Has anyone else here heard about May 1st and what do you think about it?

by WildHorses 62 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  SixofNine

  "They became good, contributing citizens and enriched our country with their hard work and culture. Legally."

  As do the vast majority of immigrants from Mexico, legal or otherwise.
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  SixofNine

  "These people are actively engaging in criminal behavior with every step—every breath—they take within this country's borders."

  Could you be more of a pedantic drama queen?
• 

  lighthouse1956

  The only thing scaring me is MIDDLE EAST terrorists learning spanish and acting like Mexican immigrants.
• 

  fairchild

  I am no stranger to hard work and it pisses me off when people say that Americans are lazy since I know I am not and I am American. There are lazy people in every nationality.

  Having been all over the world, I can confirm this. Lazy people are everywhere, and so are industrious people and hard workers.

  As for the illegals, I totally agree that they should be given a chance to become legal and pay taxes.

  As I live in the middle of nowhere, I am rather unfamiliar with Mexicans, although we do have some Bosnians down in the nearest city. But let me say this.. I just got home from work. Got called in for the second day in a row. The weather is starting to get nice and traditionally, people call in sick, because they see the snow go and they want to enjoy the first warm days of spring. I currently work on a call in basis, and once, I worked for 67 days in a row without a day off. The place I work for has an ad in every paper around here, asking for help. The ad runs year round. They pay well. They are good people. But we are constantly short handed. Workers come and go. Some have the decency to give a two week notice, but most just stop showing without as much as a phone call. I have worked there for 3 years now, and out of the 30 people I work with, there are only TWO people currently there who have worked at this place longer than I have. We need at least 8 new people, preferably hard workers who have plenty of experience, before we can start the summer season which is right around the corner.

  Sometimes it does make me wonder.. what if a Mexican showed up and asked to be employed there? I think that the owners might be desperate enough to give them a job. Honestly, I wouldn't blame them.
• 

  mkr32208

  The problem is that they are ruining entire industries! If you in construction and don't hire illegals you CAN NOT COMPETE! They don't pay taxes or SSI or Workman's comp they can underbid you by 50% and make more money in the long run than you for half the bid! HALF!

  Don't believe that "they work harder and better" ITS CRAP! You can't read a blueprint if you don't read or speak English! Toss them the hell out! If they want to immigrate there are LEGAL channels to come into this country!
• 

  barry

  We have a mexican problem here in Australia beleive it or not. We jokingly referr to Victorians as Mexicans because they are south of the border .
• 

  caligirl

  I think that if it is true, I shall go shopping that day and love the reduced traffic!

  Ok, now the serious opinion. At my former place of employment (agriculture industry) everyone who worked had to provide a social. Of course a large percentage were FAKE, and every year, we dealt with a report from the payroll company of 11-12 pages of socials that either belonged to someone else, or had never been assigned to anyone. But I do know that every person who worked for the company had taxes taken out, so there are cases where whether they are legal or not, taxes are being paid.

  I have no problem with legal immigration, jump through the hoops, pay the fees, have all your immunizations etc. I have a serious problem with people breaking the law, no matter what their reasons for being here are. If some white kid packed their Dad's Explorer full of 25 friends and went for a joyride, wound up in a high speed police chase, crashed, and a bunch of people were killed, many people would stand up and say that the kid was totally stupid, the friends were stupid, and what happened was sad but was a consequence based solely on his choices and actions, and would be asking where was the parental supervision. Fill an SUV with 25 people who snuck over the border and are being transported by a coyote to their new locale and crash during a high speed chase, and it's all the police's fault for picking on these poor people who are just trying to make a better life and the big bad police spoiled their plans and are racist pigs for daring to actually do their job and trying to catch people who are breaking the law.

  I'm sure that many of you who don't live in an area that is largely populated by illegal immigrants do not understand the impact that it has. Some just annoying, and some very serious. Drive through certain parts of many towns here in California, and you would swear you'd been magically transported to the streets of Tiajuana. It is scary. Try to go to an ER, and you will wait 5 hours because there are people with a cold sitting in the waiting room because they don't have insurance and don't understand that you can go get a bottle of tylenol and just wait it out. How about the fact that antibiotic resistent strains of TB and many other diseases that had all but been erradicated in this country are making a comeback because they are being brought into the country by people who have not had their health evaluated by going through the proper immigration process? How about ER's closing because they are required by law to treat even the people who can't pay, and the number of people who can't pay or won't pay vastly outnumber the paying patients? Have an accident and need an ER? There is a hospital 2 minutes away, but they have closed their ER because they have a 9 hour wait, or it closed, and now the ambulance has to take you 20 miles out of the way for the next open ER. Our roads are packed with people with no insurance, no licenses and drive like they don't care if you make it home to your family at night. Rapists, murderers and gangs walk into this country , and continue to rape and murder. Then they walk back accross the border and disappear, never to be prosecuted. Your tax dollars are at work housing, feeding and providing cable TV to thousands of illegal immigrants who were caught and sentenced to prison time.

  And all of that is just the tip of the iceburg.
• 

  AuldSoul

  "These people are actively engaging in criminal behavior with every step—every breath—they take within this country's borders."
  Could you be more of a pedantic drama queen?

  Could you respond with a rational counterargument instead of ad hominem? Is there something incorrect in my statement, or is it just correctly stating a reality you prefer to ignore?

  "They became good, contributing citizens and enriched our country with their hard work and culture. Legally."
  As do the vast majority of immigrants from Mexico, legal or otherwise.

  Try this again without contradiction in terms cropping up. Those who are not "citizens" of a nation cannot be "contributing citizens" of that nation. They may be "contributing illegal immigrants" but they certainly are not "contributing citizens." Further, they cannot enrich our nation with their hard work and culture legally in any "otherwise" status that I am aware of.

  Recently illegal immigrants took to the streets in droves (along with many legal immigrants) to protest US legislation. That is not a right enjoyed by citizens of foreign countries visiting on our soil. But I imagine you thought what they were doing was appropriate and timely. What they were doing was exercising rights granted to US citizens under our laws, laws that they reject when inconvenienced by them, laws that do not reprocally bind them to the contract. "We the People of the United States of America" does not include illegal immigrants.

  Respectfully,
  AuldSoul
• 

  roybatty

  I'm so sick of this "we can't kick out 12 million people"....umm....why not? Let's instead REWARD them for breaking OUR laws??? WTF??? Through a lot of hard work and patience, my parents immigrated here legally. Is it really too much to ask others to do so???

  I use to think that illegals only took the jobs "that Americans don't want." A discussion with my neighbor changed my mind...

  I was chatting with my next door neighbor about the trouble of owning a small business these days. I own a small manufacturing company and was bitching to him about competition from China and commented that, as an owner of a drywall company, he should be glad that he doesn't have to worry about that. He started to laugh and said that he has to deal with the same situation but with cheap labor here in the States. See, he has a dozen guys working for him, making decent money ($10.00 - $18.00 an hour). While his competition hires illegals, pays them much less, and undercuts his pricing. Now here's the kicker. He says that after a couple of years, these illegals learn the trade, quit working for the company that taught them the trade and start their own company. I've seen the same thing with many other trades. I've even heard people "laugh" about how much money they saved hiring an illegal alien to paint their home, do electrical work, pour a sidewalk, build a brick patio, etc...

  So this whole argument that they don't take jobs away is a bunch of bs. Also, what kind of message does it send if we grant illegal aliens citizenship? Sure, sneak into America, stay a few years and we'll grant you citizenship. With millions of illegal people here, why do we even bother patrolling our boarders??? Our president, our congressmen, our Senators are all sellouts.

  And finally what burns my ass is that my kids attend an over crowded school but it's illegal for the school not admit an illegal alien. I know, I know, that in itself isn't a big issue but it's just the principle.
• 

  G Money

  I've got alot of emails about May 1st. There are alot of socialist agitator types trying to rile the people up. This boycott thing is ridiculous. They even said boycott Sears in Mexico. Except Sears is owned by Carlos Slim, a Mexican and 3rd richest man in the world. I'l, be in Mexico on the 1st and in my town there are no US businesses cuz its a small town. I'm against the hypocracy with the Mexican government and any government. Here is a news story from yahoo news on Mexico and its immigration policies:
  
  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060419/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_mistreating_migrants_lh1;_ylt=AjBDAK556apfgXJP6eWBc6a3IxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--
  
  
  
  
  
  TULTITLAN, Mexico - Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money.
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  While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.
  
  And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people — compared with 12 percent in the United States.
  
  The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant.
  
  Virginia Sanchez, who lives near the railroad tracks that carry Central Americans north to the U.S. border, said such shootings in Tultitlan are common.
  
  "At night, you hear the gunshots, and it's the judiciales (state police) chasing the migrants," she said. "It's not fair to kill these people. It's not fair in the United States and it's not fair here."
  
  Undocumented Central American migrants complain much more about how they are treated by Mexican officials than about authorities on the U.S. side of the border, where migrants may resent being caught but often praise the professionalism of the agents scouring the desert for their trail.
  
  "If you're carrying any money, they take it from you — federal, state, local police, all of them," said Carlos Lopez, a 28-year-old farmhand from Guatemala crouching in a field near the tracks in Tultitlan, waiting to climb onto a northbound freight train.
  
  Lopez said he had been shaken down repeatedly in 15 days of traveling through Mexico.
  
  "The soldiers were there as soon as we crossed the river," he said. "They said, 'You can't cross ... unless you leave something for us.'"
  
  Jose Ramos, 18, of
  El Salvador, said the extortion occurs at every stop in Mexico, until migrants are left penniless and begging for food.
  
  "If you're on a bus, they pull you off and search your pockets and if you have any money, they keep it and say, 'Get out of here,'" Ramos said.
  
  Maria Elena Gonzalez, who lives near the tracks, said female migrants often complain about abusive police.
  
  "They force them to strip, supposedly to search them, but the purpose is to sexually abuse them," she said.
  
  Others said they had seen migrants beaten to death by police, their bodies left near the railway tracks to make it look as if they had fallen from a train.
  
  The Mexican government acknowledges that many federal, state and local officials are on the take from the people-smugglers who move hundreds of thousands of Central Americans north, and that migrants are particularly vulnerable to abuse by corrupt police.
  
  The National Human Rights Commission, a government-funded agency, documented the abuses south of the U.S. border in a December report.
  
  "One of the saddest national failings on immigration issues is the contradiction in demanding that the North respect migrants' rights, which we are not capable of guaranteeing in the South," commission president Jose Luis Soberanes said.
  
  In the United States, mostly Mexican immigrants have staged rallies pressuring Congress to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants rather than making them felons and deputizing police to deport them. The Mexican government has spoken out in support of the immigrants' cause.
  
  While Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said Monday that "Mexico is a country with a clear, defined and generous policy toward migrants," the nation of 105 million has legalized only 15,000 immigrants in the past five years, and many undocumented migrants who are detained are deported.
  
  Although Mexico objects to U.S. authorities detaining Mexican immigrants, police and soldiers usually cause the most trouble for migrants in Mexico, even though they aren't technically authorized to enforce immigration laws.
  
  And while Mexicans denounce the criminalization of their citizens living without papers in the United States, Mexican law classifies undocumented immigration as a felony punishable by up to two years in prison, although deportation is more common.
  
  The number of undocumented migrants detained in Mexico almost doubled from 138,061 in 2002 to 240,269 last year. Forty-two percent were Guatemalan, 33 percent Honduran and most of the rest Salvadoran.
  
  Like the United States, Mexico is becoming reliant on immigrant labor. Last year, then-director of Mexico's immigration agency, Magdalena Carral, said an increasing number of Central Americans were staying in Mexico, rather than just passing through on their way to the U.S.
  
  She said sectors of the Mexican economy facing labor shortages often use undocumented workers because the legal process for work visas is inefficient.