I am pretty passionate about this stuff and you too have personal ties to the topic. I apologize if you feel I mischaracterized you. I have vast, very up close and personal experiences with poor people, legal and “illegal” immigrants in working, educational and social environments .
My frustration with the label of “illegal”, is that the government makes a law but doesn’t enforce it. What passes for “Illegal immigration” is purposeful or intentional, irresponsible in-sourcing of needy people. The government is irresponsible by not legalizing immigrants to the degree that employers wish to recruit them. All the fussing about the benefits illegals and their offspring receive and all the other one-sided or mostly one-side arguments you frequently see here constitute “scapegoating” to me.
I also think the social costs are not looked at objectively. Capitalism requires a constant underclass but is a failure if one can’t accomplished the entitled ascension to wealth and its trappings. We are now recruiting and underclass that often takes 3 or four generations to move up. While that makes it cheap to get some the goods and services we have and enjoy, it comes at a cost. In contrast the cost is probably being over- socialized through state services but the profits are scurried off by the capitalists.While poor native born citizens are almost always prone to grumbling about the situation , to some degree rightfully so. the middle class and upper middle class citizens are generally happy enough with the status quo and the debate is theoretical until the bill becomes hard to pay, during a recession, then the scapegoating of illegals gets a broader range of participants. Even in the professional world “isms” become more significant.
The “illegals” and children of the illegals and legal immigrants not on solid footing, are doing a significant percentage of our volunteer military and they are doing the heavy lifting in construction(including defense products) and other low skilled work,including taking care of sick and elderly legal citizens, which would put large burdens on families if they had to do it themselves.
If we permitted only a class of immigrants qualified to be our peers, we wouldn’t be able to benefit from the goods and services that the underclass provides so cheaply or we would be paying for them directly.This would be necessary in place of the taxes that go to catch the people, who by the nature of being on the fringe need help or else we would be brutes.
The U.S native born underclass has to compete with this structure putting somewhat of a ceiling on upward mobility as well. The weaker of them are obviously going to demand the same social benefits as the illegals who fall through the cracks. Some of this group are also going to scrape by doing work others do not and or by joining the military.
I definitely think the needs or the poor should be provided for and the term “illegal” should be used more carefully. Does the system need work? Which one doesn’t? I think we are a kind of kiss-up kick down society when it comes to this. We admire wealth with much less concern for the integrity, or lack of, in obtaining it, but abhor the needy with an inabilty to see things that should make us want to defend them and their dignity.
I think we should take care of many of the refugees that we do. Yesterday my wife met an Iraqi woman who is receiving the kind of aid people often bemoan. Her family was recently blown to pieces in Iraq. She and to a lesser degree I, meet people like this all the time.Sometimes they are completely incapacitated by ignorance or injuries of many kinds. We should be proud of taking care of people like her when we are making our strategical and economic gains at their expense.
