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Immigration - An International View

As America continues to ramp up the rhetoric over immigration instead of coming up with a plan that is fair to every American and hopeful alien, the Republicans have pulled out all the stops and gone after the 14th amendment.

Finally law makers are going after our beloved Constitutions to make a point; knowing that it is unlikely that the 14th will be repealed.

Just last week amidst the debate over building a Mosque 721.257896345 yards from ground zero, another story surfaced of a missionary to Korea.

Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who was raised in Boston and had been working as an English teacher in South Korea, was arrested in January and sentenced to eight years of hard labor ($750,000.00 fine) for illegally entering North Korea from China. READ MORE...

In fact a few stories have surface this year, and a bunch of others have gone unnoticed. Hard labor in North Korea is HARD. It seems to be a fairly good deterrent. It is used to punish NK nationals that escape to China and are deported back.

As we grapple with immigration. It's an important issue for us, and just having an opinion based on nothing, is ignorant.

The International Organization for Migration states:
Around 450,000 undocumented Mexicans enter the United States every year, in addition to others from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and South America. The Mexican southern border with Guatemala has become the key crossing point for migrants coming from Central and South America, most of them in transit towards the United States. In 2004, around 215,000 Central American migrants were intercepted by Mexican authorities and returned to their countries of origin.

I want to showcase some of our competitors:


Mexico - Under Article 123 of the General Population Act, illegal immigration is an offense punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of up to 5,000 pesos, or about $450. Typically, any crime with a punishment of a year or more is considered a felony.


Article 118 of the act says foreigners who are deported and then later attempt to re-enter the country without authorization can be punished with up to 10 years in prison.

SOURCE


Canada - The Canadian Immigration Act makes inadmissible any person who has: 

(a) committed or been convicted of an offence in Canada, or
(b) who has committed or been convicted of an offence abroad that would also be considered an offence in Canada.

It proposes people who intend to apply for Canadian citizenship to be present physically in the country for 3 years of the preceding 4 years as one of the prerequisites of obtaining citizenship residence in Canada.


SOURCE


UK - five years legal residence in the UK
- indefinite leave to remain or "equivalent" for this purpose (see above) must have been held for 12 months
the applicant must intend to continue to live in the UK or work overseas for the UK government or a British corporation or association
- the same "good character" standards apply as for those married to British citizens
- the same language and knowledge of life in the UK standards apply as for those married to British citizens


SOURCE


All of them were taken to Torquay police station for further enquiry by the immigration officers. They will be kept there as detainees till they will be deported from the UK as they are not allowed to stay in UK. Their employer will also be facing with penalty as a punishment for employing the illegal immigrants. Those who employ the illegal immigrants in their business are also punished and are subjected to heavy fine as civil penalty.

SOURCE

HERE is more information on other countries.

So tell me, why we can't we get this straight?

Comments

photogr said…
David:

I think the reason is obvious.

Why do you think the democrats ( and possibly the Republicans too) want to have a pool of illegal immigrants that they can us and persuade to vote during a major election. Does the ACORN scandal come to mind in the last presidential election? They needed live bodies with fake IDs to sway the election.

America despite it's flaws is the land of opportunity for the world and rightfully so. Thinking about it, we ( our ancestors)are all immigrants that came to this country for a better life and future. Sadly the Native Americans suffered from the onslaught of immigrants into this country though. Sort of like the Mexican invasion border jumping today.

Naturally we should welcome all that want to be a part of America and swear allegiance to our constitution, become citizens, and contribute to our way of life legally.

The big problem arises is when there is no control and immigrants can filter into this country illegally failing to adapt to our diverse culture and abiding to our laws. What we then have is anarchy, high crime rates,gangs,and illegal voters controling electorial outcomes.

Any political party not wanting to control illegal immigrants invading this country should be suspect of questionable motives.
Rick Yushenko said…
Despite David’s quite well sourced references, I think that Photogr has the answer.
It doesn’t particularly matter how draconian the laws on the books are. The US laws are also rigid, and the number of illegal aliens deported rises each year, no matter who the President is.
Where I agree with Photogr is his assertion that immigration benefits the political players. The notion that they are voting in huge numbers is silly. Voter fraud is a felony, and is monitored pretty closely, in particular by both the major political parties.
No, the great thing about illegal immigrants is a steady source of labor for low wage, marginal and highly seasonal work. This is not necessarily Mexicans harvesting iceberg lettuce in Imperial County, either. I’ve met illegals from Canada, England, Ireland and Germany, all of whom looked ā€œAmericanā€ (if you get my drift) and spoke English pretty darned well. They worked in office jobs (temping), trucking, moving, and even contracting in the high tech industry (lots of people who lost their H1B status will work under the table at a steep discount for startups). Note that both Democrats and Republicans own farms, hotels, businesses and software startups. The affordable, easily hired and fired labor, assists the capitalists in both parties.
Rick Yushenko said…
I agree with Photogr’s suggestion that increases in immigration also increase Democratic voter turnout. Not through illegals using false IDs to vote en masse, but more slowly through legal immigration and naturalization. Recent immigrants tend to vote Democratic, as many of their principal issues (public transportation, schools, jobs) are more aligned. Once immigrants are established, they often reach out to their homelands and bring over more friends and family, generally legally, but not always. So efforts to assist recent immigrants will produce goodwill from their legal citizen community.
A few caveats here. Republicans have also been successful in winning over various immigrant communities, like the Vietnamese and Indians who bring their wonderful talents and energy to the USA. In New England, the Irish joined the Democratic Party in the late 1800’s, and when the Italians showed up around 1910 or so, they were frozen out and instead, joined the Republican Party in droves.
David said…
Thanks guys for commenting. I think that we have a couple of issues that need to be addressed.

- We need a real line
- We need to close the border
- We need to have a guest worker program.

Then we can have a better perspective on what actually needs to be dome.

http://fireandgrace.blogspot.com/2010/05/immigration-common-sense-view-with.html

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