Re: "Legal" and "Illegal" have no bearing on "Right" and "Wrong"
You're reading far too much into it. I was just trying to keep the discussion on point with a simplifying assumption.
Don't want to call them an economic burden? Fine, they're a financial burden: just as much as any citizen or legal resident is. Xenophobia has nothing to do with it. It costs a government (any government) a certain amount of money to guarantee the safety of X-number of citizens. Increase X, and the cost goes up. No assumptions needed.
I wasn't referring to the ones here; I was referring to the scenario in which the US let almost everyone who desired come to live and work.
Read my posts more carefully to avoid embarrassing yourself.
And what if 1,000 people clamored to rent rooms in your hotel? Or 10,000? The analogy still holds.[/QUOTE]
You're reading far too much into it. I was just trying to keep the discussion on point with a simplifying assumption.
And you aren't reading into it nearly enough. When dealing with the real world, simplistic is rarely the best way to couch the discussion.
Don't want to call them an economic burden? Fine, they're a financial burden: just as much as any citizen or legal resident is. Xenophobia has nothing to do with it. It costs a government (any government) a certain amount of money to guarantee the safety of X-number of citizens. Increase X, and the cost goes up. No assumptions needed.
Uhhhh, ahhhh, my brain. So much wrong...... Ok, I think I can make this simple, since you like it that way.....In the united states, labor is profitable. Even the lowest rung on the legal labor ladder, part time min wage, is still profitable labor. The more workers the better, no economist in the world would tell you otherwise. Your scenario of more workers meaning a net loss, or the system being drained, is just not how it works. The only scenario in which that would be the case would be if labor stopped being profitable, or if a sizable chunk of your new population were not working and merely draining. Which is not the case. Immigrants have an extremely high employment rate, higher than the native born population, they just unfortunately are forced to do a lot of it under the table. Bringing that work above the table could only possibly be a good thing.
I wasn't referring to the ones here; I was referring to the scenario in which the US let almost everyone who desired come to live and work. And what if 1,000 people clamored to rent rooms in your hotel? Or 10,000? The analogy still holds
If what you are asking me is "can the USA literally house everyone in the world?" no clearly. But I am not talking about some wild dystopian future where the nation is one giant coast to coast mega city. I am talking about what to do with people who come here for work. If there is a company here willing to hire them, then by all means they should be allowed in. "but they pay low wages and drive down the economy" I hear you say.....correct, but that is only BECAUSE they are illegal and they are forced to take ****ty wages from the unscrupulous employers who hire them. If they were all legal and part of the open above board job market, they would have to compete fairly with legal citizens, and would start being paid around the same, which would in turn drive down the incentive for employers to import labor....you see where I am going with this.
Look, as long as there are employers willing to pay illegal immigrant workers more than they would make back home, but less than natural citizens would make here, then the illegal labor market will always be thriving. It's like prostitution that way, it will always happen, the best way to combat it is to bring it out of the shadows, make it above board and out in the open where you can tax is and regulate it and work it into your economy in a healthy way.
