and are you willing to pay for lettuce that cost $12/hr (with benefits) to pick – thereby (of course) only driving up the desire of illegals to come into this country????

Short answer, yes. I will pay more to get products from a producer that actually treats their employees fairly, and actually obeys the law.

Don’t believe the outsourcing BS of Kerry, etal.

When did this become about outsourcing? It’s not about sending jobs overseas, it’s about illegally hiring people to work here. Tangentially related, maybe, but not relevant to this discussion.

Unemployment is a at 5.5% as of March. That is basically zero for all intents and purposes. If you want a job in this country (as opposed to say the socialist liberal experiment in Europe that continues to fail) you can find one.

How do you figure? The unemployment figures only figure in those people who are actively looking for work. So that means that 5.5% of people who are looking for jobs can’t find them. People who aren’t looking for jobs (either because they don’t want/need a job, or because they gave up looking) aren’t even counted in that 5.5% figure. That’s a far cry from “anyone who wants a job can find one.”

Employers are desperate for good workers and simply can’t find them.

Got figures to back that up?

We have advanced – for the most part – and just don’t have a viable work force (and consumer population) to support low skilled low paying jobs.

Hence the “race to the bottom,” which you are apparently all in favor of.

Don’t believe the outsourcing BS of Kerry, etal. The reasons corporations are outsourcing is because they simply can’t find the workers in this country. Unemployment is a at 5.5% as of March. That is basically zero for all intents and purposes. If you want a job in this country (as opposed to say the socialist liberal experiment in Europe that continues to fail) you can find one. Employers are desperate for good workers and simply can’t find them. Its not a minimum wage issue. We have advanced – for the most part – and just don’t have a viable work force (and consumer population) to support low skilled low paying jobs.

This isn’t a jobs issue at all – the immigrants are simply not taking jobs that americans want.

Baloney. The employers in question aren’t willing to pay Americans enough to get them to take the jobs. And they get to avoid payroll taxes by paying under the table. In other words, they don’t want to play by the rules, and by hiring illegals, they don’t have to.

It’s not that Americans don’t want to pick lettuce; it’s that Americans don’t want to pick lettuce for $3 an hour.

I would argue that they are essentially the same. The .gov makes drugs illegal and all of the associated bad stuff comes out of it. The .gov also makes immigration illegal (as opposed to having an open immigration policy), which fuels many of the problems with smugglers, people being treated poorly by their employers, etc.

I wouldn’t advocate a completely open immigration policy, but I wouldn’t advocate totally unregulated marijuana for everyone either.

Unfortunatly, our system stil hasnt igured this out and so, like in the War on Some Drugs, we are shutting out legitmiate avenues of immigration for many people, forcing them to become criminals.

SaysUncle is right. Open immigration with more guards manning the check in stations (in a more curteous manner) would do wonders for the economy and also free up the resources needed (as well as fund the additional guards needed) to patrol for the true terrorists trying to sneak over.

Quite frankly, IMHO immigration has become the new war on drugs. In all the talk of illegal immigration, libertarians seem to forget that its a victimless crime. (Yes you can argue there are victims, but you can also argue that legalizing drugs would have victims too).

There’s a huge demand for illegal immigrant labour, particularly in the agricultural, restaurant and hotel businesses. A libertarian means of dealing with this would be to boycott these industries. It would be a lot easier to boycott than to patrol the border..especially since boycotting would get all of the people who are already here..but nobody seems to want to do that.

Now there does need to be a legal means for these people to come over. The problem is political will. Cubans (due to the political influence of Cuban Americans) sneaking across the border are “punished” by being granted a green card immediately..something I don’t even have after being here legally for over 5 years. However, unskilled people from other countries have essentially no avenues for coming here legally.

Like 2 fences 200 yards apart, lots of sensors in between, and helicopter gunships authorized to machinegun anything that moves.

WTF?!?!?!?!

Where they on private property? Where they trespassing? Where they doing anything illegal? What if it was you, SaysUnlce, who happened to go on a hiking trip with the family along this particularly beautiful part of the desert? Would that be ok???

No, not in the eyes of the border patrol . . . . . so what exactly is the border patrol saying here – seems to me that this most incompetant branch of the government is basically declaring their intention that anyplace along the border be off limits to all americans.

Again, WTF????

If they just placed real live agents out in the field in the first place, they 1) wouldn’t have the minuteman project taking place, and 2) wouldn’t have top rely on electronic sensors to alert some office hundreds of miles away that the countries defenses have just been breached.

Isn’t this exactly the kind of problem – that began under Clinton (but I don’t think was really his fault as much as it was the fault of a runaway Government intent on wasting money on dumb projects) that ultimatly led to 9/11? If we’ve learned anything from the war on terror its simply that we cannot trust computers and sensors feeding back information to some systems analyst in a cozy air conditioned office hundreds (or thousands) of miles away from the real action where he/she can let their guard down as they take their hourly starbucks breaks. No, the only way to gather the intelligence and fight the scourge of terrorism and illegal immigration (don’t dare say these guys aren’t terrorists or warriors – just look at the numbers of MS-13 members who have been arrested and deported in the last week) is with men (not women, who are by and large to weak to handle a close in hand to hand battle/confrontation) on the ground.

Anything else is just kidding ourselves and Bush knows it.