Immigration Guest Post
July 28, 2008 by Tracee Sioux
Filed under Parenting
Kelly Saunders has been blogging for Thrifty Mommy for over 2 years and has a 3.5 year old daughter and a 1 year old son. Her goal is to save time and money any way she can in order to stay home with her kids. She loves to challenge herself to a price limit of $3-$3.50 for summer outfits and $4-$4.50 for winter outfits for her kids. She says that hand-me-downs are her favorite thing to give and get. Thanks to Kelly for guest posting on Blog Fabulous today.
With all the political hub bub going on today in the news, I could really use your help here at BlogFabulous to help me understand something. Immigration has always been a soft spot for me. I want to have compassion for those who have tried to make their lives better by coming to our wonderful country. It obviously must be better than what they had at home or they wouldn’t have struggled to gain access to the USA. After all, we have plenty of employment, evidently, to go around and our healthcare is by far the best thing going. So to all of you who have entered this country legally, thank you and welcome.
My issue is with those who have entered illegally and who now think they are entitled to everything I work so hard to give my kids. I work my butt off and my husband works much harder to give our kids healthcare, an education, and a lifestyle that they can have fun with. I don’t give them everything they want. We don’t get to go swimming in the summer because I can’t afford to join a private pool and we don’t have good options for public swimming in town. I have to send my kids to public school because tuition for private school is too much. My kids wear hand-me-downs and look nice in them. They aren’t in 5 extra curricular activities now nor will they be in them when they are old enough to participate. They can choose 1 each. They also can’t play with their friends every day if I have to drive them because gas it too much to run around all the time.
For the record, I feel sorry for those who have come here illegally and feel like they have to hide out in order not to be deported. I never want anyone to live here and feel like a second class citizen.
I do, however, have a big problem when illegal aliens come to my country that I work hard to support with way too high taxes and then complain because they can’t stay when they are caught. Shoot, they complain because they want to be rewarded for breaking our laws by becoming legal citizens. I find this ironic and it makes me angry!
I want anyone who has a desire to come here to be able to do so. But you MUST come here legally. Do it the right way through the proper channels. I realize that can be painful and time consuming, sometimes taking years to get legal permission to enter. I also am fully aware that there are some who come here to simply gain political freedom. Those are not the ones I am talking about. I want the people who come here on purpose, illegally, to do it the right way. Once you are here, pay taxes like the rest of us. That way, you are paying for the healthcare that you already get for free.
What do you think? Am I wrong or cold hearted to want people to come here legally? I am all for legal immigration. That is how my family came here and that is how everyone should arrive here. My step mom had to work very hard to get here legally and so should everyone else.
Tracee’s Solution: You want to go to the pool and send your kids to private school – they want to eat food and live in shelter, I urge a compassionate perspective. Tax Immigrants. They do a lot of nasty work that spoiled Americans are not willing to do. Most of them work HARD. Tax Them. They are also willing to work for less than Americans. I love my Mexican mechanic, without him I couldn’t afford to drive. Without my money, he can’t afford to feed this kids who already live here. The American “landscaper” down the street wants $200 to mow my lawn. The immigrant down the street will do it for $35. Why? They want the American Dream too – who can blame them? I would do anything I had to do – hop a fence or make a fake I.D. or work the worst jobs in the country – to have this life too. Wouldn’t you?
Not to mention hating and resenting immigrants is like resenting your own self and your own grandma – talk about a self-defeating waste of emotional energy.
I think your solution is a good one. Another solution that I always bring up is that it needs to be easier to immigrate legally.
My brother-in-law is from Belgium. He needed to get his green card before he could marry my sister, and I saw how difficult it was for him to do that. My family had to hire an immigration attorney who ended up having to petition a state Senator in order to get his paperwork done in time for the wedding.
My brother-in-law is exactly the kind of person you’d think we’d want to welcome into America: an engineer, with a job already promised to him, who speaks perfect English. But if even he had such a hard time trying to immigrate legally, with all the help my family gave him, I can’t even imagine what it would be like for someone without his advantages and resources.
We need to streamline the bureaucracy of immigration and make it easier to enter the country legally. I really think that would help cut down on illegal immigration.
I think that “reward” you were talking about is the only way to tax them.. It’s like a double edged sword. We can either try and deport all of the illegals that we find here, or we can make an effort to record their stay here (which means making them legal in some form or fashion) in order to tax them. I feel like we should just let them all be legal – maybe they WILL see it as a reward, but we will all reap the benefits of all of those extra tax dollars you know?
Having seen a few friends go through this personally, it is very difficult to immigrate without lots of money for an attorney. It was a long, expensive, complicated process.
I’m more cautious about granting citizenship, but I think it should be easier to come here and work.
Most people don’t think illegal immigrants pay any taxes, but actually they do.
Their employers withhold taxes from their checks just like they do ours, including social security and medicaid benefits that they will never be able to use. Many are using (and paying taxes) under someone else’s social security number.
http://tiny.cc/7UGUT
Interesting. Don’t they also pay taxes when they trade here at our stores? Does’nt that help our economy also? I get a little bent out of shape when people get on a high horse about this. There wouldn’t be any America if it weren’t for poor people searching for a better life…bending and breaking the rules..forging ahead and boldly claiming something as theirs. Violet – I agree about the citizenship issue – there should be some way for them to work here legally without having to become a full fledged citizen.
That’s a great point Violet.
I know when they “crack down” on immigration at my husband’s company which has a lot of “dirty jobs” they have a severe employee shortage because they can’t find Americans to do it.
Mostly when people talk about “immigration” I really hear racism against Mexicans (maybe it’s different groups in different areas, but it’s pretty much Mexicans in Texas).
“Do it the right way through the proper channels” sounds great. But I’ve seen perfectly good people denied green cards and work permits arbitrarily and charged a fortune to do so.