1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

The real danger of anchor babies

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TheSportsPredictor, Sep 9, 2011.

  1. Oggiedoggie

    Oggiedoggie Well-Known Member

    Any ship captain will tell you that anchor babies are pretty much worthless.
     
  2. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    With all due respect, dude, virtually everything in that post is off-base and totally indefensible.

    Well, start with the IRS and GAO. They'll tell you that about 70% of illegal immigrants pay income tax. Beyond that they obviously pay other taxes, like sales tax and property tax, just like anyone else.

    What does that have to do with illegal immigrants? It just so happens I have a 1st grader. If any of his classmates fall into that category it's not the Latino students, regardless of their immigration status.

    Again, what the hell does that have to do with illegal immigration? Latino gangs have been around for decades. They were an issue when my dad was growing up in Anaheim in the 40s and 50s. And Latino gangs aren't any more of a problem than Black, Asian, or sometimes even White gangs. (And yes, a fairly affluent community in my area has had serious problems with White gangs.)

    I grew up in Southern California and have lived in Arizona for the past 16 years. Your contention is absolutely preposterous. It is "common knowledge" among illegal immigration opponents that immigrants pay no taxes but are given free food, free housing, and free medical care from the federal government. They come here to commit crimes and their children rampantly spread disease in our schools. All of which is patently false, but is repeated over and over without ever being questioned.

    My newsroom is getting flooded with emails screaming about how we're refusing to report on a "luxury apartment complex" with a gym, pool and tennis courts being built by a school district using Social Security money to provide free housing to illegal immigrants. Every last bit of it is laughably false.

    None of this is to suggest that illegal immigration poses no problems; it's simply that the problems are outrageously exaggerated by people who are either ignorant of the true situation or are looking for a societal scapegoat. Yes, illegal immigrants pose a drain on the health care system, but somehow this is turned into "they get free health care." Well, no they don't. They don't have insurance, and in many cases they will not be able to pay a medical bill. There's a difference. We are told that those health care costs are a horrible drain on society... but when the Governor of Arizona recently eliminated state medical coverage for about 400,000 low-income Arizonans, leaving them without insurance and unable to pay a medical bill, she called it -- and I'm quoting here -- "a great day for Arizona." So, you know, apparently it's not all that big a problem after all.

    Oh, and the whole "anchor baby" phenomenon? Doesn't happen nearly as much as opponents want you to believe. At the border hospitals where we're led to believe Mexicans are flooding across to get on that American baby gravy train, the number of births that are not U-S citizens is below 5%.

    Elected officials in Arizona are screaming that crime is raging and the border is putting us all at risk, but take a look at crime statistics sometime. The safest cities in America are disproportionately along the border. Of American cities with at least 500,000 residents, the four cities with the lowest crime rates are San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin. That's according to the FBI.
     
  3. Turtle Wexler

    Turtle Wexler Member

  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Crime was not really a huge part of my argument, but I will say about the statistics, I think it's pretty commonly known in law enforcement that illegal-on-illegal crime is one of the most under-reported categories, for obvious reasons. But gangs are a big influence on life out here. They are.

    On education, if you are in a mixed-race district that involves a significant presence of undocumented immigrants or their parents, the impact I'm talking about will reveal itself to you. Graduation rates and test scores broken down by ethnic sub-groups are pretty clear on this. And on health care, they are an enormous, enormous drag on emergency rooms and overall operations. You are demonizing me by associating me with the "they get free health care" idea when that is not what I said at all. If you would like to argue that emergency room operations in major immigrant cities are unaffected, I would love to see a health professional join you in that argument.

    I don't mean to come off as a Minuteman wannabe, I'm not. I rolled my eyes too about the stories of people cutting off heads in the desert and the rest of the Arizona debate. But I have found that the side that rejects all notion that there's a problem here is the side is just as out of touch. I shouldn't say out of touch, I suppose, because the Latino vote is the kingmaker of California politics and nobody would ever do anything to anger that bloc, but I do find there's more resistance from that side to coming up with solutions.

    And my reason for entering this thread stands: People think they have a gotcha moment with the New Mexico governor. But the world of 80 years ago has nothing to do with what's happening today.
     
  5. SpeedTchr

    SpeedTchr Well-Known Member

    Whew, I thought this was going to be another useless Megyn Kelly thread.
     
  6. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    Good episode of 48 Hours tonight.
     
  7. J Staley

    J Staley Member

    I don't see it as a gotcha moment. Martinez, for the first time, admitted to the status of her grandfather after saying before that she wasn't sure. It's not like this story came about because of the dogged work of some investigative reporter.

    I don't think it's right to call Martinez a hypocrite (for more than just the fact that's not the right use of the word). And I don't think this story does that. It is interesting that Martinez, the same person who, rather controversially in N.M., has tried to crack down on illegal immigration, is a descendant of an illegal immigrant. It doesn't matter that there were differences. He came here illegally.
     
  8. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    So all elected officials should base their service on family history?
     
  9. SpeedTchr

    SpeedTchr Well-Known Member

    There go the Kennedys!
     
  10. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Crime stats will also show you that illegal immigrants commit crimes at a rate below that of the general US population. And illegal immigrants don't report anything for fear of being deported. (SB 1070, the AZ anti-immigrant bill, was originally written -- and passed by the legislature -- so that police would be required to question the immigration status of anyone they came in contact with. If you are raped and report it, you get deported. If you witness a murder and agree to identify the killer, you are deported. It was later begrudgingly watered down and re-passed.)

    And again, gangs have nothing to do with illegal immigration. Nothing. There is a big difference between "Latinos" and "illegal immigrants," and beyond that, gang affiliation is hardly limited to Hispanics.

    As to education: in many areas, my state included, school funding is largely through local property taxes. That means rich areas have very well funded schools, and poor areas have very poorly funded schools. Areas with a very large illegal immigrant population tend to be as poor as they come. That plays a huge role in test scores and graduation rates -- not some vague notion that Latinos are uninterested in education.

    And I specifically listed health care as one of the legit problems with illegal immigration -- but again, the problem is in having a population without health insurance. Critics scream about illegal immigrants and health care but don't give a damn about uninsured Americans, and it's the exact same problem. Again, in Arizona we are told illegal immigrants are a drain on health care money but that taking coverage away from poor Arizonans was "a great day for the state." It's kinda hard to be both.

    And seriously, are you going to suggest that those who are less concerned about illegal immigration are more resistant to finding solutions? If any attempt is made to revamp the immigration system -- even something as innocuous as the Dream Act -- it's immediately beaten down with howls of "amnesty!" Meanwhile, the "solutions" from the other side are to (a) crap all over the Constitution, or (b) dramatically increase spending on patrolling the border. A local sheriff actually suggested the President is guilty of "high treason" for ignoring the border, when the manpower and spending on the border are at an all-time high and crime is at an all-time low.

    Bottom line -- illegal immigration does cause some legitimate problems, but it is absolutely nowhere close to what the anti-immigration crowd likes to think.

    As for the whole New Mexico governor thing -- it's mildly amusing and totally meaningless.
     
  11. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Where did the Crips and the Bloods immigrate from?
     
  12. qtlaw

    qtlaw Well-Known Member

    Mississippi's a country right? Living in Call 20 yrs? Try 50 then get back to me.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page