I don't want to LJ-cut this, I am such a dirty hypocrite.

[capnkjb]

Everyone's in a huff over the new Arizona "show me your papers" law. I tend to side with those who find it objectionable, since on its face it's simply racial profiling. Sure, comparing it to being a Jew in late '30s Germany is a bit of a stretch - there's no confinement to barrios, no "here is my Latin American armband" crap, no Final Solution (to

Comments

[quadro_ellen]

Xenophobia is an easy reaction to fear! It doesn't require much thought or understanding of complex social issues! You don't have to know what a collateralized debt obligation is to notice there are a lot of them brown people around.

[chrisfs]

"What prompted me to type all this was the result of being foolish and reading comments on SFGate. "
That's rarely a good idea. :)

If anyone is stealing jobs, it's employers, not the illegals they hire. They are the ones that hire people for substandard wages knowing they will work cheaper than legal residents. It's a fact of life in a number of industries. Yet it's the illegals and not the employers who get blamed. Those crafty illegal aliens with their perfectly accurate id documents and their flawless command of English, they fool their prospective employers every time. Oh Noes!
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/281867/april-21-2010/the-word---no-problemo

[capnkjb]

I actually saw that one! I was somewhat disappointed because there were not a whole lot of one-liners on the side, but on the other hand it seemed more real and informative than most other Words.

[nonlinearsystem]

You read comments on SFGate? I only ever read those for the Jerry Springer entertainment effect.

But all this talk about amnesty for current illegal immigrants is interesting, but doesn't address the entrenched issue: Why are immigration quotas so limited that people risk death to come here illegally? If we allowed in enough people legally, nobody would risk their neck to cross the desert with coyotes. How does it make economic sense to send manufacturing overseas for cheap labor, while cheap labor is pounding on the door to assist US manufacturing? How does it make sense to force the labor market underground, and lose all the tax revenue and ability to regulate this market?

[capnkjb]

Fun read: 5 Myths About Immigration.

The geniuses who post comments on news articles are often why we can't have anything nice.

[nonlinearsystem]

It's the people who shout the loudest who get heard, even though they don't represent what most people believe.

Thanks for the read. Half a million a year of illegal immigrants; that's a 0.5% yearly US population increase. If we legalized those immigrants, it takes a stretch of the imagination to believe that this will shock the economy more then, say, a leaking oil well.