“America must not become a nation of on-lookers. America must not remain silent. Not only black America, but America as a whole; and not only for the sake of the Negro, but for the sake of the idea and the aspiration of America itself.” – Martin Luther King
Nonviolent Migration 
September 22, 2006 at 7:58 am
Oh, please, how about a blog on Shahak and Spinoza and Bukowski instead. This we love illegals crap is like so anti-working class. Of course, YOUR job will never be threatened by an illegal alien, right, oh middle to upper class Leftist.
I get tired of fighting with y’all.
Signed, the only Leftist in America who hates illegal immigration.
On a solid pro-working class basis too!
September 22, 2006 at 7:59 am
Looking at John Moore’s picture and post, I can see that his middle to upper middle class job will NEVER be threatened by illegal immigrants either.
How bout a bit of self-examination guys?
October 16, 2006 at 2:51 am
Wow. Someone posted. I can hardly believe it. I wish blogger would tell me the dates of posts.
Anyway, I’ll be posting some stuff that I’ve posted in another location.
October 16, 2006 at 2:59 am
Robert,
Illegal immigration not only does not challenge my middle-class job, it creates it. I am a teacher at a school within a half mile of the U.S. Mexico border. My school is 100% Hispanic, 100% economically disadvantaged, about 90% ESL, and has a significant migrant population. Since I was one of the last ones hired at my school, you could say that if there were no illegal immigration, I wouldn’t be employed.
But, then again, this isn’t about my bank account for me. It’s about liberty and humanity.
October 16, 2006 at 3:20 am
And for the record:
I grew up in poverty, but now have a college degree and a middle-class income.
By poverty, I mean I drank powdered milk, wore homemade clothing throughout my youth, and shared a bed with my little brother until the age of 12 or something.
By college degree I mean from a public university.
By middle-class income, I mean a teacher’s salary.
October 16, 2006 at 6:04 am
Hi John, in order to get the dates of the posts, you need to get rid of this crappy Blogger commenter and install Haloscan. No, I do not work for them. The Haloscan commenter is automated for Blogger – you just click buttons and it just installs itself just like that. Haloscan tells you the dates of posts, the names and emails and IP’s of commenters, gives you smileys, does not ask you to log in, opens comments in a new window, in general WORKS, allows you to ban posters, allows you to edit your comments and any comments of any posters, etc. It also lets you do trackbacks if you wish.
Blogger’s commenter sucks. Most hip people have gone to Haloscan. Now, if you don’t pay them $12 a year, they only keep your last 100 comments, but I paid em, because I like the service. It also is a little weird about excessive links in comments, but most folks can’t do em right anyway.
It’s your decision.
October 16, 2006 at 6:10 am
You see how Blogger commenter only gives you the TIME and not the DATE of the comment? Is that lame or what?
Anyway, from my POV, John, I have watched here in CA as illegal aliens have utterly devastated working class jobs and incomes in the past 2 decades. My working class friends are hurting bad. There are not many jobs that Americans will not do. My small town got invaded by illegals 2 years ago and they just nuked all the housekeeping, janitorial and fast food jobs and they are working on the painting and construction jobs. Americans are regularly threatened that they will be replaced by illegals if they do not shape up. The use of illegals is flagrant and wide-open. All of those jobs I described above were being worked by Americans before 2 yrs ago. So much for jobs Americans won’t do. And there sure are a lot of unemployed Americans around here now. Not only that, but we now have a bit of the culture of Tijuana. GREAT.
October 16, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Robert,
Thanks for the tip on the date-time thing. I’ll let James know, and he can look into fixing it.
As to your comments about the effects of illegal immigration in your California town, I completely agree that illegal immigration causes tons of problems. But I believe that the solution is the opposite of what many people think. If we simply changed the legal status of those immigrants who took your friends jobs, your friends would be in a much better position to compete with them in the labor market. As it is, employers can pay illegal immigrants much less than they would have to pay legal immigrants or anyone else for that matter because they have to pay them under the table. The employer is saving the money s/he would have to spend on Social Security and other taxes, and beyond that, the employer can easily exploit someone s/he knows to be here illegally. If money is tight, or a venture doesn’t turn out to be profitable, the employer can always withhold pay and instead call the authorities and have his unpaid workforce arrested and start again.
But what you bring up, and this is the first time I’ve heard it and so am grateful you mentioned it, is that as long as their is illegal immigration, all workers in low-skilled labor are exploited. The illegal worker is threatened with deportation, the legal worker with being replaced with someone deportable.
The solution, as I see it, is to abolish illegal immigration like we abolished slavery. We should stop blaming the victim. Ending immigration restrictions could easily solve the problems you mention. All except the Tijuana problem, of course. But remember, the problems of Tijuana is the result of the U.S. border and restrictions on immigration, not Mexican culture. I would be glad to live in a place with a rich cultural heritage like the interior of Mexico, combined with the economy and freedoms of the United States.