@BigSteve said:
For me, the argument regarding safety is an ancillary one.
The bigger issue is that they don't belong here. Period.
This is true and spot on. Illegal immigration has nothing to do with safety or crime and everything to do with economics. It truly is as simple as that.
BS Said: "If there's an underclass of illegals, granting them amnesty does nothing to their status of being members of the underclass.
It just means we get to pay for even more of their stuff..."
And this is absolutely true too. To a great extent their immigration status simply keeps them docile but the taxpayer is on the hook for ALL of the underclass, legal or illegal. Who do we think is paying for health care for the McDonalds worker? Certainly not McDonalds. The taxpayer is.
We have a permenent underclass in America and the wealthy like it very much, thank you. The entire hospitality industry would collapse overnight were it not for illegal workers just to mention one example.
The wealthy rely on illegal workers to exert downward pressure on wages for sure but it is more insidious than that. When we discuss the services that illegals consume we are exerting pressure to deprive all of the underclass of those services, legal and illegal.
There are all kinds of absurd studies that seem to show that illegals do not exert downward pressure on wages. My personal experience says it is true. My own personal experience is to actively seek them for work that would cost me a fortune if they were not here. Landscaping, the aforementioned hotel maid, construction workers....on and on. In my part of the country these jobs are virtually all filled by illegal workers and at a fraction of what it would cost to get a citizen to do them. Seriously folks. What do you think you would have to pay a hotel maid to get a citizen to do the work? Double? Tripple? And then add benefits on top of that.
When I was a kid, we (kids) did yard work to make some extra money. We would get a buck for mowing a yard. So check this out. If you use the handy inflation calculator, that dollar that this 11 year old was earning for spending an hour or so mowing someone's yard is the equivalent of $8.50 today. This is more than the national minimum wage today. And kids were expected to do that stuff in those days. I went door to door trying to earn a buck. The old lady down the street counted on me and I could count on her for $2.00 every couple of weeks. This is roughly the equivalent of what my mother in law pays for her maid to stop by for an hour and do a couple of heavy cleaning things today. And I am fairly sure that the maid who is happy to work for $8.50 an hour tax free was not born in Cleveland.
All of this is why I hate threads like this. The problem is not crime nor is the solution to get rid of so-called sanctuary cities. The problem is economic and the solution is to get rid of jobs for illegals. If we do that the problem will be solved. But that will never happen. The wealthy have always needed their slaves.
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