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Originally Posted by roachboy
ng: the terms are not really interchangeable.
in the term "illegal immigrant" the charge that seems to freak people out is in the second term, which presupposes that the folk who are here to work intend to stay here.
that is false simply because "reverse immigration" rates are not factored into the debate. even amongst documented workers, the rate of return is very high.
amongst the undocumented, the rates are probably higher still.
so there is no reason to think of these folk as an immigrant population: they are parts of a migrant labor pool.
so the analogy is false.
so say that if you are driving without a license makes you an illegal driver is much more limited: it simply states that at the time you were presumably busted, you were driving. calling an undocumented worker an illegal immigrant makes a whole sequence of other assumptions that the term "illegal driver" does not make.
seriously: without the category of "immigrant" the entire fantasy of being-invaded by Them falls apart. you could still get riled up on legal grounds, if you like: but the way that would work logically (and politically) would be totally different. it would be much harder to move from "these people do not obey the rules" to "these people are trying to take over the heimat"....
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You are making an idealistic assumption that anyone that comes to the US illegally is here to make a few bucks and go home. There's really no statistics to back that up. And it wouldn't matter any way as those that are here
illegally are, well...illegally here, be it any amount of time.
I'm the granddaughter of immigrants-my grandfather's name is on the Immigrant's Wall on Ellis Island. I have no beef at all with
documented (read-legal)workers, whether here for a month or a century. As Shani pointed out, their SS numbers, their papers et al, are legit, they're productive and not a drain on social services as they pay taxes to support those services.
My beef is with those who, regardless of origin of country, cross into the US, encourage employers to pay substandard wages, thereby depriving legal citizens of jobs, who drain and steal from social services, create dangerous situations for themselves and others(the NY Daily News did a series on illegals and the construction industry and their high injury/death rate and substandard work/conditions there). Cases in point: The 'winner' of a first baby contest turned out to be an illegal-who paid for the hospital expenses when the baby was born? An illegal family from Mexico makes public appeals to save their daughter via a multiple organ transplant. Only after the transplant was done was it discovered they'd entered the country illegally. Costs that weren't covered by public donations were borne by the medical community. These were widely publicized stories, but they reflect a larger problem in the shadows. We have an economy that's stagnant at best, American families are struggling just to get by and corporate heads are just getting greedier by the minute. Add to those problems we currently face the lure of someone coming in freely to earn less than minimum wage because some company owner can save a few bucks on his payroll and the $2 an hour is more than double what could be gotten back home. It's exploitation, it's bucking the law and it's dangerous, just like driving illegally.
Those that are of the thinking of 'taking over', I would call racist to some extent at least. But I don't necessarily think the fears of being pushed aside economically via jobs is a totally unrealistic fear as it happens every day. Why would Mr. Smith pay me $7 an hour when he can get someone for $2, no questions asked? And you think they'll just take that $2 for a few weeks and go home? Is that the right thing to do at any rate?