Just putting my $.02 in.
First of all, I am a legal immigrant. I have personally gone through the immigration process myself and it's a pain in the @ss to be honest. Second, there's very few reasons why people would be allowed to immigrate. Third, it is not cheap to pay all the processing fees to become an immigrant, plus the lawyer fees since most people can't understand for shit anything in the forms. Yes they are do-able without a lawyer, but it takes a long time understanding all the forms and getting everything ready.
If you have ever met anyone who's here illegally, most of them will tell you that they come here to make money and then to return to the Mexico or their home country. Few of the illegals here come here to join gangs or just be a messed up person. Those "illegals" that commit crimes are usually the descendants of illegals who were born in the US thus not being illegal anymore.
Speaking from personal experience, it is VERY hard to make a decent living in Mexico. My cousin worked at a video rental place (just like a small privately owned shop) and his pay for an 8 hour shift was around $4.50. Thats for a whole day! Wages down in Mexico are EXTREMELY underpaid. If you were a Mexican seeking a better life, going the legal way to get into the US is almost impossible. Getting the savings to be able to process any papers would take a couple years of savings. Once you could finally put the papers in, you run the risk of them denying you (which happens a lot btw). That means all that money that you saved up goes to waste. That's one of the main reasons people get here illegally... getting in the legal way is too hard and expensive.
Anyways i think i've ranted enough.
EDIT: The only thing i see wrong with the AZ Immigration law is that any cop can stop you and ask for papers without a real reason to. Why not do it like CA and have check points at certain places and check there?
Amen. Cops dont need more reasons to be allowed to discriminate. Luckily I was born in the US (Arizona, go figure..) and I didn't have to go through this process of making my way in.
A lot of the people who like idea of the law are white people who have never had to worry about being profiled, or discriminated against so they don't understand how offensive and annoying it is. I know I would be offended if I was a U.S. citizen and a police officer questions whether or not I'm here legally. There's better ways to go about this than profiling people.
Thank you. Someone understands..
Its amazing the 3 of you are so ready to discuss, and condemn, a law you obviously know nothing about. The law does NOT state cops can pull people over simply under suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. It DOES state the cop may only ask for proof of residency if 2 criteria are met: 1) a law was broken which brought the police attention to the individual, and 2) the police has reasonable suspicion of illegal residency (beyond they simply look Mexican). The law goes on to specifically state it
prohibits police 'profiling' by way of questioning someone based on nothing more than ethnicity.
Frankly, I think its too lenient. I have to show proof of my identification (and residency) every time I open a bank account, write a check... hell just to rent bowling shoes. So go ahead and cry me a river that it would be unthinkable that a legal resident should have to prove their residency status just as regularly as the rest of us.
furbiesandbeans, while I respect your perspective and can appreciate the work that went into becoming a legal resident, and I agree our system should be reformed (for several reasons), but I disagree with much of your reasoning. You suggest your cousin made/makes $4.50 a day in Mexico. People throw these types of figures out all the time, to establish a comparison to our wages in this country. The problem with that is, you left out mentioning currency exchange. Im sure its not great considering the job you described, but how are we to know $4.50 American dollars a day is such an awful wage? Sure it sucks if you want to come to the US and buy something, but for Mexico it clearly fits their economy. The fact you have immigrated here means you know all about the currency exchange rate, yet you dont mention it when you talk about your poor cousin making $4.50 a day. Dont attempt to manipulate us into thinking conditions are worse in Mexico than they are. Mexico's living conditions aren't even the point of this discussion anyway.
Furthermore, there are plenty of bad living conditions throughout the world. It is not our responsibility to allow refugees from those places to come here secretly, live unofficially, and sponge off the society the rest of us pay for. Being poor is no excuse to break the law, nor does it mean we owe it to them to pay their way when/if they come here.
And yes, of course most illegals come here to make money, then go 'home'. They come here to live long enough that they can mooch enough money out of our economy to send home and make their life in mexico more comfortable. We pay for their new found comfort, us, the US tax payers. That same currency exchange makes it easy to save up what is considered a lot of money in Mexico. You seem to be implying them not intending to stay here permanently is some sort of reason to empathize with their side of this argument, when in fact all it does is emphasize these people are just here to use us for their own personal gain, and then leave as soon as they've suckled enough money out of our economy. Make no mistake about it, they are using us, and they know it.
