposition from their political rivals, republicans, whom immigrants tended to support. The prominent republicans Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed that the powers claimed by President John Adams under the Acts resembled those of a monarch. They denounced the Sedition Act in particular as "unconstitutional," as a violation of the First Amendment. Both the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures passed Resolves that rejected the Acts and set forth the doctrine of nullification.
Although no one was prosecuted under the first three measures, a series of influential republicans -- including prominent editors and printers -- were quickly charged under the Sedition Act, forcing some newspapers to close. One of the men prosecuted was Benjamin Franklin's grandson and the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora. The charge: libeling President Adams. His arrest sparked a public outcry against the Acts, which helped give the Presidency to Jefferson in 1800. Once in office, he pardoned those convicted under the Sedition Act and Congress repaid the fines collected...with interest.
Thus, from America's earliest years, the issues of alien residents and free speech have been linked during crisis. Although the early republicans were not necessarily more sanguine about resident aliens than federalists, they were intensely suspicious of expanding the federal government's authority. They believed that the power to suppress constitutional freedoms would be used inevitably to quash political opposition.
Raciality.com
Vicente Duque
Granting citizenship to illegal aliens just because they already in America is not justice, it is a travesty of the first order. We should not subscribe to the fait accompli school of justice. That would excuse all those violators of the law simply because they have been able to elude apprehension and repatriation. The fait accompli principe would imply that if a burglar enters your home while you are at work, escapes with your valuables, and has not been apprehended to date, simple justice would be to grant amnesty to the burglar because he got away with his crime.
To the contrary, simple justice in the case of illegal aliens is the gradual, systematic identification and repatriation of all those who cannot prove that they have not taken jobs that citizens will do; that they in fact add more to our economy than they take out in the form of social services, remittances, education, and medical care; that they are strong supporters of America's sovereignty; that they are socially integrated and culturally and linguistically assimilated;that they have paid all applicable taxes since they entered illegally; and that they now support any and all measures necessary to secure out borders.
I suppose they believe this applies to the illegal who steps over the border the day before any bill passes. All those who stream across the border daily could now simply stay and be granted citizenship.
"We are calling the president to present a specific immigration reform proposal in Congress before April 30th that will bring a solution..."
We all can subscribe to that but the immigration reforms loyals Americans want the president to present are far different from those favored by illegal aliens. Who should the President listen to -- citizens or illegals?
"Immigrants come to the U.S. to improve their conditions and to try to contribute to the economy of the nation through their hard work, not to take other people's jobs"
Most would agree that illegal aliens want to improve their conditions but they have little regard for how their presence affects unemployed citizens or those in need of Medicaid assistance.
They do not come here to "...to try to contribute to the economy of the nation through their hard work..." That is the farthest thing from their minds. And most have little understanding of the U.S. economy or economics in general. They do not understand that the more of us there are, the less there is for each of us.
They may not come here to take other people's jobs but that is the observable result so that statement is empty rhetoric.
I have no sympathy for the family separation argument. It simply doesn't hold water. If they want to avoid separation, they can return as a unit to their homelands. This is a red herring and never should be recognized as a basis for legalization. Parents under a removal order must take their minor children with them regardless of their citizenship. Their adult childreni born in the U.S. can make their own decisions as to whether to stay or go, just as many legal immigrants before them had to decide whether to remain in their homelands with their siblings and parents or strike out on their own as adults in the new world.
Modern transportation and communication system enable families to stay in much closer touch than they could in the 1800s.
Those that believe they deserve a pathway to citizenship could improve their chances and their acceptance if they also endorsed, in large numbers, English as the official language of the U.S; and if they endorsed effective border security measures including the use of E-verify across the board as a way to begin the process of identifying and counting all of the illegal aliens and determining how many of them deserve to stay in the U.S. even though they admit they entered illegally. In other words, start acting like the American they want to become rather than just a Mexican who lives in the U.S. illegally.
They need to start thinking about what is in the national interest not just their personal interest. The retention of some of the illegals and the granting of a pathway to citizenship can be justified only on the basis of the needs of our economy and the recognition by the illegals that they need to change their behavior before they can be absolved of their wrongdoing for entering this country illegally. There is something inherently wrong with the idea of illegal aliens demonstrating in the streets for rights they do not deservel and for changes in the laws they have violated.
I have no problem with jailing miscreant employers. Although I would support no bail, that would be a very difficult proposition to sell to anyone. In the law and precedents which guide judges' bail decisions, it is a well-established principle that if there is no risk of flight and if the offense is a nonviolent one such that the offender is no threat to the public, bail is almost always granted. Most employers would fall in this category and judges would most certainly grant bail. There may be exceptions but that's the way it crumbles cookiewise. I doubt there is anything we could do to alter that time-honored approach to justice: innocent until proven guilty and for bail: no flight risk, and no danger to the community.
Getting more funding for the border patrol will be difficult unless there is solid evidence that a staffing increase would be cost effective. I have already seen articles in which officials have pointed out the increases that have already occurred with little in the way of results. Of course, the BP agents must be well-trained. I don't know the extent of their current training regimen. Although I can subscribe to all of those measures, I believe that only the jailing of employers of illegals would have any impact. And, of course, if they had done that in Pottsville the result would have been the same. The jailed employer would have had to fire all of his illegal employees. So, if you are trying to let the illegals off scotfree to help the communities in which they work, it is highly unlikely that that would be the result.
Jailing employers with no bail should have an impact but there would be a certain amount of outrage that only one of the miscreant parties is being punished. I know you don't agree with that but the question was: "What measures would you take, at the border and internally, to secure the borders if your job depended on the result?
Would you be willing to bet your livelihood, your ability to make the payments on your home, car, etc. on the effectiveness of your proposals? How would you identify miscreant employers without E-verify and without any raids or roundups? Do you really think that could be done without those tools? How?
I am convinced that without the ability to identify miscreant employers, the idea of jail without bail is an empty concept.
Obviously, I think much more has to be done to achieve the objective of secure borders. Added to the things you suggested above, mandatory E-verify across the board, the repatriation of a significant numbers of illegals, a six month sentence working on border infrastructure for the first offense, and expeditious immigration decisions with little time for appeals. Add to that a re-interdpretation of the 14th amendment to require at least one parent to be a citizen before the child can become an instant citizen, an end to chain immigrations, and true fluency in English for citizenship and you would begin to have an effective approach to border security in depth. Even with those measures I would continue to have major concerns about the volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic at the borders. Thata volume is made for terrorists.
Finally, I just became aware that the importation of tourists for the sole purpose of producing a child on American soil, is a booming business. It costs about $45,000. Something like 3-7000 Turkish women have done just that. A bill has been introduced in the Congress to address this issue but whether any
Democrats will support it is questionable.
I think if you really put yourself in the hypotetical situation I described, you would have some different ideas about what would be required for effective border and internal enforcement measures. In fact, except for your ethnocentric bias, as a former middle manager well-thought of by your bosses, you would certainly be able to do a better job than the feeble measures you have suggested. I think deep down you know they would be inadequate and that the flow of illegals would continue.
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