Do the right wing Conservatives really want illegal Mexicans out of the U.S?

Absolutely not. They depend on a scared, obedient undocumented immigrant population that lives in constant fear of deportation in order to work for peanuts and demand little. It’s a way to further suppress wages, avoid labor laws, and not have to worry about unions.

But they need to talk as though they would love to rid the U.S. of immigrants. This allows them to redirect legitimate working class anger from the owners to the powerless undocumented immigrants.

The ones I know do. These illegals bring drugs with them and rape women.

^Their words, not mine.

@DoNotKnowMuch has it. It is a method of distraction from the inequality that has arisen from doing whatever to keep corporate owners happy.

Some do, some don’t. And lots haven’t thought about it.

It’s one thing to hate a faceless group (all mexicans!) – and quite another thing to hate an individual – your maid, or the guy who paints your house, or whatever. I think a lot of this hated is by stupid people who are acting like a mob.

This is mostly about assigning blame to someone else for one’s own failure.

Not everyone who wanders over the US border with Mexico is Mexican. Not every illegal immigrant to this country comes over that border. Obviously – it should go without saying, but in this forum nothing can go without saying – not every Mexican entrant into the country is illegal.

But to answer the question “as written”, anyone who wants to live by a rule of law “should” want to see “illegal Mexicans” (and Canadians, and Europeans and anyone else who has entered or stayed in the country illegally) to pay some kind of legal price for that. Whether the cost is “a fine”, or deportation / expulsion and permanent revocation of return privileges, or imprisonment, if that’s what the law calls for, should be up to the law and whoever is prosecuting it or at least nominally upholding it.

Otherwise, why have borders, Customs and Immigration and passport control at all? Come one, come all, right?

For that matter, if we’re going to abrogate laws whenever they’re inconvenient to enforce, perhaps we could just do away with Congress and courts altogether. Who needs ‘em?

But back to the OP: I don’t know what “the right wing Conservatives” want, because I don’t know any of those folks – and they certainly don’t waste any time on Fluther.

You have to separate the right wing conservative business owners from the conservative rank and file.

The rank and file are easily stirred up with bigotry and fear against immigrants,.

Meanwhile, business owners pay the undocumented workers to come and stay in the US.

That doesn’t stop the wealthy from using the bigotry and fear to steer elections.

The United States Chamber of Commerce, an organization whose membership is overwhelmingly Republican, doesn’t want to lose the cheap labor for all the reasons stated by @DoNotKnowMuch above. They are quite out front about it as an org, but they cover themselves by also stating some “immigration management” programs such as seasonal worker’s visas, etc., instituted by the Roosevelt administration during WWII in order to get the crops picked. But this is just lip service. The USCoC are about business and profits, and the type of worker described by @DoNotKnowMuch in the first post here is the most desired worker that will generate the most profit for hotels, restaurants, in construction, and in the fields.

Yep, the ones I know do too and hate that they are getting state benefits etc. Of course they hire them to do their weed eating too, though, in all fairness the guys are legal not illegals. I have no problem with immigrants of any kind but..I do think they should be required to become citizens and not be able to suck on the government teat when there are people like me, who have paid into the system my whole life only to be poverty stricken in later middle age this past few years. I feel like a piece of shit because I am getting medical benefits at this time after decades of solvency and good, private insurance.

I have paid into the system for almost 40 years in one capacity or another and feel embarrassed that I need the help at this time. I do think we need to take care of our own before giving handouts to non-citizens.

The ignorant ones that I know do. Thankfully I only know a couple of them personally. They simply regurgitate the bullshit they hear in the media. They don’t thik for themselves.
They also hate niggers and can’t believe a nigger is in the White House.

@Coloma they can’t get state benefits. And they’d love nothing more than to become US Citizens, but most of them simply don’t have the time or the money. Plus they’re afraid that if they come forward to start the process they’ll be deported back to the hell that they escaped.

@Dutchess_III They can give birth here for free and then have a child as a ready made citizen though.

The right wing conservatives want votes is all….and even though Trump is saying build a wall and make Mexico pay for it is not because he truly wants to boot out the illegals as we all know damn well he built his casinos with contractors who employed “illegals” in order to win low bid on his contracts. Trump is so far left of the right he should be running as a Democrat and he only says what he has said is to get media attention and suck the oxygen out of the room so Cruz, Hillary, Sanders and the rest get little to not attention because of his “entertaining” bombastic statements. Trump is playing the media, low information voters and his opponents like a maestro…it amuses me to see how few people get this.

Give birth for free…well, I’m sure it’s like anything else, there is a bill but they just don’t pay it. Should the hospitals just turn a laboring woman back out on the streets?

Yes, the kids become citizens, but the parents will never qualify for any benefits. Would you really be OK with denying a child food and shelter and doctor’s care because the parents fled their murderous country to save their family?

It seems that here, as elsewhere in silly-land, the concept of “birthright citizenship” is grossly misunderstood. No one who is in the USA illegally and gives birth here gives birth to “a US citizen”. Even Wikipedia gets this right. Y’all should, too.

@Dutchess_III No, but, as I said, I do feel that America needs to take care of their own first. pretty simple. Why should I, or anyone else foot the bill for others that are non-citizens when we have gazillions of people, children and the elderly right here at home that need assistance, many that have paid their taxes and paid into the system for decades and are entitled to very little for all their hard work. I don’t think American women should crank out baby after baby either while on the public dime, and the children do qualify, for assistance. food stamps, WIC, etc.

There were Trump supporters protesting at a Cruz rally today in Indiana. Cruz went up to one of the protesters and asked the man what he likes about Trump and why he supports him. The Trump supporter took a moment then said “everything.” Cruz asked him several times to be more specific. It took the man a bit until he finally blurted “the wall! ”

Cruz was calm and polite the entire time. He went on to tell the Trump supporter that Trump is lying. He said Trump won’t build a wall. At that moment the supporter started yelling “Lyin’ Ted Cruz! ”

I wish I was making this up. I watched it today during Shepard Smith.

The right wing average citizen? Or, the right wing politicians. Yes, a lot of people really are pissed/afraid about illegal immigration. Most of the right leaning politicians and big business people are fine with illegal immigrants being here. In fact they turn a blind eye to it on purpose.

It depends on exactly which right wing conservatives you have in mind. The thing to recognize about undocumented immigrants is that since they are here, all of us are compelled to play the game. I say this all the time and have made very few friends saying it. The only reason our borders are allowed to remain porous is that undocumented immigrants depress wages. The argument in favor of slave wages is seen in resistance to the minimum wage laws. The argument amounts to “we as consumers benefit when wages are low.” The tragedy is that those of us with small businesses, the folks in the middle, have been tricked into believing that our interests are somehow the same as those of the folks on the board of directors at General Electric. The undocumented immigrant and minimum wage issues are just 2 sides of the same coin. And clues as to the truth of the argument against raising wages can be realized by considering the fact that it is always the most depressed hard scrabble third world regions of the country that offer the most virulent opposition to the raising of wages. ALWAYS! The Southern regions of our country are particularly instructive on wages and poverty, because the great lesson was there for all of us to witness. The remarkable thing about those nostalgic mint julep antebellum years when slavery defined the South is that for the “workforce” the wage was effectively zero. And it is no coincidence that the bulk of the white population subsisted at levels of destitution unheard of in the rest of our young country.

If you live in an area being flooded by them then you may feel differently from someone who does not. I personally don’t have a problem because the vast majority are here to work and they generally do good work. However, they are not entitled to any benefits they are not paying for. What is fair is fair. What we need to do is provide a means to make their presence here legal and make sure they have access to what they need while they are here. Should they wish to stay we need streamlined process to make them citizens. What we should not do is allow businesses and individuals continue to exploit them. We should not tolerate breaking of our laws from both parties. My frustration with flutherites tonight over their blatant lack of understanding and hate directed toward conservatives is close bringing a curtain call for me on this site.

Right wing unemployed voters do because they need to blame someone for them being unemployed bums that won’t even work at MacDonalds. But the politicians know they need them to work, so to get the right wing to vote they have to pretend they want them all out.

@ ARE you kidding me But that’s my point. We are all forced to exploit them. The farmer who hovers on the edge of disaster can’t pay a decent wage for back breaking work. Why not? If I own a small retail business, why are none of my employees people who were born in this country? For the brown people being exploited by the guy who can’t pay a decent wage, you might think that it would occur to that guy that he himself is being exploited. And he surely is. He’s told it’s “the market” that’s killing him. And he is almost certainly a staunch conservative because he believes that liberals will work toward improving the plight of his workers and force him out of business. The great failing of the left is in not explaining the way things actually work in this country & this is deliberate. It is in fact the only reason the democratic party exists in its present “where else can they go?” state.

@SQUEEKY2 I think you have to distinguish between conservative voters and conservative politicians. A lot of the voters want undocumented Mexican immigrants out of the US. Some of them even want all Mexican immigrants out regardless of their legal status. But conservative politicians don’t really want them out for all the reasons that @DoNotKnowMuch already mentioned. They just say they do to whip up their base.

@CWOTUS Wikipedia doesn’t say what you think it says. It says that “U.S. citizenship is automatically granted to any person born within and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,” explains the judicial history regarding jus soli (including the currently controlling case upholding it under most circumstances, though ruling out the “anchor baby” scenario that so many conservatives wave around), and then notes the existence of a controversy regarding the future of this doctrine as part of American law. That’s pretty far from an unambiguous claim that no one who is in the USA illegally and gives birth here gives birth to a US citizen.

I don’t know anything about the “right wing.”

I don’t know anything about conservatives.

I don’t know anything about Mexicans.

I only know I want the law to be applied to everyone, not just me.

@stanleybmanly I think that it’s true in a way. This is one issue where I side with both the right and left on certain points. I do still think that it is a choice employers can make even if that choice is to go out of business or hire illegals. If a business is propped up by slave wages long hours and no benefits then well… Besides it is law and if it cannot or will not be enforced then it needs to be changed. We should not selectively enforce our laws.

I inadvertently hired an illegal crew to do my roof after a severe hail storm (through a legit contractor who hired them) It pissed me off a little except the final result was a roof that was put on correctly, quickly and did not leak. Neighbors who hired another contractor that did not use illegals had much poorer results. I can go into some generalizations and stereotypes but you probably get the idea. I can’t help but admire their work ethic.The sad truth is we actually need them to do work that nobody else will do because the wages and working conditions for those jobs suck. There are reasonable solutions to this except they are mostly bitter pills that will be hard to swallow. It won’t be easy to clean up something that is both helping to prop up the economy yet tear it down at the same time. Letting it continue is not a good option if we want to keep the middle class though. I’m mostly on the side of stop the flood. Work visas and benefit plans specifically for immigrant workers is probably the way to go. Not just stiff but catastrophic consequences for businesses that use them outside of law is likely about the only way it’s going to end.

@CWOTUS I went to your wiki link prepared to change my understanding…but right up front are these three statements:

1) ” Under United States law, U.S. citizenship is automatically granted to any person born within and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

2) “All persons born… in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”[3]”

3)”The Pew Hispanic Center also estimates that there are 4.5 million children who were born to unauthorized immigrants that received citizenship via birth in the United States;”

What am I missing?

@JLeslie I would agree with your statement, on the face of it, but at the back end I also see living, breathing human beings, babies being tossed into the Americn streets to beg or being prostituted to survive, or dying of malnutrition. I guess I see things more from a world perspective than a geographical perspective. I don’t think that any one life is more important than another. Would you, personally, turn a starving child away from your door because his parents were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line? OF course you wouldn’t. But taking that kind of stand means you are willing to do just that, only have others do it for you so you don’t have see it.

When it comes to a person here without papers, I’m not about to turn anybody in for doing exactly what I would do in their situation. No it’s more useful to look at what drove them here and who it is that benefits from their poverty.

And the first item on the agenda that is NEVER mentioned is the fact that the deluge of desperate people from Mexico is the direct and indisputable result of NAFTA. It is NAFTA that rendered eking out a living in rural Mexico a clear cut impossibility. Listen people, so much of what goes on around us IS NOT the result of random chance or natural disaster. It is no coincidence that the same people reaping the windfall in exporting our jobs are exactly the folks growing richer from desperate hordes depressing the wages of those left with work.

Why can’t the U.S. just annex Mexico…..we’ve done it before.

^ Because no matter how much actual good it might do for Mexico far too many idiots would just see it as more evil American colonialism.

What is confounding is this being a pressing issue at this time, when the net migration between the US and Mexico shows more people moving back to Mexico.

Trump’s wall would keep undocumented workers from leaving,

@Dutchess_III I’m totally lost. Did you mean to address me?

I’m sorry! Looking back I meant to addres @Coloma, not you, when I said: “I would agree with your statement, on the face of it, but at the back end I also see living, breathing human beings, babies being tossed into the Americn streets to beg or being prostituted to survive, or dying of malnutrition. I guess I see things more from a world perspective than a geographical perspective. I don’t think that any one life is more important than another. Would you, personally, turn a starving child away from your door because his parents were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line? OF course you wouldn’t. But taking that kind of stand means you are willing to do just that, only have others do it for you so you don’t have see it._”

Sorry ‘bout that.

@Dutchess_III I too have a more big picture, global perspective. I think the idea of building a wall between Mexico and the US is unfathomably obscene, but I also do not think that we should be obligated to take in every stray person, dog, cat, parakeet on the planet. America is a very codependent country, we are always meddling in others affairs while neglecting our own. I do not think any one life has more value than another, and that goes for non-human life as well.

I do think though that charity begins at home, and when the Cobblers own children have the shoes they need then start giving shoes to others. We can’t provide shoes for everyone, all the time, at the expense of our own feet going unshod.

But what about those who are already here, @Coloma? Why should I, or anyone else foot the bill for others that are non-citizens…. Mostly we’re footing the bill for the children.

@Dutchess_III Right, the children, and I don’t have all the answers, but we do need to find a way to prevent the influx of illegals before they give birth on american soil. There are plenty of immigrants that become citizens legally so we shouldn’t give a hall pass to those who do not wish to take the necessary legal steps to do so.

But that is still condemning children to starvation and death.

And it’s not that they don’t want to. They do. The steps are so fraught with danger, not to mention horribly expensive, that they just can’t.

@Dutchess_III I’m not “condemning” anyone to starvation and death, just stating the fact that our country cannot care for and support hundreds of thousands of illegals.
My original point is that while I am all for altruism we must take care of our own needy and downtrodden first.

Mexican immigrants aren’t here as charity cases. They are here for jobs.

Those with “borrowed” Social Security numbers are paying into SS and Medicare and will get no return. Just like citizens they pay sales taxes, gas taxes, and property taxes (either as owners or via rents). They spend on utilities and groceries and food and clothing and transportation just like everybody else.

They were invited over. They are wanted enough that people hand over cash to make the trip from Mexico worthwhile. They wouldn’t be here if Americans weren’t giving them jobs.

The bogey man of “illegals! illegals!” is something to scare and stir up the yokels.

It’s difficult to imagine what you all want. On one hand you rile against the business owners giving them jobs. You also rile against low wages and blame Republicans for keeping Illegals on the lowest pay scale. It should be noted that an estimated $26 billion will be sent to Mexico by these illegals. Apparently they are making more than it takes to live here and that money is removed from our economy. Kinda like an illegal foreign aid.

This issue has nothing to do with hate but has everything to do with the economy. 2.7 million Syrians have relocated to Turkey and they call it a humanitarian nightmare. We have 15 million illegal immigrants and you all want to make them permanent. We already grant a million green cards annually, more than any other country on earth and you all think it’s not enough.

We can’t support the worlds population, it’s simply too much. If you allow unlimited third world immigration, you have a third world country. That’s how it works.

@Call_Me_Jay It’s true people who borrow social security numbers pay in and never get that money out. When I was a teen I knew people who did it. It’s also true that many illegals don’t pay in to the tax system at all. It’s also true that many immigrants who are here legally still don’t pay into the tax system, working under the table or working for themselves under the radar. This happens a lot. Of course, there are also full blooded, born here, Americans, doing some of the same things, not just immigrants.

Plus, keep in mind, the example of them paying in on false SS#‘s needs to be balanced with social services they do get to use and don’t pay for. Plus, I think this happens less and less. The IRS knows what is paid in, and then also knows when taxes aren’t filed, and when tax amounts don’t match.

My FIL was asked by the IRS if he had paid taxes of a certain amount midway through the year, and he had not paid anywhere near that much. One time, I filed my taxes and put in the wrong amount of tax I had paid in during the year, and the IRS corrected it for me, and sent me a check.

—On one hand you rile against the business owners giving them jobs. You also rile against low wages and blame Republicans for keeping Illegals on the lowest pay scale.

I mentioned employers because it illustrates how conservatives aren’t concerned about immigration. You would be railing against the industries that host immigrants if you cared about immigration. Somehow that’s absent and instead we hear lots of abuse heaped on Mexicans.

Your presidential candidate for November spouts insults against Mexicans that are worthy of a Klan rally.

—an estimated $26 billion will be sent to Mexico

Nice racist hysteria site you linked to there. It’s telling.
Samples from your “fact” source:
“The ISIS Barbarians Are Already Inside our Gates”
“Uppity school kids are now dictating American law?”
“Mexican Cartels Moving Terrorists Across Southern U.S. Border”

—We can’t support the worlds population, it’s simply too much. If you allow unlimited third world immigration…

An argument nobody made. Beat that straw man!

@Jaxk…. I can’t see how they came up with thta 26 billions dollar figure, especially when they state it’s “tax free money.” How in the world do they know how much goes into Mexico?

OK @Coloma, We do take care of “our own.” How would things change for impoverished Americans if there were no n undocumented residents?

@Dutchess_III I don’t have the energy or desire to debate at this time, but no, we do not take care of our own. Our cities are filled with homeless people, homeless disabled people, mentally ill homeless people, substance addicted homeless people, elderly homeless people, a high unemployment rate and we are not taking care of our own. I am just saying that given the natl. debt, the debt in the state of CA. and all other state debts that we need to clean up our own mess of suffering and debt before we open our arms to the rest of the world. On a spiritual and philosophical and altruistic level, everyone deserves care, but on a purely practical level you can’t give away what you don’t have. How would things change?

I don’t know the answer to that in all it’s myriad facets, but I do not agree that people should be able to sneak into any country without proper documentation and then capitalize on jobs and state benefits or give birth to protect themselves from deportation.

@Dutchess_III – They are talking primarily about remittances, like wire transfers. All those things are recorded. Plus when dollars are sent overseas, those dollars have to be repurchased by the US. Mexico gets the dollars and pays the individual in Pesos. The US then owes Mexico for those dollars. The US loses the economic benefit as well as all the taxes (sales, excise, etc.) that would have applied if the money was spent in the US. It works out to be a massive transfer of wealth from the US to Mexico (and other countries).

Being a CA. resident this is what I am talking about.

www.newsmax.com/US/california-illegals-healthcare;Medi-Cal/2015/07/17/id/657605/

@Coloma Can I ask what is your issue with your link?

Being a CA. resident this is what I am talking about.

The story says people will be allowed to buy insurance.

The alternative is they use the emergency room and the public ends up with the expense.

@Cruiser & @Call_Me_Jay
I was referring to the state providing Medi-Cal benefits under the ACA, not those that are able to purchase their own health insurance. The article says it has not been discussed, yet, nor how it would be paid for, which, with the state debt here in CA. there is nothing to pay for it with, but of course, we’ll just keep printing more cash as always. lol
For those illegals that cannot afford to pay for a covered CA. plan medi-Cal will be their only option so I am sure this will be forthcoming.

@Jaxk I see. Thanks.

I didn’t say we don’t have problems, @Coloma, but I don’t think getting rid of undocumented people and their children would change anything. Nothing.