Thank you for that revelation, Engineer-Poet. I had you pegged correctly from the beginning.

you try renting your 2-bedroom house to 15 people. I’ll pass on that.

Hey, what happened to “… of my choosing?  Are you admitting that the public should have some say in what I do with my own property, if it affects them?  Sure looks like it, and we have plenty of laws on the books (Constitutionally tested) which back that up.

But if I want to rent or sell my 2-bedroom house to someone of my own choosing, whether they are from Mexico or China or wherever, what right do you or anyone else have to decide I can’t do that?

Oh, you can do that.  You can sell to someone from the other side of the globe (rumor has it that Britons are buying real estate in Detroit, sight unseen, on speculation); you just have no business demanding that they be allowed legal entry to the country because of that.

whether these people create problems for the neighbors or not is an issue totally separate from where they came from.

Is it?  Propensity to create trouble has a strong correlation with national origin; machismo, religious supremacism and cultures which promote drunken driving are examples.  And when one of the troubles is sheer demand on resources, ANYONE is a problem.

Plenty of Americans create problems for their neighbors, and there are ways to deal with that.

I missed where you laid out the case for importing more problems when we already have problems.  I missed where you laid out the case for importing e.g. unskilled immigrant workers when unskilled US workers have a huge unemployment rate and wages have been at minimum for years.  I missed where you laid out the case for putting more people in states where there are serious and growing water shortages.  I missed where you laid out the case for bringing in people who will need schools, roads, houses and the like when we’ve got a deep recession and don’t have the revenue to maintain what we’ve already got.

You ask why these people continue to have children who would have to endure the conditions prevailing in their home countries. Why do Americans who can’t afford to provide for children continue to have them?

I don’t know, and I would happily vote for carrot-and-stick incentives to do the right thing even if folks like you would call me “Nazi” or, heaven forbid, “racist”.  But I don’t owe anything to the foreigners; that’s THEIR government’s and THEIR population’s concern.  The ~4.5% of the world’s population which is US citizens is enough to deal with without importing other people’s problems.

You seem to take it as a given that these people are all coming here to mooch off the American taxpayers.

Their intent is irrelevant, what matters is their effect.  It’s been calculated that the public expenditures on a two-earner minimum-wage couple with two school-age children is not only more than they pay in taxes, it is more than they earn (and no, their children’s contributions to Social Security will not match the public subsidy for at least two generations).  And how in the world can you advocate importing people who need the dole when we’re running trillion-dollar deficits?  Are you totally insane?

I propose exactly the opposite:  no more resident or immigrant visas except the “O” visas (persons with essential skills) and their immediate family.  Fix our interpretation of the 14th Amendment to eliminate “anchor babies”; any children born to non-residents would be considered citizens of their parent’s home countries, not the USA.  And fix the problem of our unwise immigration policies of the past by paying people to surrender their residency and leave; make it a requirement of parole for criminals.

The solution to that problem is to end public welfare in favor of voluntary charity

Get back to me when you’ve succeeded in doing that.

not keep people that want to improve their lives by coming to the United States from doing so.

And what do you do about the supply of roads, schools, police, housing, farmland, endangered species, WATER?  YES, keeping people from coming to the United States IS the solution.  Either the problems these people are enduring are inherent to themselves, or they aren’t.  In the latter case, their lives can be improved right where they are; in the former, you have no business asking anyone to bring them in.

Congress is Constitutionally tasked with the job of deciding who can enter the USA.  Even under the 14th Amendment, non-citizens have no right to enter the USA except under our laws (illegal immigration is an “invasion” under Article IV, from which Congress is required to protect the states).  The people are fed up with excessive immigration (both legal and illegal), and you are going to see an increasingly angry public.  Get used to it.

You ask why these people continue to have children who would have to endure the conditions prevailing in their home countries. Why do Americans who can’t afford to provide for children continue to have them? You seem to take it as a given that these people are all coming here to mooch off the American taxpayers. Some certainly are, but many Americans do the same thing. The solution to that problem is to end public welfare in favor of voluntary charity, not keep people that want to improve their lives by coming to the United States from doing so. As I said before, I believe that freedom and opportunity are for all people, not just Americans.

Liberty and justice requires that people who are not harming anyone else be allowed to live their lives in whatever manner and wherever they please. The fact that some Americans are willing to offer these immigrants jobs and places to live doesn’t limit the liberty of the people born here.

So, Engineer-Poet, if you want to hire someone of your choosing or sell or rent your property to someone of your choosing, then other people are entitlied to say no, you can’t do that?

Try renting your 2-bedroom house to a group of 15 people.  You’d be overwhelming the local services, for one thing.  Doesn’t the health department have something to say about that?  Don’t the neighbors? 

That doesn’t sound like justice to me. It sounds like a bunch of racist busybodies telling other people how they will be allowed to live their lives.

Nobody mentioned race until you brought it in.  Culture is significant, but sheer numbers and crowding are problems all by themselves.  And if these people didn’t want to be in whatever conditions prevailed in their home countries, why did they continue having children who would have to endure them?

Corrodes the foundations of this nation? What foundations are you talking about? Certainly not liberty and justice.

Yes, I am.  Crowding more and more immigrants into the USA limits the liberty of the people born here.  Raising their taxes to provide services for “neighbors” whose presence on our soil is against the law is a gross violation of justice.  And don’t get me started on the various nuisances, starting with the ubiquitous “Press 1 for English”.

Corrodes the foundations of this nation? What foundations are you talking about? Certainly not liberty and justice. You must be talking about something else.

If there are people who have an employer here that wants to pay them for their services, people here who are willing to sell or rent them property to live on, and other people here who are willing to sell them food, clothes and other goods, why should these people need to get permission from the state to come and live here?

Because a billion or so people would do it if they could?  What would be left of our roads, schools, farmland, parks and wilderness after that?  What would be left of our society after it was overwhelmed by sheer numbers?

The current citizens of the United States have spoken:  they don’t want the level of immigration that’s now occuring, let alone complete open borders.  And when the elites violate the laws to get cheaper labor or voters who will support them, it corrodes the foundations of this nation.

So yeah, there *IS* a huge problem with uneducated immigrants in the U.S.