patrick.net

Clearly the accident was directly the result of the immigrant's illegal status. Had the government only made this immigrant legal, the accident would not have happened. When will the government stop all these unnecessary deaths by granting legal status to immigrants?

#conservativeLogic

zzyzzx says

One of those killed was St. John the Baptist

Was he resurrected too? No worries. He probably has a few more lives.

Why do Republicans in Lousyana allow illegals in their state?
I guess it helps get more federal money(tax dollars) that they
didn't pay in federal taxes.

YesYNot says

zzyzzx says

One of those killed was St. John the Baptist

Was he resurrected too? No worries. He probably has a few more lives.

Worts are tough to kill.

Dan8267 says

Had the government only made this immigrant legal, the accident would not have happened.

Corrected:
Had the government only kept this illegal alien out, the accident would not have happened.

rpanic01 says

Worts are tough to kill.

Boil them too long and you can make the beer taste funny!

zzyzzx says

Had the government only kept this illegal alien out, the accident would not have happened.

Had the government only kept all illegal aliens out, farm owners would have to pay workers $30/hour to harvest the crops. That's the real problem: cheap labor.

But your post demonstrates what you really mean. It's not the illegality of the immigration that you object to. It's the immigration itself. Have the intellectual fortitude to state what you really mean and defend it rather than throwing a red herring into the discussion. One could easily take any group, men, doctors, stock brokers and state that people from these groups should be deported because some members of the group coincidentally cause car crashes or commit crimes. If your litmus test is that no person in an assigned group may commit any crime or cause any accident, then there is no group you would not deport.

There are plenty of good reasons to restrict or eliminate immigration. This guy getting into an accident is not one of them.

The real irony is that a lot of illegal immigrants are probably going to be the ones doing the clean up work in Baton Rouge because they will be the cheapest labor.

Had the government prevented this unlicensed driver from driving, these 4 would still be alive:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-van-crash-grower-20160823-snap-story.html

Yes, we need to enforce a strong border. Panacea for terrorism, crime, or jobs it is not. Only about 17% put illegal immigration at the top of the problem list for America, not say it isn't an issue, but there are far bigger ones.

What's Trump's policy on illegal immigration? How is he going to solve it? If you can tell me that, you should write Trump. He doesn't even know where he stands on the issue. Flows like water.

Also a problem with airline pilots.

License? We don't need no stinkin' license!

HEY YOU says

Why do Republicans in Lousyana allow illegals in their state?

Cause they were kicked out of Brokelahoma.

anonymous says

Had the government actually enforced the rules against hiring illegals and making an example out of a few business owners/CEOs, this may not have happened.

The Tea Party is working on kicking out the government next.

Dan8267 says

farm owners would have to pay workers $30/hour to harvest the crops.

Bullshit.

zzyzzx says

Dan8267 says

farm owners would have to pay workers $30/hour to harvest the crops.

Bullshit.

Wow, with that sophisticated analysis, how could I possibly argue with you?

He wasn't an illegal driver.

He was an undocumented driver.

The problem is it is exactly the crushing of wages by illegals and legal unskilled workers in vast quantities that is making the American Dream unobtainable for a huge section of the public.

I read that about half of all working Americans make within a dollar or so of the minimum wage.

The moment there is any growth in jobs or upward wage pressure, the faucet turns on full blast with unskilled immigrants of all legalities.

Americans have always picked lettuce in the past, and not in ancient history, either. Plus we have a legit guest worker program. The real harm of illegals isn't picking grapes, it's the roofing and drywall installation jobs they take away, as well as frozen pea packing and chicken plucking jobs, which they were key in deunionizing.

Dan8267 says

zzyzzx says

Dan8267 says

farm owners would have to pay workers $30/hour to harvest the crops.

Bullshit.

Wow, with that sophisticated analysis, how could I possibly argue with you?

I don't see you coming up with how you got a $30/hr figure for a minimum wage job.

zzyzzx says

I don't see you coming up with how you got a $30/hr figure for a minimum wage job.

Just because you don't know something, doesn't make it wrong.

There's no way Americans are doing hard manual labor for under $30/hr when there are plenty of easier jobs that pay $60k/yr and require no manual labor. A typical air-conditioned office job pays $60k/yr or more and you spend half your day on PatNet.

Would you pick strawberries for less than $30/hr? Say yes so I can call bullshit on you.

Just to put things into perspective, you can make $40/hr to $80/hr snuggling people. Yeah, you can't make this shit up.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/professional-cuddlers-embrace-more-clients-1420759074

Kimberly Kilbride is a professional cuddler.

For $80 an hour, or up to $400 for an overnight gig, the 33-year-old mother of three dons flannel pajama bottoms, puts away her family pictures and two pit bull mix dogs and invites clients into her bedroom in Highland, N.Y., to snuggle. Once the spooning begins, she insists that it stay strictly platonic.

http://thesnugglebuddies.com/hiring/

Of course, it's better to be the owner and get the lion's share of the revenue without having to do any of the work.

Still think that Americans are going to do hard labor for less than $30/hr?

Oh, and for Call It Crazy...

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/01/quit-your-job-and-snuggle-baby-goats-instead.html

Just remember, CIC, it's purely platonic.

Dan8267 says

Would you pick strawberries for less than $30/hr? Say yes so I can call bullshit on you.

John McCain: "You know I've heard that statement before. Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here fifty dollars an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So, ok, sign up! Ok, when you sign up, you sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season, ok, not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/22/572803/-

There's a shitton of people, like always in history, mostly young people, who would not only pick strawberries at $30/hr, they'd do it for $15/hr. Lots of unemployed rural whites and blacks who would jump to make $15/hr.

And so would many other Native-born Americans who are making $11 per hour as Temps at Amazon Warehouses.
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/life-and-death-amazon-temp/
http://www.businessinsider.com/brutal-conditions-in-amazons-warehouses-2013-8

Many farm laborers make less than minimum wage because federal regulations allow it in many cases. There's also no overtime in many cases, either.

thunderlips11 says

Lots of unemployed rural whites and blacks who would jump to make $15/hr.

At McDonald's, not in the fields. This experiment has been tried.

www.youtube.com/embed/J7TGWaHaUeU

Without dirt foreign cheap labor, American farms could not compete with foreign farms and we'd import all our food instead of growing it domestically. That might not be a bad thing, but farm owners sure as hell wouldn't want that.

The bottom line is that if you want to get rid of all the Mexican immigrants you either have to pay a lot more for farm labor, which is a dead-end career, or you have to give up American agriculture and import all our food.

Alternatively, we could just a land-swap with Mexico, giving Mexico our farm land in exchange for their coastal land. Let Mexico do all the agriculture, and let America do STEM and finance. And Mexico could run the farms such that the profits are shared by the farm workers, not owners, in accordance to the products processed by each worker. It would be better for the farm workers and it would eliminate all immigration from Mexico as those farms in Kansas would be part of Mexico, not the U.S. Plus we would get some nice beachfront real estate in exchange. Of course, that would also give us a fiscal motive to prevent sea-level rises.

www.youtube.com/embed/aXP9c99S0sc

Rew says

What's Trump's policy on illegal immigration? How is he going to solve it? If you can tell me that, you should write Trump. He doesn't even know where he stands on the issue. Flows like water.

Wednesday Trump will try and clear it up for us. :)

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/428681f59b0c40e9af1f973dd30bc1ca/trump-says-immigration-speech-coming-wednesday-arizona

Can't wait for some sad-panda-realizations from the hardliners. "Wait, what? Where is my deportation force?" Honestly, I'm not holding my breath he clears anything up. I think he will say "Build wall first. Mexico pays. We drink margaritas. Then we will decide what to do with illegals. Muslims, are extreme vetted, which is just like current vetting only EXTREMEEEEeeee!"

What type of wall? Who will build it? Just a wall? How is Mexico paying? : all will go unanswered. Trump cannot and will not talk specifics.

Day 1 trump says he will focus on removing the executive orders that Obama passed on gun control and immigration. I'm sure that sounds great to the Trumpets. The orders are increased background checks, overwhelmingly supported by the public, and deportation relief for lawful permanent residents, parents, and children. Never mind that for the past 50+ years every president has issued deportation relief and urged illegals to come forward and be counted: it's all Obama's fault, gosh darn Kenyan muslim!

Trump on his great wall ...
www.youtube.com/embed/khD3gJGLvQo

The preeminent border control specialists in the world :: Ladders, ropes, jumping they say? Wait, what? Physical barriers aren't good at stopping economic migrants? Wait, what? Other tools and policies? Limitations? Electronics you say?
www.youtube.com/embed/X9fe4m0UAg4

Oh, but electronics are hackable, we are going courier. I forgot.

anonymous says

zzyzzx says

Had the government only kept this illegal alien out, the accident would not have happened.

Had the government actually enforced the rules against hiring illegals and making an example out of a few business owners/CEOs, this may not have happened.

One person on the entire thread who has a clue.

Dan8267 says

There's no way Americans are doing hard manual labor for under $30/hr when there are plenty of easier jobs that pay $60k/yr and require no manual labor. A typical air-conditioned office job pays $60k/yr or more and you spend half your day on PatNet.

So according to you, there are NO Americans working for under 60K/year?
BULLSHIT!

You are so fucking stupid that it probably hurts.

Sorry Libs, I have to agree with the Right on this one. I'm not sure how you can support illegals coming and staying in our country. It doesn't make any sense except for the agenda to hope they'll vote Democrat...doesn't look good.

zzyzzx says

Dan8267 says

There's no way Americans are doing hard manual labor for under $30/hr when there are plenty of easier jobs that pay $60k/yr and require no manual labor. A typical air-conditioned office job pays $60k/yr or more and you spend half your day on PatNet.

So according to you, there are NO Americans working for under 60K/year?

BULLSHIT!

You are so fucking stupid that it probably hurts.

You seriously need to take a look in the mirror, or at least learn how to read English. No person with literacy at the level of a fourth grader would have interpreted the above quote as "there are NO Americans working under 60K/year". This is a ridiculous misinterpretation of my statement, so much so that it implies either severe illiteracy or deliberate misinterpretation to construct a straw man argument.

However, being a generous man, I am going to give you a chance to save face by correcting yourself and explaining what I actually said. If you fail to do this, then it is right that you look the fool. This is not a hard challenge.

Dan8267 says

You seriously need to take a look in the mirror,

You need to look at the real world where there are plenty of unemployed Americans who WILL take whatever job they can get. They don't need 60K, that's rich. Get out of your ivory tower.

I personally know several people who have been looking for work for YEARS.

just any guy says

I'm not sure how you can support illegals coming and staying in our country.

It's the agricultural industry most responsible for illegal immigration. However, it is not the illegality of the immigration that you or I or anyone else opposes.

If you were fine with "legal" immigration but only oppose "illegal" immigration, you would be satisfied by a law that transformed all illegal immigrants into legal one. It is mere fiat that makes the immigration illegal. It would be trivial to declare all illegal immigration legal. A mere stroke of the pen could do that, and then there would be zero illegal immigration. Yet, clearly this would not satisfy you or any opponent of immigration, including myself.

It would also be a trifling matter to fully document, fingerprint, and create identification for all immigrants. There are no hoops for legal immigration that cannot be done in seconds in the Information Age except the hoops deliberately designed for the sole purpose of slowing the immigration process. Databases are connected to the Internet making querying data trivial. IDs can be produced in seconds. Fingerprints added to databases across the nation in seconds. Documentation created and distributed in seconds.

So, I ask you, honestly, is it the illegality of the immigration that really upsets you or is it the number of immigrants, or the nationality of the immigrants, or the culture or language of the immigrants, or the job skills of the immigrants that really matters to you?

As long as the red herring exists that it's the illegality of the immigration that's the problem, we cannot acknowledge the real problems of immigration. And the first step of solving a problem, any problem, is acknowledging the existence of the problem. The straw man argument that the problem is with immigrants not using proper channels and legal procedures prevents us from dealing with the very real and important cultural, fiscal, economic, and population problems of immigration.

By the way, the entire illegal immigration problem was created by capitalism in its attempt to keep labor as cheap as possible in order to maximize personal profits from owning the means of agricultural production and siphoning off worker wealth creation. The agricultural industry in America has a terrible and embarrassing history of using slavery, then child labor, and now powerless immigrant workers by promoting the use of illegal immigrants because their illegal status makes them powerless to demand better wages, working conditions, job stability, or the right to vote.

I'll leave you with one example of why the current system is really bad. An open, free society cannot exist when a large contingent of the population effectively has no rights and cannot vote or improve their economic outlook. It would be better if this population was not here and the domestic agricultural industry collapsed then to allow a large portion of the American population to be non-citizens with no say in our government. Whenever one population is oppressed politically and economically, problems are generated that spread to other areas because everything is ultimately connected. Unfortunately, we cannot even have this conversation until the anti-immigrant crowd -- and that's really what the position is -- stops with the nonsensical straw man argument that "if only the immigrants were willing to follow the legal process". That's a bullshit argument and it doesn't help reducing immigration as the immigration levels are currently determined only by economic factors such as agricultural production.

So if you really want to reduce or eliminate net immigration to the U.S., stop BSing and take a real stand and defend the position you really want. Otherwise, the immigration will continue at the same or increasing rates while you scapegoat to no avail.

Dan8267 says

I am going to give you a chance to save face by correcting yourself and explaining what I actually said. If you fail to do this, then it is right that you look the fool.

zzyzzx says

You need to look at the real world where there are plenty of unemployed Americans who WILL take whatever job they can get. They don't need 60K, that's rich. Get out of your ivory tower.

I personally know several people who have been looking for work for YEARS.

Honey, that's a fail. You are doubling down on your stupid straw man argument rather than correcting yourself. You now look doubly bad.

Here's a final chance to save face. Tell me what my argument really is and get it right. I could get a ten-year-old to explain my argument correctly. Are you really less literate than a ten-year-old, or are you faking stupidity because you lack the emotional maturity to admit that you made a straw man argument and got called on it? The best thing you can do right now is to admit that you made the straw man, correct yourself, and then address the real argument I made. Failing to do that, you simply lose and look the fool.

And yes, I'm goating you into doing the right thing, and it's for your own good. As embarrassing as it might be to admit the truth, it would be far more embarrassing to continue with this obvious charade. Don't be that stupid.

Dan8267 says

Honey, that's a fail. You are doubling down on your stupid straw man argument rather than correcting yourself. You now look doubly bad.

Here's a final chance to save face. Tell me what my argument really is and get it right. I could get a ten-year-old to explain my argument correctly. Are you really less literate than a ten-year-old, or are you faking stupidity because you lack the emotional maturity to admit that you made a straw man argument and got called on it? The best thing you can do right now is to admit that you made the straw man, correct yourself, and then address the real argument I made. Failing to do that, you simply lose and look the fool.

And yes, I'm goating you into doing the right thing, and it's for your own good. As embarrassing as it might be to admit the truth, it would be far more embarrassing to continue with this obvious charade. Don't be that stupid.

You are the one that's too stupid to understand that there are NO jobs that Americans' won't do. I keep finding atricles about how there was an immigration raid and the next day unemployed Americans show up to try to get a job.

An illegal alien was piloting a charter bus that he wasn't licensed to drive when it crashed Sunday morning in Louisiana, killing two people and injuring dozens, police said.

---------------

The company hired someone without a license, to drive their bus. They should be on the hook for everything here, including our outrage, right?

errc says

The company hired someone without a license, to drive their bus. They should be on the hook for everything here, including our outrage, right?

I wonder what their insurance policy says about hiring unlicensed drivers, assuming they actually have insurance.

zzyzzx says

You are the one that's too stupid to understand that there are NO jobs that Americans' won't do

I never said that. If you think I did, it's because you are an idiot who can't read.

So you have failed the challenge to rebuke your straw man and address my actual argument. How pathetic. That's why your side always looks bad. You would have looked much better and have made a better case against immigration if you were honest about why you oppose immigration. Too bad. Because of you, the immigration problem will persist and grow.

If you want Americans to harvest crops, a dead end job with no future, then you'll have to pay those Americans way the hell more than what the immigrant workers are making and you'd have to give them generous benefits including health care. The cost of doing so would make the American agricultural industry unable to compete with cheaper agriculture in other North, Central, and South American nations. The profits of the domestic American agriculture industry would collapse.

Anyone who thinks that there are enough Americans willing to do hard labor for slave conditions that barely keep them alive are fools. That experiment has been conducted and it failed miserably.

But hey, if there is some moral obligation for Americans to submit themselves to do these lousy jobs for lousy pay, then let people like zzyzzx do these jobs. I doubt he'll be willing to do that work for even $15/hr, way more than the migrant workers make. Hell, he wouldn't even do it for the $30/hr.

As for me, I'd take a $40/hr job as a professional snuggler before I picked crops in the hot sun.

Most white Americans wouldn't even consider a piecework ag job because they can't bring their families to the work site state and they can't go home at the end of the work day. Then they'd have to move to another farm/field/town to do it all over again. That, more than the grunt of it, makes it beneath them: they're not migrants goddammit they're landed. As to the grunt aspect, likely only the white redneck southerners have the grit to do the work but they aren't going leave the south.

zzyzzx says

I keep finding atricles about how there was an immigration raid and the next day unemployed Americans show up to try to get a job.

Anecdote isn't data, and besides you sorta ended up with egg on your face the last time you tried to trot out that shit. Unlimited immigration affects the value of labor in America, no doubt about it. You think it only goes one way. It doesn't.

anonymous says

zzyzzx says

Had the government only kept this illegal alien out, the accident would not have happened.

Had the government actually enforced the rules against hiring illegals and making an example out of a few business owners/CEOs, this may not have happened.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

Rew says

Muslims, are extreme vetted, which is just like current vetting only EXTREMEEEEeeee!"

Muslims are held to the same standards as h1-b workers? Interesting

Still waiting for an answer as to why Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar can't take in any refugees

Dan8267 says

never said that. If you think I did, it's because you are an idiot who can't read.

So you have failed the challenge to rebuke your straw man and address my actual argument. How pathetic.

You are pathetic if you think American’s won't get off their lazy ass for less than 60K per year and Air conditioning.

Dan8267 says

I'd take a $40/hr job as a professional snuggler before I picked crops in the hot sun.

Clean houses? Maybe.... Male snuggler, you'd better be hot, in both the looks and personality department to get hired. Doubt they'd hire Tom Dick and Harry off the street just because they have a pulse.

No Mexicans needed for canned tomatoes:
www.youtube.com/embed/Rhu21aNUlxQ