Colorado - Illegal Immigrants no longer eligble for state health care

EDValerieRN, ASN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

Yeah ... illegals "rights" to take our jobs, drive down our wages and consume our taxpayer funded services so corporations can make bigger bucks.
:typing

Immigrants are not driving down our wages. Congress is, in two ways: Not raising minimum wage ($5.15/hr??!! Are you kidding?!) and not holding corporations responsible for hiring these immigrants.

Immigrants aren't coming here because they WANT to ruin our country and screw us over. They are coming over here because they were invited by our CEO's.

HM2VikingRN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

Just to clear what i have highlighted above. If you have a resident alien card/green card you are not an illegal immigrant you are a legal resident and as a legal resident you pay taxes. I am not a proponent of the "free for all" healthcare or social services there should be limitations. I have also seen the above situation being abused by American citizens. If someone has never come from a 3rd world country where the US dollar can do so much, well, you will never understand why they come here in droves. It sometimes seems so easy to blame an ethnic group for driving down wages when the wages or the jobs that they do many citizens would never consider doing. For example chicken factories and farms in GA employ many illegal immigrants simply because they cannot find other workers. The road to being a US citizen is a long, challenging and expensive one and it takes an average of 10 or more years; that is if you meet their requirements and ofcourse most illegal immigrants would not!!

Remittances to their home countries are why they come. From what I have read many workers come up here just to make enough money to support their families back home but do not really start out with the intent of living here.

I was reading over at the ACLU website about how the ACLU has actually filed a lawsuit on behalf of several immigrants who have completed the steps to citizenship but are awaiting FBI clearance that has no time limit for completion. Part of fixing the immigration mix will require that Congress clarify and simplify the steps to legal entry for the purpose of residency vs that of people who are willing to come as temporary workers.

Frankly, it will be much cheaper and more effective to aggressively enforce our current punitive sanctions against THE EMPLOYERS of illegal immigrants than it will be to close our borders. (If you build a 50 foot fence the next person will bring a 50 foot ladder. Molly Ivins.)

The other prong of solving this problem is that we need to aggressively demand of our trading partners (Nafta, Cafta etc.) that their labor laws require environmental and pay protections on a par with what our own US workers enjoy. (If you level the playing field that will reduce the supply of workers seeking to come North to make a living that will support their families.)

Multicollinearity, BSN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

Immigrants are not driving down our wages. Congress is, in two ways: Not raising minimum wage ($5.15/hr??!! Are you kidding?!) and not holding corporations responsible for hiring these immigrants.
Immigrants aren't coming here because they WANT to ruin our country and screw us over. They are coming over here because they were invited by our CEO's.

It's not quite that simple. Yes, the minimum wage situation is an outrage. It should be raised. Still, illegal aliens do suppress wages for a certain subset of American workers. Most economists (even liberal ones) will tell you that United States citizens who have not graduated from high school and/or are below average as far as IQ are competing with and losing jobs to illegal aliens. In yesteryear Americana, the not-so-bright among us could work unskilled labor jobs and get by. Now, our not-so-brights (through no fault of their own) are losing these jobs to illegals.

hope3456, ASN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

This is an interesting article on illegal immigration - it was in the rocky mountain post this morning

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/other_business/article/0,2777,DRMN_23916_4946326,00.html

Multicollinearity, BSN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

I live in Southern Arizona. Last election, I went to a local political forum where the local interfaith counsel invites church members to ask questions of those running for office. About 1/2 of those in attendance were immigrants and their activist representatives. Many spoke Spanish and asked their questions thru interpreters. All of their questions were asking the candidates what they would give them. They call illegal aliens "undocumented immigrants." Examples of the questions:

"Will you make sure that undocumented immigrants can get driver's licenses?"

"We want health benefits. Will you make sure undocumented immigrants get medicaid?"

"We want food stamps. Will you promise we get them?"

"We want our AFDC. Will you promise we get it?"

"We want in-state tuition at for undocumented immigrants. Do you promise and pledge?"

"Will you pledge to exempt those whose first language is Spanish from the AIMS test for high school graduation?" (the AIMS test is an Arizona standardized test which is required in order to graduate)

Now as a liberal democrat myself, I was astonished. It was one giant gimme gimme grab session. Please do not assume that those who wish to enforce immigration laws are cold or bigoted. It is crazy living here near the border. The cost of illegal immigration is a epic drain on the state budget.

cardiacRN2006, ADN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

I don't buy the argument that hiring Americans will force the companies to move off shore. Here, the illegals are doing construction, working on farm land, or doing landscape. We aren't going to move the farm to Mexico to get cheaper labor, and the homes need to be built here, not in Mexico. It's just another excuse to justify the 'need' for them being here.

That article says that possibly 30% of illegals have forged papers....I believe the percentage is much, much higher.

TrudyRN · Aug 26, 2006

I agree with you there. I am against illegal immigration. But, I agree, we with you on that. If we don't vaccinate then that puts all children at risk. I wonder how many of the migrant children in my daughter's school would test positive if they got a TB skin test. That's another issue that I wonder about.

Mexico (and maybe other countries) gives the BCG vaccine against TB so probably all of them would be + and they should not get the PPD test, as they have been vaccinated. Makes me wonder why we dont vaccinate our children here with BCG.

cardiacRN2006, ADN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

It is crazy living here near the border. The cost of illegal immigration is a epic drain on the state budget.

Multi........crazy is definately an appropriate word to describe what it's like living here! Although I obviously agree that everybody is entitled to their opinions on immigration, I also believe that someone who lives in Minnesota can't possibly understand the stress, fears, and downright city-wide crisis that we feel every single day as a result of illegal immigration.

HM2VikingRN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

i agree 100%!
to actually demand that we don't call them illegal, to demand better healthcare than the average american receives, to demand that we teach their children in spanish....and to boot, if we didn't give in to their demands they promised to do their best to hurt us finacially!
doesn't sound like a group of law-abiding citizens that i want to give access to special citizenship.
there is a process for citizenship-why do illegal mexicans get to demand some sort of special treatment for obtaining it? do people in rwanda get the same treatment? last i checked, there was no genocide in mexico. no, all the mexicans are being killed by the sun in the desert because we allow this beast to get out of control.
out of curiosity hm2viking, what state do you live in?

i am not sure that they were demanding better everything than the average us citizen receives. children who are born in the us are citizens by definition. that does entitle them to a free and appropriate public education. (which right to the best of my knowledge is written as a guarantee into the constitution of every state in the us.)

i am not sure that they were trying to hust us financially in any real long term sense but they were trying to raise awareness of the public at large of the contributions they make to our society. i think that they were really protesting for the right to be treated with dignity and respect which is the same right that we all demand of each other in a civilized society.

from the minneapolis star tribune:

not only products, services and investments should be allowed to cross borders but labor as well. recognizing this, the european union approved flows of labor among its members and provided financial support to the less affluent. the result was the correction of income imbalances in greece, ireland, portugal and spain. the lesson is that free trade calls for a committed partnership rather than fleeting enthusiasm.

illegal immigrants from mexico (an estimated 56 percent of the u.s. total) and the rest of latin america (22 percent are here because they cannot survive with dignity in their countries. given their unique cultural values, they would return home if they could sustain a modest and honest lifestyle.

latin america has the worst distribution of wealth in the world and lacks the means to bridge it. this reality has cornered the poorest into choosing illegal migration.

a guest worker program and a reality-based law would be feasible if the magnitude of the problem were manageable. to make it so, jobs must be created across latin america and across its socioeconomic sectors. this can be achieved by giving the north american free trade agreement (nafta) the greater depth of a mutually accountable and committed partnership and, on this model, enacting similar agreements with central and south american nations.

why should latin america's economy be our responsibility? the gap between the rich and the poor in latin america reached explosive levels through globalization and, in mexico, through the nearsighted implementation of nafta. american government and international corporations spearheaded globalization; with their canadian and mexican counterparts, they enacted nafta while ignoring the millions of mexican poor.

behind the façade of macroeconomic improvement, small business and farming in mexico were ravaged by the agreement's absence of leveling measures, competition from american and canadian companies and u.s. agricultural subsidies. crony privatization, which gave mexico more billionaires than any european country, added insult to injury. many of the victims of this collateral damage are now living as illegal immigrants in the united states; .

we have created this problem as a country. its like the pottery barn "if you break it you own it..." i am not advocating illegal immigration. militarizing the border does absolutely nothing to address the root causes of illegal immigration. i am arguing that if we want to fix the problem that we need to be committed to fixing the economic injustices in mexico, central and south america if we want to reduce the number of immigrants coming here. i think that if you look deeper you see the results of unbridled crony capitalism. the tax and spending policies under the current administration (wealth concentration through tax giveaways, declining health and education infrastructure, nonbid crony contracts) are all having the same effects on our own workers that nafta etc. have had on our neighbors to the south. i think that is the real source of the anger being expressed over immigration issues. :wakeneo:

i have also been speaking to the law of unintended consequences. (if we legally hammer the immigrant parents of children born in the us we are harming our own citizens.) i live in mn and we probably have a greater diversity and concentration of immigrants than almost anywhere else in the us. my wife provides special education services to children of immigrants and she has almost no hispanic students anymore. what i think that this probably represents is the assimilation of hispanic families into our local communities as productive members of society. the students she has are from africa.

cardiacRN2006, ADN, RN · Aug 26, 2006

i am not sure that they were demanding better everything than the average us citizen receives.
i am not sure that they were trying to hust us financially in any real long term sense but they were trying to raise awareness of the public at large of the contributions they make to our society. .

what? please tell me you're joking! the absolutely demanded to get better treatment, and the absolutely threatened us with their boycott and march. they flat out came on tv and threatened to not work, and to not buy anything american, and to do this until they got their demands. maybe you missed the coverage of all the marches???????

if you didn't know this little bit of information, than you are sadly misinformed about the subject.

btw, as a result of the boycott (which has been done twice now), the legal mexican-americans lost thousands of dollars. seems like since they illegals mostly work at mexican restaurants, their boycott only hurt themselves.