Wow. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management estimates that illegal immigrants have dumped some 25 MILLION POUNDS OF TRASH on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexican border. Cleanup crews and volunteer groups have spent enormous time and resources cleaning up the garbage, but have thus far picked up only 1 percent of it -- 250,000 pounds.
4:01 PM * PERMALINK * 6 comments
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Comments:
I recommend you take a look at this to get some perspective:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php
For instance, the second picture description reads:
"Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes."
I can see you have a very anti-illegal immigrant stance. I don't see anything wrong with this point of view, just that I feel that it isn't as big of a problem as many people think it is.
Many people feel that, "oh, our system is being gamed and our tax dollars are being spent on people who don't even pay taxes." but many people don't realize that this tax dollar is actually getting put to good use relieving families who are struggling.. many people come here illegally just so that they can earn enough money to survive or provide a better future for their family. Just imagine it as a humanitarian cause and that your tax dollars are being donated to charity.
And then, maybe one can say, well, my tax dollars are not spent the way I want them to be... well, then, what about the millions of dollars that's being spent by the U.S. government to waste lives.. U.S. soldier lives are killed, Iraqi lives are killed... lives are wasted here...
Is war a much more justifiable expense than illegal struggling families?
Maybe our tax dollars are being spent on illegal immigrants, but if you treat this as a humanitarian donation of helping the many masses from struggling,
this is a good thing because it is keeping people alive.
where all of our tax dollar is being spent...
more money goes to war and
Oops.. I forgot to delete my "rough draft sentences".. hehe..
The problem is the term "illegal". You're doing no one favors by saying it's illegal but we'll look the other way as long as you do our gardening for less than minimal wage. Illegal immigration should be stopped, and a perfectly viable method to stop illegal immigrants is to make it much easier for people to come into the country legally - that's what the debate should be about rather than random amnesties for law-breakers. After all, a guy stealing a TV is just looking for a better life for his family but I think you'll agree that it's much better to have him get a better job so he can afford it legally rather than turn the other cheek to his theft because he has less than us.
I don't think it's about allowing everyone to come. If we had completely open borders, we might be getting 30 million people per month. In a few years, the U.S. would be larger than China.
Is that what you're advocating?
Or, should we just make it legal for Latin Americans to come in unlimited numbers, and restrict everyone else. That doesn't sound fair, does it?
The only reasonable positions are:
1) make immigration unrestricted for everyone, in which case we would have to deal with *serious* overcrowding and a radical increase in problems associated with immigrants who never assimilate; or
2) increase the number of legal immigrants we allow in from all countries evenly or fairly, in which case we'd still have to control the border.
It seems to me that, like every other country in the world, the U.S. has a right to control its borders and immigration.
When we allow illegal immigration, as we do now (i.e., not really do much about it), it's unfair to everyone. It's unfair to the billion people in the world who would love to immigrate, but don't because they don't want to break our laws; it's unfair to Mexicans and latin Americans who want to immigrate but don't want to break our laws; it's unfair to illegal immigrants who come here and have to live in the shadows as criminals; it's unfair to low-wage Americans who have to compete with illegal immigrant labor; it's unfair to teenagers, who can't get jobs anymore because all the teenager jobs -- mowing the lawn, busboy jobs, burger-flipping, etc. -- are taken by illegal immigrants; it's unfair to taxpayers, who have a carry a 20k per year burden for every illegal immigrant family; etc.
Mike
Mike
Personally, I'm not advocating any change (nor am I proposing things stay the same). I'm simply proposing that people lobbying for amnesty for illegals while still keeping their actions illegal are misguided and should take a look at how to change immigration policy rather than just say "look the other way".
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