Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [MLUG][Politics]The great immigration wash-out

[Rick <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Nathan Odle wrote:
> 2)  Everyone not willing to sign up for the amnesty deal gets cut off 
> entirely.  Entirely.  No health care, no welfare, no nothing.  Everyone 
> else retains normal resident alien rights.  There should be no argument 
> about this...they had their chance.

This should be the default. Non-Americans (read those who are citizens 
of other countries) should not be eligible for benefits paid for by 
American citizens. However, since under this type of plan, new 
immigrants are working and paying taxes, they fall under the umbrella of 
services that they are helping pay for.

> 3)  Close the border.  Tight.  We have ways to make this work, including 
> putting some pressure on Mexico to keep them from encouraging their 
> people to come up here.  An adjunct strategy would be to do everything 
> we can to help Mexico improve their standards of living so less people 
> actually want to come up here.  Also, given 4), less people will be 
> trying to get here illegally, there's just no need now that you can walk 
> up to the border and be guaranteed resident alien status if you're not a 
> criminal in your own country.

This is just such a big fat duh that I still don't understand why it's 
being debated at all.

> 4)  For all new immigrants, give them the same 3-year probationary deal 
> with automatic citizenship thereafter.  Those immigrating must submit to 
> whatever background check is reasonable and possible.  Other than that 
> there are no restrictions.  No quotas, no BS, if you're likely to be a 
> contributing member of American society you're in.
> 5)  It goes without saying that there's a good chance we'd go full-on 
> bilingual with this plan as the majority of new immigrants would be 
> Mexican.  I'll save the debate over whether or not an English test 
> should be compulsory for another time.  Part of me says that the 
> economic benefit of all the new contributing citizens would outweigh the 
> costs of going full bilingual since we're practically there now.  
> Besides, it's a relatively short-term situation - in 100 years it'll all 
> merge into one language anyway.

While I'm certainly not against more Americans being bilingual, I expect 
every immigrant to learn at least passable English. Frankly, I'd like to 
learn Russian.

> 6)  For full enforceability, best results would be achieved with a 
> National ID card of sorts for citizens and resident aliens.  Used only 
> for "citizen/resident alien-only" benefits.  I'm not sure I'd be willing 
> to make this leap though.

I'm afraid none of the "denial of service" type plans will work without 
some measure like this.<tinfoil> I also believe that's one of the key 
reasons why this issue was brought to the forefront.</tinfoil>

> 7)  It's possible that very-long-term, this plan would result in the 
> merging of the US and Mexico into a single country.  Likewise for any 
> other plan that results in large-scale legal immigration.

Unlikely at best, but an interesting point to ponder.

Rick
--
We simply can't idiot-proof everything. Sometimes the idiots just have 
to suffer and die.
--http://www.overheardintheoffice.com/

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