OFF TOPIC - pierced ears

Sorry not to clarify. I am talking about right now. And I bet it depends on your definition of "persecution." From my perspective, a lot gets labeled "homophobic/persecutory" that is merely a difference in opinion.

Christians are also persecuted against. And marriage is not a constitutional right, so that's not persecution. Hazing and beating happens to more than just gays. And Christians are persecuted in more subtle ways.

You have a really good point there.

It's not just illegal immigrants that have no medical care. But if you are employed and have no insurance, the hospital has recourse against you to be able to collect their bill. If you are an illegal, there is no paper trail to money for them to be able to recoup their losses.

Personally, I blame minimum wage laws in part and just plain basic greed in part. But it's a very complex problem that has become more complex over the years and at this point is very difficult to untangle.

I rather liked the tongue-in-cheek suggestion of someone on Usenet at the beginning of the CLinton administration that the most effective way to make medical care more affordable for all would be to make any type of insurance illegal and let the free market take care of prices.

They tried amnesty, and all it did was make the problem worse.

I don't know that there is an easy solution, and to be honest, I don't think that any politician is capable of solving the problem because in the short-term it would be career suicide and I don't know very many with the courage of their convictions to do what is best for the country even if it costs them their political future, so practically speaking, I don't hold out a whole bunch of hope for a solution.

Ten years of living a few miles from the border.

Standing joke, INS would deport someone to Tijuana and he'd make it back to downtown before the INS agents did. And it wasn't too far from being accurate.

At least when I was living there, Mexican citizens could come over "for the day" within, I think, 30 miles of the border, without a visa. So you tell the border guard "I'm going shopping in San Diego" ... and forget to go home at the end of the day. You disappear into the crowds of other Hispanics, and who can tell which of the 10,000 Jose Rodriguezes working for cash under the table is the Jose Rodriguez who forgot to go home on December 2d.

They did put up a fence across the most-breached area of San Diego/Tijuana, which served only to move the moseyers east of the fence (and digging tunnels under it). Crossing into the Arizona desert may be fatal, but crossing into the San Diego suburbs is not.

I'm still hearing reports out of the San Diego region of people who live between the border and the freeway seeing a steady stream of people running across their property after dark. You've got a cell phone, Cousin Jose drives out to pick you up at the freeway exit after you've walked a couple miles, nothing dangerous about it, and it's only uncomfortable if you decide that the Border Patrol is unlikely to be as diligent on a rainy night.

Try living on the border, like I did and my friends/family still do, and you'll get a much different picture of the ease of sneaking in than you have if your only "experience" with it is seeing news reports on TV. Not every illegal comes through the deadly Arizona desert; at the time I was there, statistically the biggest problem was in San Diego, where, literally, they would walk from a Tijuana suburb to a San Diego suburb, and never be more than a mile or so from a place to buy an ice-cold Coke.

I saw with my own eyes places where I could've just walked across the border, in either direction, completely unnoticed by any government authority. Call my ex and ask him to drive you to a couple of those spots where he took me; it'll convince you that it is entirely possible to "mosey" in unnoticed.

Precisely. They did amnesty in (1985?), and the only message it sent was "come over illegally and you can jump to the front of the citizenship line". The number of illegals here now is even larger than it was then, because they learned that it pays to break the law; you'll be rewarded later, while your cousin who's waiting for his turn the legal way is still stuck in Baja.

In this area, we've had a resurgence of diseases such as tuberculosis, brought in by illegal immigrants who avoid the medical exam required of legal immigrants. TB may be eradicated in developed countries, but it's still out there in the Third World. And because there's no way to keep them out, they bring in their diseases and start sharing their germs in the US.

They've had to jail several people to make them cooperate with the medication regime so that the TB they're carrying doesn't spread as a superbug, treatment-resistant because they took 2 pills in the hospital and stopped taking them when they got out (or simply left the hospital against medical advice because they were afraid La Migra would be alerted and haul them back to Mexico, better to disappear back into the community than be a sitting duck in the hospital).

I have reduced immunity. The last thing I need is to cross paths with someone with TB or some other Third World disease and add that to my list of health problems.

Actually makes sense. Too many people with good insurance couldn't care less what stuff costs, because they never even see the bill. If the doctor wants to charge a million dollars for a ten-minute visit, so what? Blue Cross is paying, not them.

I don't have prescription coverage (an extra couple hundred bucks a month if I want it); when I ask a doctor "how much is this going to cost me?" they can't even hazard a guess whether this pill is $20 a month or $200. Or whether something else might be cheaper. No one has ever asked them that question before, because all their other patients pay $10 or $20 no matter what the actual cost is.

Someone I know takes one prescription -- ONE of her many -- that runs $1000 a month. You want to make a bet how many patients would be willing to pay $1000 a month if the full amount had to come from their pocket? The price of that stuff would come down to $150 PDQ if the company wanted to keep selling it in any sort of reasonable quantity. (She's joked that it would be cheaper to pay plane fare to Canada once a month for a refill at Canadian prices if she actually had to pay for the stuff herself.)

Greed is a big part of business nowadays. I lost a job because they found someone half my age who'd do it for half the pay. She also did half as much per day and only did it half as well, but management was only looking at the bottom line. Not at the fact that they were going to eventually have to hire two people to replace me, for a net savings of zero in the long run. (Actually, cost them more, since they were now paying for two people's health insurance.)

What some of the local farmers admit to netting per year, it's clear that they could pay minimum wage with benefits and still make a nice profit. Or they can pay illegals $3 an hour and make twice as much profit.

And the big scandal over H1B visas -- most of them were going to multi-zillion dollar companies, which were laying off the American citizen doing the job in order to bring an Indian over on an H1B to work for a fraction of the salary. Theoretically, an H1B should be used because you can't find a qualified American, not because you want to pad your already-obscene profits by undercutting the standard wage in the industry. Does Bill Gates not have enough money, that they've got to resort to firing Americans and bringing in the equivalent of slave labor?

I heard one politician recently commenting that the going rate for a project was $15/hour, so illegals coming into the profession hadn't caused the pay to go down. Oh yeah? 20+ years ago, my husband was paid $32/hour for the same work, which means, in terms of buying power, the influx of illegals has the wage down to about 1/4 what it used to be.

Is this a contest? "My group is more persecuted than yours?" That doesn't make any of it ok, does it?

And you're right, marriage is not a constitutional right, so why should there be an anti-gay constitutional ammendment? The federal government shouldn't have any say in who can get married in the first place. That's a state based issue.

But please note, that I didn't say anything about marriage in my statement. I said that some states interfere with partnership agreements, which is a different issue. In most states, I have the rigtht to contract with anyone I want, but if the contracting partner happens to be my same sex lover, the state of Louisiana reserves the right to interfere. Why just in that case, and how is that not persecution?

Elizabeth

How long ago was that, Karen?

Elizabeth

Dr. Brat wrote: > ...................

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R&D&H -- I haven't been following this part of the thread -- I just wanted to be ornery and pester you a bit :-). CiaoMeow >^;;^<

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And because of these bad apples, many of the rest of us are stuck in unbelievable straits. There certainly is a significant problem with illegal immigration here in the US. I do not contest that. But a large part of that is that the *LEGAL* immigration system is significantly broken.

I'm a well educated Canadian physicist. I moved down here under H1B in January 2000 to take a job I love, and am very good at. In a very specific sub-branch of physics. There is only one university here in the US doing research in my area at all. There certainly are not an abundance of Americans that I'm taking work from. There are not enough people in the field by a long shot anywhere in North America. Being Canadian, we don't qualify for a number of possible routes to permanent residency, including the diversity lottery. So be it, we accept that. My husband and I are both good, law abiding people, and have jumped through hoops for immigration you can't begin to imagine. We have now been here for eight years. Eight.

It took us 7.5 years to get to the point where we were finally allowed to *apply* for our greencards this past July. And they're expecting at least a further 2 years from now before we actually receive them. All in all, that will be 10 years from when we left Canada to come her legally before we can become permanent residents here. And a further five years (with a minimum two year processing wait after filing) before we can file for citizenship.

And in that time, up until this past September, 7 years and 9 months after we *LEGALLY* moved to the US, my husband has been unable to work. Not unwilling, just unable. Because of the laws concerning H1B, and the fact that his college degree wasn't in a science discipline. US Immigration does not allow the spouses or children of H1B holders to work. You have to wait until you are actually permitted to file for your greencard, and then you qualifiy for certain immigration "benefits" including the "benefit" of paying a total of $760/year to be able to legally work. And that's assuming you actually get what you paid for in the first place. My first EAD (work authorization) never came. They're sent regular USPS with no tracking. Immigration's response when you ask about not receiving it is to say wait 45 days, then they'll start an investigation. And 12 hours later send you a letter telling you, sorry, you didn't get it, refile and pay us the same fee again and we'll send you another one!

And the best part? They don't actually start any security checks until you get to the point of actually filing for the greencard. Yes, you read that correctly, we have not undergone any security checks for immigration until we've actually lived in the country for almost eight years. And for many people, those security checks can take years to process. I fully expect to get stuck for a while in security clearance because I (should) have a security file because I had a security clearance back home in Canada.

That is a tremendous amount of time to be living in legal limbo, and under some very dificult restrictions. For example, we still don't own a home. And won't any time before getting our permanent residency. I work on Long Island, an area with one of the most expensive housing costs in the nation. But to buy a house without permanent residence, you are required, by law, to have a minimum 25% downpayment. On Long Island. With one income. Good frelling luck! My husband wants to go back to school to get a second degree. Spending the years when he can't work at school sound like a great plan, don't they? Until you discover that we don't qualify as state residents for any of the state schools (never mind the fact I pay full taxes, and medicare and social security, which I'm specifically banned from collecting, but legally required to pay into). So we'd have to pay triple tuition (or more depending on the school) as foreign students. Once again, on one income...

I love my job here and my life here, but the immigration system is broken. Extremely broken. And it needs to be fixed, and the actual immigration laws already enacted need to be enforced before you can ever expect to have any hope at doing anything about illegal immigration. I'd like to be able to honestly say this is just the rantings of some rare exception. But the sad fact is, it's not. My case is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it's so ordinary that we should 'breeze through' the final processing stage in about two years...

Getting off my soapbox now, Heather in NY

What you need to do is rent a rickety, run down boat and row toward Florida. Once the boat gets broken up, you need to swim to shore. If you can get your toes onto Florida soil, you will be taken in with open arms. Why bother trying to do it legal We have an incident like that every couple of weeks.

Of course, that was completely tongue in cheek, but it is true. This area is becoming a Spanish speaking community with some really hard working, but still poverty stricken people who struggle to make it and others who just take and take and take and make it harder for the good families who want to get ahead.

There really has to be a better way.

Lucille

As long as you came from Cuba. If you rowed from anywhere else, including Canada (!), you will be sent back!

Elizabeth

Right--I should have pointed that out.

But we do have lots of immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico who come here to work in the orange/grapefruit groves. They are dirt poor and exploited by their employers and it's sad to see such poverty.

I know, but it's only hearing it from the horse's mouth that will make people sit up and take notice. If I were to say "this is the problem" and explain exactly what you've said, I'd be accused of making things up, because it can't possibly be that bad.

Want me to teach you enough Spanish that you can row up to Lucille's house and claim you came over from Cuba?