Fox's Visit To Utah

[Dror]

What do you all think of Mexico's President Vicente Fox's visit to Utah? He's already spoken with the governor, and is expected to speak with Church leaders, too. I wonder what they will talk about. Think they'll give him a Book of Mormon?

Don't know if he'll talk about the immigration issue or not. I'd be interested to hear what he has to say about it. Personally, I don't know the ins and outs of the legislation being debated in Congress, but am generally in favor of making immigration, or working in the country, relatively easy. Make 'em legal, give them proper wages, and make 'em pay taxes. It seems to me that would benefit everybody. It would benefit the Mexicans who work here because they would get better wages and not have to worry about deportation or lack of public services. The taxation would mean they wouldn't be a burden on our system.

Border security is an issue to me, largely because of the possibility of terrorists coming in through Mexico. I don't know if building a wall or sending in the National Guard are the best answers (I have to wonder why border security just suddenly became such a huge issue within the past couple of weeks. Are we in that much greater danger than we were, say, three weeks ago? The cynical part of me wonders if "El Presidente" Bush thought this might be a way to boost his popularity ratings. ). In any case, I don't think your average Mexican is a terrorist threat. Maybe if we make it easier to come into the US legally, and work here, they wouldn't feel the need to sneak across the border, and we'd have a better idea who is coming into our country. And those who sneak in despite the ease of legal entry, well, nab 'em and send 'em on their way! Maybe that means they have something to hide! (Drugs, etc.)

Well, I don't have the answers, just a few musings. I'm in favor of liberal immigration policies at least partly because my mother is an immigrant (from Europe)--because she immigrated to the US, and was later naturalized, I was born an American citizen, for which I am grateful.

[Fiannan]

Fox is Mexico's president? The way he acts, and the way our congress acts, you'd think he was the president of the USA!

On the immigration issue the government should listen to the people of the USA -- build a border wall now and post the USA's military on the border! In fact, let's get really tough and adopt MEXICO's immigration laws -- now they are tough, although I would not want our security forces to be as racist as Mexico's are.

[prisonchaplain]

Fox is Mexico's president? The way he acts, and the way our congress acts, you'd think he was the president of the USA!

On the immigration issue the government should listen to the people of the USA -- build a border wall now and post the USA's military on the border! In fact, let's get really tough and adopt MEXICO's immigration laws -- now they are tough, although I would not want our security forces to be as racist as Mexico's are.

You know, there is another way.

Kum by ya, my Lord. Kum by ya.

Kum by ya, my Lord. Kum by ya... well you get the idea.

I think the Apostle Paul put it another way: (1 Corinthians 13:13) And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (KJV)

Now, I am sure that is how the Mexican "guests" (by the way, do other country's make their guests clean their toilets too???) will see your ideas--walls, armies, etc., but silly me--I must be blind to the you're trying to communicate to them.

[Fiannan]

Yes, but using your analogy if someone calls and asks if they can come over and spend some time with me then I'll be a lot more positive than if I come home and find them taking over one of the rooms in my house (and let's say I don't even know them) and then calling me a racist if I question the appropriatness of their commiting an illegal act of squatting on my property.

[shanstress70]

Now, I am sure that is how the Mexican "guests" (by the way, do other country's make their guests clean their toilets too???) will see your ideas--walls, armies, etc., but silly me--I must be blind to the you're trying to communicate to them.

Make them clean our toilets? You have to be kidding me. Do you mean pay them more money cleaning toilets than they could ever HOPE to make in Mexico? I calculated in another thread how much a lady makes cleaning houses in my neighborhood... it was about 80K per year, and that's tax free money! Please don't pain the Mexican immigrants as being in an unfortunate situation. If it was so bad, why in the world do they risk everything to come here?

[Dror]

<div class='quotemain'>

Now, I am sure that is how the Mexican "guests" (by the way, do other country's make their guests clean their toilets too???) will see your ideas--walls, armies, etc., but silly me--I must be blind to the you're trying to communicate to them.

Make them clean our toilets? You have to be kidding me. Do you mean pay them more money cleaning toilets than they could ever HOPE to make in Mexico? I calculated in another thread how much a lady makes cleaning houses in my neighborhood... it was about 80K per year, and that's tax free money! Please don't pain the Mexican immigrants as being in an unfortunate situation. If it was so bad, why in the world do they risk everything to come here?

Precisely my point. They come to the United States, despite the difficulties involved, because they can make a much better life for themselves here than in Mexico. Isn't that why almost everybody else came to America? The Jaredites, the Lehites, the Spanish, the French, the English, the Germans, the Polish, the Jews, the Irish, etc., etc., and now the Mexicans, all came to make better lives for themselves, and very often it involved making a profit. And what's wrong with that? Obviously, what's wrong with illegal immigrants is that they are here, well, illegally. Nevertheless, one can certainly understand why they are coming here--to flee poverty and corruption.

You pointed out this lady is making tax-free money. It seems to me that if we offer these people legal status, we could then tax them, and then they would no longer be a burden on our system. Moreover, if they were legal, employers would have to pay them at least minimum wage. This would be better for those Mexicans who therefore get higher wages, of course, but it may also be better for Americans because they then would better be able to compete with the Mexicans for jobs. One of the most common complaints about illegal immigrants is that they take "our" jobs away from us. Well, that's because because of their illegal status, they often get paid less than minimum wage, because they can't very well go to the authorities and cry 'foul.' Make it so they receive at least minimum wage, and employers won't be able to do that any longer, and we'd have a more level playing field (and 'paying field'!). Also, the same Mexicans who take jobs also create jobs, because they themselves are an additional market, living here and creating a higher demand for products and services.

Dror

[Winnie G]

Fiannan On the immigration issue the government should listen to the people of the USA -- build a border wall now and post the USA's military on the border! In fact, let's get really tough and adopt MEXICO's immigration laws -- now they are tough, although I would not want our security forces to be as racist as Mexico's are.

I have to say my eyebrows went up when I read your remarks Finnan. Can you say Berlin wall?

You make it sound like these people are terrorists not migrant workers house cleaners and underpaid.

Would someone please tell Finnan how much he will have to pay for a head of letise once this wall of igranice is built.

Yes, but using your analogy if someone calls and asks if they can come over and spend some time with me then I'll be a lot more positive than if I come home and find them taking over one of the rooms in my house (and let's say I don't even know them) and then calling me a racist if I question the appropriatness of their commiting an illegal act of squatting on my property.

Fiannan are people coming in to the states taking over property you see as worth having. Ive seen were some os these illegal’s live, broken down trailers more like slum housing. I mean for heaven sakes are you going to keep Canadians out because there beer is better?

I think making them tax payers is the better why to go.

[Fiannan]

So would you be willing to accept the USA adopting Mexico's immigration laws?

[BenRaines]

Last I read it is Americans who are paying undocumented aliens to do the work in cash or under the table. I think that we should have a guest worker program and permits issued for non US citizen workers.

The no tax reporting is caused not by immigrants but by employers and people willing to pay cash for work. They are probably the same people who cheat on their taxes to pay less.

I believe that illegal is illegal. If there is a problem in the law then fix it but making illegal legal just to prevent people from being illegal does not make sense. I am all for legal guest worker program and a true immigration policy.

I have lived outside the US and our borders are a sieve. Illegal immigration is almost impossible in many countries.

Ben Raines

[prisonchaplain]

Yes, but using your analogy if someone calls and asks if they can come over and spend some time with me then I'll be a lot more positive than if I come home and find them taking over one of the rooms in my house (and let's say I don't even know them) and then calling me a racist if I question the appropriatness of their commiting an illegal act of squatting on my property.

I'm not opposed to us getting control of our borders in a reasonable, consistent matter. But, to nod and wink at illegal immigrants for decades, knowing that they provide cheap labor for some businesses, and then to, every once and a while (when a vulnerable politicans decide to pull out the Nativist card), demonize them, jail them, etc.--well, me thinks we end up looking silly and vindictive.

<div class='quotemain'>

Now, I am sure that is how the Mexican "guests" (by the way, do other country's make their guests clean their toilets too???) will see your ideas--walls, armies, etc., but silly me--I must be blind to the you're trying to communicate to them.

Make them clean our toilets? You have to be kidding me. Do you mean pay them more money cleaning toilets than they could ever HOPE to make in Mexico? I calculated in another thread how much a lady makes cleaning houses in my neighborhood... it was about 80K per year, and that's tax free money! Please don't pain the Mexican immigrants as being in an unfortunate situation. If it was so bad, why in the world do they risk everything to come here?

1. We wink and nod at their crossing into our land to provide labor at much cheaper wages than our own workers would make.

2. $80K--I guarantee you, despite no research, that the average Mexican illegal immigrants wages are probably under $20K.

3. What's bad is that we cannot control our borders, and then lash out with silly, Nativist-sounding meanness that usually lasts two or three years, before things get back to 'normal.'

[Fiannan]

Are people aware how much bureaucracy and money is involved in getting a green card to the USA? A guy I knew married an Indonesian -- she is a Chinese Christian and her people are heavily persecuted/sometimes killed by the "religion of peace" people. Did that make the process any easier for her and her husband? No way. You see, they chose the legal route to get her residency in the USA. He had griped many times afterwards that she should have gone the route of going the route that many illegals go -- and then waiting for the next round of amnesty for votes.

My wife's family is European. I have joked with them that if they ever want to move to the USA they can do it the expensive way or the cheap and easy way. I guess they should get here, do something that registers them as being here, go back (through a foreign point like Havanna) and then, when the congress gives amnesty, just lie and claim they have been here illegally for the past two years.

Rewards go to those who break the law.

[miztrniceguy]

my youngest sister married a man from mexico...they were sealed i n Oakland temple a year later....he had been here many years, and had applied for a "green card". he has his own landscape business in calif. when i got married in Nauvoo a year after their sealing, they could not come because he still had not been able to get legel status after about 3 or 4 years of trying. they were afraid to try and drive all the way to MO from calif and risk getting stopped and having problems. flying was out of the question, as it was 1 year after 9/11.

kinda bites, as she was the only member of my family capable of attending my wedding, otherwise.

[lumberjacksdaughter]

First let me say that from what I hear, the system for getting into the country and aquiring citizenship is laborious and takes a long time. I recently heard of an American man who had to sell his and his Canadian wife's home because once she applied for permanent citizenship she had to go back to Canada and could not come back to the USA for at least a year because the process is so complicated and slow. Obviously the system needs improved. I hate it when people are forced to be dishonest to succeed and the ones that remain honest are punished because of it. (FYI - I am one of those who often gets punished for being honest.) That being said...

I live in a Washington state city that is 60% Hispanic. The one time my grown daughter went down to get a little help from social services she was treated with total disrespect by the Hispanic girl at the desk and was refused help that an illegal immigrant in our town would have no trouble getting and not because of her qualification status, either. My 82 year old mother worked hard her entire life and gets far less help from the government than an illegal alien who just crossed the border would. And I know that all it takes is for a doctor to diagnose a Hispanic child with ADD in this town and he is practically automatically then given Social Security money for life.

I was in the downtown area of our town when the Hispanics nationwide had called for an American Boycott. They were going to bring our cities to a standstill. I happened to be driving through our downtown on the way to Walmart. The main street was blocked off and the police directed us to a side street. We sat there for 30 minutes with no policemen around because the demonstration was blocking the street that the police detoured us on to. So my teenage daughter and I sat there while Hispanic women standing on the corner jeered and shouted rude comments with threatening gestures directed specifically at us.

So when the president of Mexico, Vincent Fox came to our small town I was excited to join a secure our borders demonstration along his motorcade route. The police had police-taped our group back from the road 75 feet into a muddy field. I was anxous to participate and make my feelings on immigration known. Then I realized that there was a Spanish radio station playing on a boom box in the middle of us. I didn't think much about it but when a couple of the people in our group shouted out their thoughts on immigration to motorists passing by (intelligent and non-threatening in a peaceful way - I swear I am not lying) the people with the boom box turned it up all the way to blast out anything that our group might be saying to anyone. The police were 15 feet away across the police tape and did not even bother to come over and try to ask the people trying to provoke us to please turn down their music. After the motorcade passed the Hispanics with the loud music were allowed to cross the yellow tape and stand on the sidewalk waving their Mexican flags while we Americans waving the American flag were kept 75 feet back behind the yellow tape in the muddy field. When the organizer of our group walked over and asked the police how come the Mexcans could demonstrate on the sidewalk but we were relegated way back in a muddy field he informed her that he was in charge of crowd control and would do it how ever he wanted.

When Vincente Fox was headed back our way to get back to the airport, the police started escorting the Mexicans back towards us. Our lady in charge said not to worry, that the police had assured her that they would have the Mexicans at one end or other in order to avoid any kind of confrontation. The police then proceeded to escorted the Hispanics square into the middle of our group again. We had a permit to protest in that spot. And I can guarantee you that our group would not have been allowed to mingle in the middle of the Mexicans that were demonstrating on our downtown streets May 1st. And of course the local media coverage was totally skewered and misleading.

It all boils down to Americans made to stand far back in a muddy field and Mexicans got to wave their Mexican flags close by on the sidewalk as traffic travelled by when the motorcade was not close and traffic was not stopped.

You explain to me why it is OK for illegal aliens to get much more government help and considerations then citizens who have spent a lifetime building up and supporting America. 50% of people in California prisons are illegal aliens. 30% of prisoners in the rest of the country are illegal aliens. One elderly lady along the southern border had to put up tall chain link fencing to protect her life and property. Illegal aliens wake up our citizens along the border in the middle of the night and demand food and water. The Amercan citizens' pets and cattle are killed and garbage builds up on their property.

The current legislation says that before we build a fence along the border that we must get Mexico's permission.

What say you?

P.S. My kids' best friends for years now are Hispanic with really cool families and when I finally got to Walmart on May 1st, Boycott America day there were Hispanic workers at Walmart and plenty of Hispanic shoppers.

[Bob_oz]

I have just finished reading these posts and I'd like to say how pleased I am to see the cross section of opinion from normal people.

We all know that this issue is not only your issue, British immigration led to the London race riots not so long ago, just this year in Sydney race differences raised riots, France and most of Europe has rioted and is waiting to ignite again, in Africa its tribal and on we can go.

For many reasons we open our doors and hearts to people to give them a better life.

Others open the door for profit and greed.

Some feel unaccepted and retain ties with their homeland over making connection working for acceptance in their new land, some live with us and declare they are Mexican, Greek, Italian when they are citizens of the USA or Australia, it is not hard that others feel they are anti-USA or Australian (yours and mine) by their actions

I really feel the hurt from our sister lumberjacksdaughter and understand it all too well.

In Australia we have a activity when we visit some of the large cities ....called: "spot the Aussie" because they can be in the minority (at least those that look australian)

Intollerance is a BIG issue and I think may be the big issue of the future, frankly I see no easy answer because sometimes the more love you show the more some will see this as a weakness and take advantage. When you who are rejected because you have become the minorityit becomes very difficult

This land is my land , this land is your land .......but only if both want to share in mutual respect

Bob

[Fiannan]

One wonders, the Book of Mormon says that if the people who come to the American continent do not live by Godly principles the Lamanites would take it back. Either the Book of Mormon is true or Joseph Smith was quite the expert at demographic trends as at that time even Darwin predicted Europeans would replace Turks (Darwin did not have a high opinion of other races). Europe was expanding eastward through Russia, controlled most of the Middle East, was expending in countires like Brazil, Argentina and Uraguay -- it looked like Europeans would dominate.

Now in the early 1970s there were not that many Hispanics or Indians in the USA. Then we started off stabbing our own offspring (abortion), legitimizing homosexuality and makig parenthood an option rather than a sacred duty.

Maybe God is merely replacing a decadent people with one that is culturally superior.