I think you mis-understood me. The point I am making is if there was truly empirical data that the illegals were of more benefit than cost there would be a pile of that data shoved in our faces by the Pro-Illegal Crowd. There just isn't.

Principles, theory and implicit assumptions serve as a starting point where research and empirical data either prove or dis-prove the point attempting to be made. Being at a University you would and should be at the more abstract end of the spectrum on this matter. However, due to the passion on both sides of the immigration issue, if there were any data to prove the implicit assumption Illegals benefit more than they cost society, it would be plastered all over the internet and every media outlet from coast to coast. It's not. There may be an offsetting benefit for their presence, the hard data shows they cost far more than they benefit. I do appreciate the civility of your input.

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Barack Obama's Executive Flop

If Obama couldn't lead such a small organization as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to success, how can any one bellieve he can lead this country to it?

You know, I am seeing a lot of economic arguments both for and against illegal immigration, but what about the following argument?:

Illegal immigrants are breaking the laws of the United States of America, and those who reward lawbreaking are forcing those immigrants who play by the rules, and and want to come here legally, to get to the back of the line. This is patently unfair to them.

I guess I misunderstood you, sorry if I offended you.

If it is about fairness, is it fair that most of immigrants to America before the 20th century (except the Chinese) did not face any significant legal barrier but immigrants nowadays face a lot of legal obstacles to come to America and start a new life and try hard to achieve the American dream?

You absolutely did NOT offend me.

The immigrants that came here before and during the early part of the 20th century were needed. America was going through a great industrialization without enough labor, especially after WWI. Now, what has happened to most of the manufacturing jobs immigrants were needed for? They are immigrating here, not because we need them, but because they need us, which from an economic point is not a valid reason for us to accept them.

The distributors get at least half of the profits from agriculture. The farmers get a small percentage as do the retailers, only they can change that. If they squeezed the distributors, they could pay a living wage that would attract American workers. The assumption is produce prices would go through the roof. But when people simply stop buying the stuff, the principles of supply and demand would stabilize things.

I really didn't mean to make you think I was offended, I didn't think I did.

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Barack Obama's Executive Flop

If Obama couldn't lead such a small organization as the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to success, how can any one bellieve he can lead this country to it?

It makes sense that industrialization requires a large steady supply of labor. However, did America really need more labor at the turn of the 20th century? Britain had roughly 38 million people in 1900 and achieved a successful economic transformation, why America at the time had 76 millions needed more people?

A steady supply of labor is often a positive thing for economic growth, during the 19th century and now because economic growth means job creation, more people making the pie bigger instead of dividing the already fixed pie.

The same argument could be applied for industrial workers back during the 19th century. Native workers could do the jobs just as well as the immigrants but with higher cost. One wouldn't exactly say that America "needed" immigrants to work in manufacturing jobs.

And also, in the example you illustrated, if there is not enough supply of cheap labor for labor-intensive industries (agriculture for example even though not all agricultural firms are labor-intensive) then it will push the cost up as you have correctly pointed out. However, the difference is, consumers will find another source of agricultural products from abroad instead of stop purchasing the products and domestic firms will not be able to compete.

It is more than a matter of economy. Science is threatened. We have produced the greatest science in history. All those non-scientific aliens will manage to interbreed with the White Race and in so doing will destroy science.

Science is inbred. It is natural to western man. Destroy his racial make-up and poof!! there goes science. Science is necessary to the quality of life world-wide. Everyone benefits from science.

We must save Science.

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Hi, I like communications. I like intelligent and amusing people. We might disagree, but that's okay. Just don't be boring.

Then you probably haven't heard of creationism then? Wasn't exactly a colored man product, was it?

lets just call this illegal immigration issue what it really is, an invasion! if any other countries people came here illegaly in the numbers from mexico we would call it an invasion and a declaration of war. It would result in an all out war...im not suggesting a war, but come on people lets defend our nation! have some patriotism PLEASE!

legality of illegal immigrants. The first question is, throughout our history had illegal immigration a problem? The answer is not a big deal. Throughout most of American History, up until post-WWII there has been virtually no legal barrier to immigrants. Many documentaries had illustrated this fact. We might have seen movies showing that all the immigrants needed to do when they arrived in America were to give their names or they could receive an English name. Thereafter, they would be recorded and after a certain length of time (depended on the law at the time) they could apply for citizenship.

The argument that America did not have illegal immigration because it had maintained close inspection on immigration such as "Elvis Island" is without support of data. There was very little record of America having a quota on immigrants. In addition, there were extremely little inspection on immigrants, for example there were three recorded massive outbreak of Cholera among immigrants coming from England during 1832, 1848 and 1852, but they were not turned back or anything.

Moreover, the average percentage of immigrants as opposed to the population throughout American history has been around 14-17%, peaking during the second wave (1820-1870) at 20% and third wave (1890-1930) at 22.1%. Now, let's consider the percentage of immigrants as opposed to the population. There are 30 million legal immigrants in America. In addition, there is an estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants (How? what the government did was they did a random sampling of the entire population which statistically gave an accurate estimate of the entire population, then they subtract the actual people on file). Therefore, today immigrant population is around 42 million, that makes 14% of the population. As a result, it shows that the immigrant population is actually below the historical level; the difference is the law has changed drastically.

Speaking of defending our nation? I am defending the principles that this country was built upon. A land of opportunities and tolerance that embraced with open arm to the distressed people everywhere and provided a second chance to achieve a better live, an American dream. That is what I believe.

Except for that last part i dont think you really adressed my argument. Anyway, no historically it wasn't a problem, unfortunatly, it IS now. and we cannot afford to sustain and educate a bunch of illegals.