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HPD won't screen for immigration

Agnapostate said:
I sense that you're sticking with some harder liquids yourself. ;) :2wave:
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Not really. I do have pretty neat little wine-rack room though :cool:

Salut :2wave:
 
Tashah said:
A performance-based live and let live philosophy that excuses/ignores an initial illegal act (illegal entry).

Utilizing such a philosophy, one could also extrapolate that no one who purchases a gun illegally should be prosecuted and the weapon confiscated unless and/or until they commit a crime with said weapon.
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I'd compare it more to something like public drunkeness laws. The truth is, 99 times out of 100 you can be drunk as a skunk in public and the cops will ignore it. But, as soon as you make any trouble or start bothering people, they'll charge you. As a society, that's how we want it enforced. We don't want obnoxious drunks annoying everybody, but we do want people to be able to walk home from the bar when they're drunk instead of driving. So, we settle on passing a broad law and trusting the cops to enforce it only when appropriate.

I see immigration enforcement the same way. Nothing is gained by deporting an illegal immigrant who is here working hard in exchange for very small sums of money, staying strictly out of trouble with the law, and not bothering anybody. In fact, we lose out if we deport folks like that. They're a huge asset to our country. If we deported every illegal alien tonight, we would lose the $1.7 trillion they spend here every year, $650 billion in production, and 8.1 million legal jobs would disappear because of companies that need sub minimum wage labor to survive. Basically, we'd turn this recession into a great depression overnight. Not to mention millions of families would be broken up, lots of children who are citizens would need to move out of the country with their parents, lots of households would lose nannies or maids that have lived with them for decades, etc. The human toll would be even larger than the massive economic toll. The truth is that nobody wants that. So, we compromise on the sort of enforcement we have in place- if somebody complains, if the illegal alien gets arrested, or if there is any kind of problem, they can be deported. If not, we more or less turn a blind eye. I think that's about the ideal approach, and no matter what they claim when they're campaigning, that's exactly what politicians in both party actually push for when in office. Why should we change that?
 
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teamosil said:
Houston has been a sanctuary city for a long time. The voters in the city have been opposed to strict enforcement of immigration laws inside city limits for a long time. Most the big cities in the US are sanctuary cities. If somebody is a contributing member of the community and doesn't get in any trouble with the law, there is no reason to deport them. And, as the Arpaio debacle made plain, that enforcement program degenerates very quickly into racial profiling and harrasment of groups of people (citizens and not) based on their ethnicity. Houstonians rightly want no part of that.
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If someone comes here illegally, they are already 'in trouble with the law.' Furthermore, if they aren't here legally, then the income that they earn is not federally taxed. That means any federal services that they use, which would include their safety via the CIA, Army, Navy, etc. (just to name one specific aspect of federal services), is being received for free.

The solution to this problem is two-fold: (1) enforce immigration laws while reforming and streamlining the legal immigration process and (2) move to a consumption tax which capture taxes on the economic transactions of these illegal aliens.
 
Caedon said:
enforce immigration laws while reforming and streamlining the legal immigration process
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I partly agree. What I would like would be to have strict border enforcement, and definitely streamline the legal immigration process, but once somebody is already here I'd rather focus on getting them into the system and paying taxes than booting them out.

Caedon said:
move to a consumption tax which capture taxes on the economic transactions of these illegal aliens.
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I totally disagree with this one. Consumption taxes are extremely regressive. The very wealthy only spend a tiny percentage of their income on taxable goods. So, we'd have to shift huge amounts of tax burden down to the middle classes. Assuming you're talking something like fair tax, the poor would get by with the rebate, but the taxes on the middle class would have to at least double to make it be revenue neutral. The percentages the fair tax advocates claim would be sufficient are absolutely false. They're based on all kinds of incorrect assumptions and data. Most the independant studies that I've seen of the idea have concluded that when you figure in things like tax evasion, black markets, reduced consumption, etc, we'd actually need something more like a 70% consumption tax for it to produce as much revenue as the income tax does today. That'd be crippling for the middle class.
 
Tashah said:
Not really. I do have pretty neat little wine-rack room though :cool:

Salut :2wave:
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Getting kinda random there, though not consistent. When your friend sutherland speaks like I do, he's "articulate," but when I do it, I'm "lawyer-esque" and "pseudo-intellectual." :rofl
 
teamosil said:
I totally disagree with this one. Consumption taxes are extremely regressive. The very wealthy only spend a tiny percentage of their income on taxable goods. So, we'd have to shift huge amounts of tax burden down to the middle classes. Assuming you're talking something like fair tax, the poor would get by with the rebate, but the taxes on the middle class would have to at least double to make it be revenue neutral. The percentages the fair tax advocates claim would be sufficient are absolutely false. They're based on all kinds of incorrect assumptions and data. Most the independant studies that I've seen of the idea have concluded that when you figure in things like tax evasion, black markets, reduced consumption, etc, we'd actually need something more like a 70% consumption tax for it to produce as much revenue as the income tax does today. That'd be crippling for the middle class.
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Hang on there. I'm not opposed to including a capital gains tax as well. I think a mixture of CGT & a consumption tax would be effective.
 
Caedon said:
Hang on there. I'm not opposed to including a capital gains tax as well. I think a mixture of CGT & a consumption tax would be effective.
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Maybe... I'm a big fan of cap gains taxes. That would definitely offset the regressive problem substantially.

We're going way off topic... I'm new here, so I don't know how much people care if you go off topic... Somebody tell me to shut up and start my own thread when it gets annoying ;)

But, I'll try to be brief. If I were to redesign the whole tax system, what I'd do would be to tax all types of income the same- wages, cap gains, inheritance, etc. Everything that puts money in your pocket gets grouped in as 'income', and keep it as progressive as our current income tax brackets. If we left the rates the same, that would generate well over $1.1 trillion in new tax revenues because inheritance is currently not taxed at all as of next year and cap gains are taxed at less than half of the rate of wages for the top bracket. We could cover the deficit and still have a $600b surplus. Then I'd use that surplus to evenly reduce all brackets.
 
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Are you concerned that increasing the capital gains tax will lead to stagnation in investing? Such an increase could lead to reticence in pulling the money in and out, leaving added capital in the hands of companies who may not be as successful simply because the person wants to avoid CG tax in the current year.

My concern is that you could overly affect the manner in which the market allocates capital to the most effective and successful companies by increasing the penalty associated with shifting your money around.
 
Here is my take on it, but I'd definitely be interested to hear your thoughts as I'm not an economist or anything... But this is what I've read and it makes sense to me:

Raising the cap gains tax would reduce the pool of investment dollars, and that is bad. But, high taxes on wages reduce the pool of consumption dollars, and that's bad too.

In 1996 the cap gains tax rate was 28% and we slashed it down to 15% over the next few years. Ever since then our economy has been characterized by stock market bubbles. What used to be considered an insanely unacceptable price to earnings ratio doesn't even make people blink anymore. Tons of companies that have operated at losses for years and years saw their stock prices charging upwards on highly speculative investing. Those bubbles always burst because in the end. If a company just doesn't sell enough widgets sooner or later people are going to lose faith in the high stock prices. What we need is not more investment dollars to drive stock prices higher on still weaker fundamentals, we need more consumption to actually buy the stuff those companies make. It's a balancing act. When the economy is short of investment capital and overflowing with demand, you should theoretically lower cap gains and raise income taxes. When the economy is flooded with investment dollars but lacking in actual earnings, you should theoretically lower income taxes and raise cap gains taxes to keep things balanced. Right now we have high income taxes and low cap gains taxes, and we have loads of investment capital sitting around in gold and t-bills and whatnot because the consumption is so sucky.

So, what makes the most sense to me as a long term policy is to keep cap gains and income taxes matched. I don't like the idea of the government constantly tweaking the balance, since that process is so obviously corrupted by varying levels of influence from different interested parties. I'd rather just keep the two matched, which historically seems to have led to a reasonable balance between having enough investment capital and having enough consumption.
 
teamosil said:
Houston has been a sanctuary city for a long time. The voters in the city have been opposed to strict enforcement of immigration laws inside city limits for a long time. Most the big cities in the US are sanctuary cities. If somebody is a contributing member of the community and doesn't get in any trouble with the law, there is no reason to deport them. And, as the Arpaio debacle made plain, that enforcement program degenerates very quickly into racial profiling and harrasment of groups of people (citizens and not) based on their ethnicity. Houstonians rightly want no part of that.
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I wonder how many Irish illegals are in Houston ? Of course you have to profile criminals !
 
submarinepainter said:
I wonder how many Irish illegals are in Houston ? Of course you have to profile criminals !
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Doesn't matter. Keep in mind that 80% of hispanics in the US are citizens or legal residents. How is it possibly fair that they get hassled all the time because they happen to be of the same ethnicity as people who are breaking the law?

Effectiveness is not the only principal we design our law enforcement practices around. If it were, we'd let cops randomly search any house or tap any phone without probable cause. Random searches of every house on any given block is sure to turn up at least a few crimes. But it isn't worth that kind of sacrifice of our liberty. Same deal with this.
 
teamosil said:
Doesn't matter. Keep in mind that 80% of hispanics in the US are citizens or legal residents. How is it possibly fair that they get hassled all the time because they happen to be of the same ethnicity as people who are breaking the law?
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I'm fairly sure that they aren't, actually. Polling indicates that a substantial number (almost half) of U.S. Hispanics are white or predominantly white, while it's the predominantly Amerindian mestizos that typically emigrate illegally.
 
teamosil said:
I do see your argument, but you're missing a couple points. First, targetting a location where the crime you're trying to catch people committing is not considered racial profiling on face. It certainly could be argued that it is racial profiling when it is disproportionate. For example, if 60% of burglaries happen in a black neighborhood and 40% in a white neighborhood, and the police decide to put 95% of their officers in the black neighborhood, that's pretty fishy.
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I don't know, I would understand why they would devote that much resources to a high crime area vs a low crime area. Get the burglaries stopped then you can go onto the next highest crime area. The more police on it the faster it will get resolved.

teamosil said:
But, that's not what Arpaio is being charged with. What he's being sued for is essentialy stopping every hispanic that his teams come across and trumping up charges so he can check their citizenship status. That's racial profiling pure and simple. And, there is a very good reason that it is illegal- because most Mexicans living in his county are citizens and they're being harrassed constantly, they're getting ticketted for trumped up charges, etc. It isn't right that a citizen should be persecuted for crimes committed by other people just because they happen to be the same ethnicity.
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It's going to be very difficult to prove that he's trumping up charges. Which they are going to have to do if they are going to prove that he is racially profiling. Remember a cop can stop you for any reason...even crossing the center or white line even slightly, also known as swerving. How are they going to prove that they didn't? Or that they didn't use their turn signal? Or some other minor offense that most people don't even notice when they do it.

A plaintiff must always provide the burden of proof. And without proof there is no case. IE it didn't or does not happen.
 
teamosil said:
I see immigration enforcement the same way. Nothing is gained by deporting an illegal immigrant who is here working hard in exchange for very small sums of money, staying strictly out of trouble with the law, and not bothering anybody. In fact, we lose out if we deport folks like that. They're a huge asset to our country. If we deported every illegal alien tonight, we would lose the $1.7 trillion they spend here every year, $650 billion in production, and 8.1 million legal jobs would disappear because of companies that need sub minimum wage labor to survive. Basically, we'd turn this recession into a great depression overnight. Not to mention millions of families would be broken up, lots of children who are citizens would need to move out of the country with their parents, lots of households would lose nannies or maids that have lived with them for decades, etc. The human toll would be even larger than the massive economic toll. The truth is that nobody wants that. So, we compromise on the sort of enforcement we have in place- if somebody complains, if the illegal alien gets arrested, or if there is any kind of problem, they can be deported. If not, we more or less turn a blind eye. I think that's about the ideal approach, and no matter what they claim when they're campaigning, that's exactly what politicians in both party actually push for when in office. Why should we change that?
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I have to disagree here. They are bothering people. By taking jobs away from those that need it yet are here legally. Especially in a recession.

While it might cost us money initially to deport illegals in the long run it would gain us money.

Fact: Illegals do take jobs away from legal folks. By deporting illegals it would free up jobs so that those that are here legally could get a job and have more money to spend. It also lowers the umemployment rate since illegals are not counted when officials figure out the unemployment rate.

Fact: While there are illegals that do pay taxes the majority does not. By having legals have those jobs that illegals have there is more taxes being paid than there are illegals paying. Even if just a minority of illegals did not pay taxes it would still mean more income via taxes because all the jobs that illegals hold would instead be held by legals...if of course all illegals were deported.

Fact: Less money is spent teaching an illegals kid/s. While this may seem cold hearted it is the truth. IMO an illegals government from their home country should be dealing with this, not the US.

Fact: Health care costs would go down, even if only a little bit, because illegals rarely pay a hospital bill. No doubt kind of hard to get on any type of insurance since they do not have the documents most insurance companies require.

Fact: Less money would be spent on incarceration and other legal means if there were no illegals. It takes a ton of money to house people in jails and to give them their court time.

Fact: With no illegals there would be no murder, rape, theft etc etc commited by illegals. Which means those illegals that commit these types of crimes would not have been able to commit those crimes in the US. Which means more civilians would be safer with no illegals around. And really...how do you put a price on a persons life or raped body?
 
Agnapostate said:
I'm fairly sure that they aren't, actually. Polling indicates that a substantial number (almost half) of U.S. Hispanics are white or predominantly white, while it's the predominantly Amerindian mestizos that typically emigrate illegally.
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If that were true that he was profiling only amerindian hispanics, why would that mean it wasn't profiling? Or am I not understanding your argument?

Here is some info on the case the ACLU picked up against him for racial profiling if you're interested- American Civil Liberties Union : Lawsuit Charging Sheriff Arpaio Illegally Targeted Latinos In Maricopa County Can Go Forward

There are tons of cases against him, but that's the highest profile one because the ACLU picked it up.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Fact: Illegals do take jobs away from legal folks. By deporting illegals it would free up jobs so that those that are here legally could get a job and have more money to spend. It also lowers the umemployment rate since illegals are not counted when officials figure out the unemployment rate.
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Most illegals work for below minimum wage at jobs where the work would simply not be profitable at minimum wage. For example, a huge percentage of illegal aliens work as migrant laborers picking fruit. They need to move regularly to follow the work, they make only $15 a day or so, they work 12+ hour days, and they only work a few months out of the year. At minimum wage (in CA where the largest number of migrant laborers are), 12 hours work would cost the employer $90. When you factor in the costs of land, irrigation, planting, seeds, waste, transportation, marketting, etc, fruit farmers are only making pennies for every pound of fruit they sell. If it only costs you $15 to get 12 hours worth of fruit picked, it remains profitable, but barely. If you have to pay $90 to get that much fruit picked, it simply is no longer possible to compete with imported fruit from countries without minimum wage.

And, even if it were profitable, I honestly don't believe you'd find citizens willing to do that kind of brutal work, move every few days, live in shanties, for 2 months of minimum wage.

So, those jobs wouldn't exist in the US anymore without illegal immigrants. The fruit industry in the US would go out of business. And, when they did, we'd lose tons of legal jobs. The truck drivers, accountants, managers, marketers, executives, warehouse staff, secretaries, etc, etc, would all be looking for work. That's where the stat in the study I posted about losing 8.1 million jobs comes from. That's the number of people employed in industries that depend on illegal immigrant labor to remain profitable.

Also, many illegal aliens act as day laborers. If citizens wanted that work, they're free to line up with them now. Realistically most people that hire day laborers would probably hire the citizen before they'd hire an illegal. But even with the economy in the state it is, I have yet to see a single white guy standing out there with the day laborers looking for work... And I drive by two different day laborer corners pretty much every day. If citizens want these jobs, nothing is stopping them from taking them now. We don't want them.

I'll grant you all the costs for social programs and whatnot spent on illegal aliens would go down. I've heard an estimate that if you take the total spent on illegal aliens and subtract the sales and income taxes we collect from them directly, we're losing about $40 billion nationwide between state and federal supporting illegals. That's not a good thing, but it's a lot smaller cost than the impact to our economy of losing the cheap labor. IMO the solution is to figure out a way to get them paying taxes.

Kal'Stang said:
Fact: With no illegals there would be no murder, rape, theft etc etc commited by illegals. Which means those illegals that commit these types of crimes would not have been able to commit those crimes in the US. Which means more civilians would be safer with no illegals around. And really...how do you put a price on a persons life or raped body?
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Technically you're right that the total number of crimes would go down if all the illegals were gone. Of course, that would also be true if we got rid of all the left handed people or all the people who have owned poodles in their lives. Any group of people commit at least some crime.

But, all indications are that illegal aliens commit far fewer crimes per capita than citizens, excluding the obvious crime of breaking immigration law. Immigration and crime - The Boston Globe

That doesn't necessarily directy refute your point, but it does put it in perspective.
 
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teamosil said:
If that were true that he was profiling only amerindian hispanics, why would that mean it wasn't profiling? Or am I not understanding your argument?

Here is some info on the case the ACLU picked up against him for racial profiling if you're interested- American Civil Liberties Union : Lawsuit Charging Sheriff Arpaio Illegally Targeted Latinos In Maricopa County Can Go Forward

There are tons of cases against him, but that's the highest profile one because the ACLU picked it up.
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All that Arpaio needs to win this case is one person that he stopped that wasn't latino where he asked about immigration status.
 
teamosil said:
Raising the cap gains tax would reduce the pool of investment dollars, and that is bad. But, high taxes on wages reduce the pool of consumption dollars, and that's bad too.
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Raising the capital gains tax doesn't necessarily reduce the pool of investment dollars unless you get to the point where people decide not to invest at all. I don't think we are close to that point at all. People might grumble, but they would still rather see the possibility of 10% return taxed at 25% versus plunking the money in a savings account with .04% return.

teamosil said:
In 1996 the cap gains tax rate was 28% and we slashed it down to 15% over the next few years. Ever since then our economy has been characterized by stock market bubbles. What used to be considered an insanely unacceptable price to earnings ratio doesn't even make people blink anymore. Tons of companies that have operated at losses for years and years saw their stock prices charging upwards on highly speculative investing.
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That's true... but you've also selected a very unusual period in our nation's economy. Everyone saw the internet and knew it would drastically affect how businesses interacted with each other and consumers. Investors knew wealth would be created practically out of thin air. That's why investing was so speculative - people had high hopes of returns and there was nothing like this in the past from which to ground expectations or make comparisons. Natural optimism overtook good sense.

teamosil said:
Those bubbles always burst because in the end. If a company just doesn't sell enough widgets sooner or later people are going to lose faith in the high stock prices. What we need is not more investment dollars to drive stock prices higher on still weaker fundamentals, we need more consumption to actually buy the stuff those companies make.
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At some point though, more investment dollars don't drive bloated prices even higher. The market resists that and instead shifts the added capital to other companies. Companies that wouldn't have received the needed capital now have that opportunity... which leads to additional jobs, factories, widgets, and growth. The pool of companies is not limited and investment dollars are not bound to a few companies. Although this isn't exactly the same, we saw in the early part of this year what happens when the wheels of our economy are not properly greased with enough capital - the entire thing grinds to a halt.

teamosil said:
It's a balancing act. When the economy is short of investment capital and overflowing with demand, you should theoretically lower cap gains and raise income taxes.
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Why? Why not let the market find its own equilibrium? Why should we impose restrictions and influences on the economy that will certainly have unintended effects?

teamosil said:
When the economy is flooded with investment dollars but lacking in actual earnings, you should theoretically lower income taxes and raise cap gains taxes to keep things balanced. Right now we have high income taxes and low cap gains taxes, and we have loads of investment capital sitting around in gold and t-bills and whatnot because the consumption is so sucky.
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If, according to you, we have too much investment capital in gold and t-bills, how will raising the capital gains tax help at all? I can see the point of lowering the income tax to increase consumption. However, note that increasing consumption will increase the demand for production. When the demand for production increases, the demand for capital to fund expansionary practices increases as well, which should affect the glut of capital.

teamosil said:
So, what makes the most sense to me as a long term policy is to keep cap gains and income taxes matched. I don't like the idea of the government constantly tweaking the balance, since that process is so obviously corrupted by varying levels of influence from different interested parties. I'd rather just keep the two matched, which historically seems to have led to a reasonable balance between having enough investment capital and having enough consumption.
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I tend to agree, though I think that government spending should be reduced to the point where it is possible to have relatively low capital gains and income taxes across the board.
 
Kal'Stang said:
All that Arpaio needs to win this case is one person that he stopped that wasn't latino where he asked about immigration status.
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I don't really know for a fact, but that doesn't sound accurate to me. For example, tons of racial profiling cases have been won against various police departments purely by showing that they were significantly more likely to pull over members of one race than members of another race. I don't think they need to prove that he is exclusively questioning latinos. Is that incorrect?
 
Houston has been a sanctuary city for many years, and this immigration policy only dates to March of 2009. I doubt it was even enforced from March - present.
 
teamosil said:
For example, tons of racial profiling cases have been won against various police departments purely by showing that they were significantly more likely to pull over members of one race than members of another race.
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Evidence of this? I don't think you know what you're talking about here.
 
teamosil said:
Most illegals work for below minimum wage at jobs where the work would simply not be profitable at minimum wage. For example, a huge percentage of illegal aliens work as migrant laborers picking fruit. They need to move regularly to follow the work, they make only $15 a day or so, they work 12+ hour days, and they only work a few months out of the year. At minimum wage (in CA where the largest number of migrant laborers are), 12 hours work would cost the employer $90. When you factor in the costs of land, irrigation, planting, seeds, waste, transportation, marketting, etc, fruit farmers are only making pennies for every pound of fruit they sell. If it only costs you $15 to get 12 hours worth of fruit picked, it remains profitable, but barely. If you have to pay $90 to get that much fruit picked, it simply is no longer possible to compete with imported fruit from countries without minimum wage.
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Are these numbers off the wall? Or are they from a source (perhaps the one that you already sourced, sorry haven't looked at it as yet)? I'd like to see it if it is. If not then anyone could easily argue the point that illegals more than likely make more than $15/day. So before I go any further mind answering this question?

But there is another way to argue it. Not all businesses that are agricultural (or any business really that uses illegals...like construction) based (even berries) use illegals. How is it that they stay in business and yet still use legals if what you are saying is true? Yes this even includes small businesses. (I know many small businesses that do the same things that illegals do yet don't use illegals)

teamosil said:
And, even if it were profitable, I honestly don't believe you'd find citizens willing to do that kind of brutal work, move every few days, live in shanties, for 2 months of minimum wage.
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Anyone that wants to provide for their family would do it. I know I for one would. And I have. In fact the only jobs I've been able to get for the last 10 years is seasonal work in the fields.

teamosil said:
So, those jobs wouldn't exist in the US anymore without illegal immigrants. The fruit industry in the US would go out of business. And, when they did, we'd lose tons of legal jobs. The truck drivers, accountants, managers, marketers, executives, warehouse staff, secretaries, etc, etc, would all be looking for work. That's where the stat in the study I posted about losing 8.1 million jobs comes from. That's the number of people employed in industries that depend on illegal immigrant labor to remain profitable.
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Ok so we'd loose 8.1 million jobs. But more than likely this is what would happen.

Since those jobs would be lost several things would happen depending on the type of business lost. But lets go with agriculture. If a business lost its ability to stay open they would have to end up selling any land they had in order to first have a business to begin with. That land has a high probability of being sold to another business. More than likely a business which can compete using legal workers. Due to zoning issues it would probably be an agriculure business. That business would put that land to use. In order to do so they have to hire people to work that land.

Same would even go for construction jobs. More areas that need construction would open up which means companies would need to hire people in order to keep up with the demand. Due to more areas opening up more money would be going towards businesses that hire legal workers..which means they could hire additional people.

In the end while we might loose jobs, in the long run those jobs would be filled again. By legal people.

teamosil said:
Also, many illegal aliens act as day laborers. If citizens wanted that work, they're free to line up with them now. Realistically most people that hire day laborers would probably hire the citizen before they'd hire an illegal. But even with the economy in the state it is, I have yet to see a single white guy standing out there with the day laborers looking for work... And I drive by two different day laborer corners pretty much every day. If citizens want these jobs, nothing is stopping them from taking them now. We don't want them.
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Personally I have seen people of other races (including white) stand on corners looking for work. But you also have to remember that those that are here legally have other avenues to look for work that are not open to illegals. Like walking into a business and asking for a job, labour department to name a couple. An illegal that is working as a day laborer can not use these resources because in order to do so you need a SS number. Most day laborers do not have these things. (not even fake or stolen ss numbers)

teamosil said:
I'll grant you all the costs for social programs and whatnot spent on illegal aliens would go down. I've heard an estimate that if you take the total spent on illegal aliens and subtract the sales and income taxes we collect from them directly, we're losing about $40 billion nationwide between state and federal supporting illegals. That's not a good thing, but it's a lot smaller cost than the impact to our economy of losing the cheap labor. IMO the solution is to figure out a way to get them paying taxes.
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The only way to do so would be to legalize them all. We already did that once during the Regan Administration. Look what happened after that. ;) The difference between now and then is that we have at the very least twice the amount that Regan did. IE it just encourages MORE illegals to come and do what the current ones are doing. Legalizing illegals just perpetuates the problem. Making laws against companies from hiring illegals does not good without enforcement of those laws. And even then you have to first realize that they are using illegals before you can start to investigate them. And then you have to prove it. ALL without being called racist or being accused of racial profiling. (and yes this occurs even now. I frequent a site that is about Hispanics and illegals)

teamosil said:
Technically you're right that the total number of crimes would go down if all the illegals were gone. Of course, that would also be true if we got rid of all the left handed people or all the people who have owned poodles in their lives. Any group of people commit at least some crime.

But, all indications are that illegal aliens commit far fewer crimes per capita than citizens, excluding the obvious crime of breaking immigration law. Immigration and crime - The Boston Globe

That doesn't necessarily directy refute your point, but it does put it in perspective.
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Oh I know that illegals commit far less crime in the US than legals. I already have that perspective believe me. The site that I mentioned above practically drums that into people that visit. But like you say...it doesn't refute the point. :)
 
teamosil said:
I don't really know for a fact, but that doesn't sound accurate to me. For example, tons of racial profiling cases have been won against various police departments purely by showing that they were significantly more likely to pull over members of one race than members of another race. I don't think they need to prove that he is exclusively questioning latinos. Is that incorrect?
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Not correct. How do police departments that exist in areas were the majority of people are black get away with out racial profiling suits? Or for that matter even whites since whites can still get pulled over more if there are more of them around. (surely whites can sue for racial profiling?)

Edit note: sad that I actually have to ask that last question. :p
 
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Kal'Stang said:
Not correct. How do police departments that exist in areas were the majority of people are black get away with out racial profiling suits? Or for that matter even whites since whites can still get pulled over more if there are more of them around. (surely whites can sue for racial profiling?)

Edit note: sad that I actually have to ask that last question. :p
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Well, ok, yeah, you can't get in trouble for racial profiling if you are pulling over more people of a certain race just because there are more of them around. ;)

There are two statistical models I've seen used for measuring racial profiling. One says that you look at the percentage of the population in a precinct and that the number of traffic stops, questioning on the street, etc, should roughly match those percentages.

The one that I've been seeing used more often lately is that you look at the percentage of crime committed by each racial group and measure whether traffic stops and whatnot roughly match up with those percentages.

If your goal is individual liberty and equal rights then the first standard makes more sense- it isn't fair that somebody gets pulled over more often than somebody else just because of the color of their skin. If your goal is the most effective law enforcement possible, the second standard makes more sense. Generally speaking, more liberal sources will use the first standard when they study racial profiling and conservative sources will use the second standard.

The sad thing is that some police precincts are racially profiling by both standards, meaning they are profiling so agressively that they're actually becoming less effective and they're totally obliterating any sense of individual liberty.

And yeah, of course, whites could sue for racial profiling as well, although I haven't personally seen any studies that indicated that any police departments were profiling whites. It's a big country though. I'm sure it's happening somewhere.
 
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