Get the facts straight about immigration
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Lisa Johnson-Firth
Published: May 7, 2008
In light of Mr. Stewart’s recent actions to solicit support from the public for his “rule of law” resolution, I would like to encourage the board to be vigilant about getting the facts concerning immigrants in Prince William County. For instance, there has not been a decrease in serious crime because most of the immigrants detained were picked up for minor traffic violations.
It does not take a two-year study to see that the resolution has already had a drastically negative impact on the county and the rule of law under the Constitution. We now have ghost neighborhoods, school and ESL classes down in attendance, increased community fear and home foreclosures, 40 to 80 percent business drop-offs for some business owners, increased hate-speech rhetoric, police due process violations, anecdotal evidence of profiling and the building of negative perceptions.
There are also new family issues to grapple with.
For those of us raising children, it becomes challenging to teach the concept of “love your neighbor as yourself” when the next door neighbor is being deported or is fearfully fleeing.
Even at this early stage, it should be evident to the board that the resolution was ill-guided and must be rescinded or, at the least, suspended, while the board conducts hearings and solicits expert testimony and studies. An easy solution would be to recognize current federal and state laws supporting immigration enforcement, including the recent 287(g) agreements between ICE and the Prince William County police and sheriff’s office, and the Prince William-Manassas Adult Detention Center.
LISA JOHNSON-FIRTH
Immigration & Human Rights Law Group, PLLC
Manassas
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Reader Reactions
Posted by ( phdee ) on May 14, 2008 at 9:02 pm
barnu, assumin g there was only a sales tax, explain how immigrants/illegals would unfairly drain our social services. I totally fail to see the connection.
As for tax incentives for businesses within our country, how much moree could be given than now exists. Big businesses can’t make a product in the US without subsidies, tax breaks,, etc. Look at Wall Street today.
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Posted by ( raywilliams ) on May 14, 2008 at 6:50 pm
And once again barnun makes a valid point. I do not know if Mexico is on the USA gift plan, but if they are then withholding funds would wake up the Mexican government. Money talks, all else walks. But for a short-term, positive result is to offer a temporary Documented Illegal Resident card illegals can use for payroll documentation and withholding. It could be implemented in 6 months and at least 75% of those here illegally would apply for it. A part of receiving this card would be fingerprinting and DNA samples. So simple, even a Caveman could do it.
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Posted by ( phdee ) on May 14, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Chemwiz: I forgot ask. Are you taking my challenge to you about the sworn affasdavit. I know you aren’t because you have no facts. Moreover you are a big COWARD, with lots of flatulence.
The excuse you gave about the SEX crimes of illegals reminded me of the recent explanation by Bush on his “Mission Accomplished” sign. You are hilarious as Bush is.
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Posted by ( Chemwiz ) on May 14, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Barnum: All good points made…
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Posted by ( phdee ) on May 14, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Hello Chemwiz: I just got an e-mail from my staunch Republican son-in-law, and guess what? There were 3 parts (you failed to post Parts 1 and 2); these referred to Bush tax cuts (since 2006 only), and pointed out the Dems had been in charge since then in Congress. And Part 3 was a carbon copy of your propaganda, including the SEX crime stats. Examing the postings more closely, I notice that many allegations are purly racist in nature, and could be KKK literature, but certainly from a hate group. You must have spammed the lies all over the place, if you claim they are fats - rather than your being duped by someone’s hate and propaganda.
Why don’t you, as a huge intellectual, tell us where you “stol,e” the propaganda from, if you have the courage, strength and fortitude - which say you don’t. PWC’s board has before gotten postings from outside hate people on its resolution, mostly taking a chance to gtet a spot to post their racism, hate, bigotry, etc. Like you, they are of course “mental cripples”, uneducated, and a disgrace to this country. Un fortunately, like the KKK, you do have free speech, but5 who will want to listen other than similar slime.
And you claim you present facts. Ha ha hhaha. You know as much about facts as aa whore does about love.
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Posted by ( barnun ) on May 14, 2008 at 1:10 pm
there are those who beleive the tax code should be completely overhauled. if we eliminated payroll tax all together and went to a straight sales tax, the illegals would then contribute equally, but they’d still drain unfairly from our social services. I’d venture to guess that most of the resolutionists dont like that our jobs are outsource to china or mexico but that has not been the point of disussion. I’ve stated many times that our government should put serious pressure on mexico to enforce their side of the border as well as to generally improve their country. Our government should offer tax incentives for industry within our country, not industry that gets exported out. We send Mexico a LOT of aid money. we should start skimming billions off the top to support their people within our country.
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Posted by ( RonCharest ) on May 14, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Here is a link to an excellent article on Immigration, written about Arizona’s fiasco Hard Line stance against “Illegal Immigrants.”
“Why Harsh Immigration Crackdowns Will Never Work”
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/85022/
Full disclosure: I’ve been making the argument that we need to prosecute employers who hire “Illegal Immigrants” because I suspected the ramifications. And because I knew just how uncomfortable it would make folks to hear that - especially Nativists who simply need a target for hating and have found it in Hispanics.
This article makes the negative impact of going after employers quite clear. It also makes it clear that forcing employers to follow existing wage and fair labor laws - something I’ve advocted in all sincerity - is effective. And for all the wailing and nashing of teeth over how much “Illegal Immigrants” are draining Los Angeles, this article shows just the opposite - LA has made “Illegal Immigration” a mostly postive thing for all residents.
Concerning the cost of building a fence around the US: The cost of construction of any military system is (rule-of-thumb) only 30% of total lifetime ownership costs based on a 20 year life cycle. Figure the costs of building and maintaining a 100% people-proof fence around the United States for the next 20 years, then come back and tell me where the money comes from. Be sure to include costs of personnel operating and maintaing this fence, as personnel costs are always the largest single line-item of ownership costs at about 40%.
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Posted by ( raywilliams ) on May 13, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Yes, Ron - providing incentives for our corporations to build factories in Mexico instead of China would help. But America is a county of Low Prices - Every Day so a pair of Levis might cost $2 more made in Mexico rather than China. Of course, they would cost $6 more if made in the USA, but as Americans, we don’t care about the other guy - only low prices. The Resolutionist cry about a construction company hiring a day laborer, but say nothing about the factory jobs sent to China, tech jobs to India and the BILLIONS we spend on foreign oil every day. Personally, I’ll focus on PWC and let smart people like Bush and Cheney concentrate on global issues. I just hope George leaves a balanced budget for the next guy like he received from Clinton.
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Posted by ( Chemwiz ) on May 13, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Ron,
Your first paragraph reiterated why I had said, so I obviously agree with you. You make some good points about NAFTA and its impact on the situation. I am just having trouble understanding how “enforcing our existing laws” would be good enough. I don’t think that they are strict enough and I don’t think that they are possible to enforce. As I mentioned earlier, you will always have construction, farming, labor jobs that will be too difficult to enforce. I see how there could be corruption if we build the barricades, but I don’t see a better solution. It would have to be a tightly supervised endeavor but would still be less increase on govt and tax $$ than attempting to enforce corruption throughout the whole country. Also, how can the IRS system work when none of those jobs are reported? Hmmm…this is definitely a tough problem, but work needs to be done to resolve it – ASAP.
Ph-duh: If you go back and look at my post, I stated that there has been nearly 1 million sex crimes commited by illegal alliens...I did not say that figure was on an annual basis. There’s a village somewhere who’s missing their idiot…you should go back home. I’m not going to reply to your non-sense again.
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Posted by ( phdee ) on May 13, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Chemwiz: I just LOVE that allegation of yours that a million illegals are sex offenders!!! That’s one out of 12 illegals. Then you claim the4 prisons population is 30% illegal. Thenwe add the murderers, robbers, DUI, etc to the total - and bingo: there are more criminal illegals than there are illegals. It is so hilarious!!!! iMAGINE: 1 OUT OF 12!!! ha ha ha ha! Can hardly keep from laughing and wetting my pants.
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