^ Vincent, what are immigration politics in Germany like? Is illegal immigration a major issue there? My impression is that it's easier to attain legal permanent resident status (not necessarily citizenship) in Germany than it is here, but I'm not really sure on that. (
Here's a post I made awhile back briefly outlining how that process typically works in the US.)
dazzlingamy said:
I think the main issue is not illegial immigrants but the reuthless selfish companies and contracters who offer jobs with the most disgusting wages attached to them, making more and more profit for themselves and taking advantage of immigrants and causing bigger problems.
Why is the pursuit of happiness imposed with make money. When are were going to realise how much we are fucking things up all in the pursuit of making a quick buck for what?
I'll resurrect what Lies said earlier at this point, because I think it offers at least the beginnings of a practical answer to your question...
Liesje said:
IMO, this problem seems to go around in circles and each point on the circle only perpetuates it further. I think the way Justin's arguments flow are a good example of how you can really blame anyone here, it just depends on what perspective you're taking at the time.
What I see is this: Many people in Mexico are poor and because of corruption or bad economics, really have no chance. They can't afford to cross legally, so they do it illegally. You can't get a good job as an illegal, but ironically you're basically forced to in order to BE legal. Like my friend from Central America who was from a poor family and now has the same education I do - he was required to find a full time job that would sign a three year contract in order to maintain a valid visa, while I get off easy because I'm a born citizen and can float between shitty part time jobs or unemployment as I please. So then people start blaming the corporations who either won't give good jobs to legals or will give shitty jobs to illegals because they will take less pay. But it's not always their fault either. Did you know that they are not allowed to fire someone just because they suspect that person is illegal? My dad's employer has thousands of illegals, and everyone knows they are illegal, but they can't prove it because they've got SSNs even thought we all know they aren't valid. They are hard working, reliable people who will work for minimum wage and when required, produce some kind of documentation "proving" they are legal. Companies don't have the resources or the authority to run background checks just because they suspect the documentation is falsified. So then we go one step further and blame the US government for making it so damn hard for people to become legal and get a normal job. But where do we draw the line? Do we just let everyone in? We don't even have enough jobs for our own people, some of whom are just as poor. We're right back where we started. 
I'm not sure to what extent the above applies to farming, but farming is likewise far from a high-profit-margin industry, so I'd imagine it's much the same. Like BVS indicated, it would take steep increases in cost of living pretty much across the board to enable many industries to pay significantly higher wages than they currently do, especially large ones with thousands of employees. Obviously there are exceptions to that and I'm not arguing that it's a morally adequate answer in any case (nor, of course, am I arguing that *literally* criminally low wages are OK), but unfortunately that's the reality. I'm not myself opposed to empowering and even requiring companies to do more background checks, although that would require far more coordination among USCIS, SS, IRS and so on than presently exists, as well as steep increases in the number of federal agents devoted to enforcing that.
I don't though see where "They work for less because Americans can't afford to" makes much sense--illegal immigrants have to pay rent and taxes and food and transport just like anyone else, so whatever the injustice might be in their taking these jobs, it doesn't consist in them becoming millionaires through work that leaves ordinary citizens poor. Whether they place an undue burden on other taxpayers is a question I'd personally have to plead "unconvinced either way on" because the available studies on that contradict each other pretty fiercely, which is unsurprising since they share no common methodology and use wildly different measurement criteria.
That said, I do find myself somewhat sympathetic to the resistance to accepting "These people are desperate" as a justification of the status quo. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world are desperate but it's not realistic to expect the developed countries to absorb them all, nor is it fair to the rest of them for one particular group of very poor nationals to be allowed to dodge the same hoops everyone else has to jump through to get here legally, however understandable what's motivating them may be. I don't see a hypermilitarized border as a cost-effective solution to that though; everything I've read suggests that making it harder to get jobs without verifiable documentation would be a lot more efficient and eliminate the appeal of coming here illegally in the first place. I do also think that the citizenship process ought to be streamlined; whether or not Mexico's quotas should be adjusted is another sticky question and requires more certainty than (so far as I can tell) anyone really has as to just how intrinsically dependent the minimum-wage sector currently is on illegal immigrants' labor--in all likelihood neither "these are jobs no one else will take" nor "poor Americans are getting crowded out of these jobs en masse" are in fact accurate for more than a few situations.
). I'm not talking about your video. I'm not talking about hostile Mexicans. (But honestly, can you blame them for being hostile when U.S. citizens have set up militia forts to shoot people trying to come over here?)
You really went a long way to disprove yourself.
