So much for the oft quoted reason illegal Mexicans only want to come here for work.
A recent Pew Hispanic Center study found...
Ta da!

Unemployment plays a minimal role in motivating workers from Mexico to migrate to the U.S. Only 5% of the survey respondents who have been in the U.S. for two years or less were unemployed while still in Mexico.

That's the same unemployment rate as Tennesse as a whole.

Another interesting finding:
Immigration status has little impact on the likelihood of unemployment in the U.S. Respondents who reported that they have a U.S. government-issued ID had the same employment experiences as those who do not have any documents making them eligible for legal employment.

Posted by: Rick Forman at December 6, 2005 11:56 PM

Unemployment plays a minimal role in motivating workers from Mexico to migrate to the U.S. Only 5% of the survey respondents who have been in the U.S. for two years or less were unemployed while still in Mexico.

Right. "Employment" in Mexico means the equivalent of a couple of dollars per day.

Let me help you understand this. My wife was a nurse in the Philippines, now she's a nurse in the US (Yes, Donna, a job-stealing forner, and sometimes she doesn't even speak English! The shame!). Now, wait just a minute! She was employed there, but came here, anyway? And borrowed thousands of dollars to do so?

Yes. Let me explain this to you. She was making PHP5000/month in the Philippines as a nurse. For those of you bad with math, that's about US$125 at the exchange rate then. She makes more than that in a day, now. Many people there are working 15-16 hours/day every single day just to survive. Literally.

See, employment has a very different meaning in different countries.

(And, again, she's a citizen, Donna, so tell the INS that it's a false alarm and hang up. And take them out of speed dial position 1- use that for someone in your family.)

I just bought a new house, so of course I've met more than my fair share of Mexicans and other Latinos both working on the house and the yard. I talk to them when I can. Some of them were unemployed before coming here, others were employed, but just wanted better pay and better working conditions. One guy was even a schoolteacher in Mexico.

(Sigh. Hang up, again, Donna, they're not here now, the work's done.)

There's got to be something here that people find worth risking their lives for.

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 7, 2005 9:41 AM

Hard-working people who want to make a better life for themselves - that's the kind of people we need in America. All we ask is that they come here LEGALLY, and that our government enforce some sort of control over our borders and over the numbers of people emigrating to the U.S., so that our economy and culture can absorb and assimilate them - and so that corrupt governments like the one in Mexico don't use America as their safety valve to let off "steam" by sending disgruntled people north, instead of reforming to make Mexico a better place so that Mexicans will want to stay in Mexico.

I have a hunch that most Mexicans - most people anywhere - would prefer to live in the country they were born in, if they could provide a decent living for their family. But as long as Mexicans can just walk across the Rio Grande and into the generous welfare state of Estados Unidos, and get a great-paying job they aren't legally supposed to have, they won't stay home and pressure the Mexican government to fix things.

There is no reason Mexico needs to be so poor. It is rich in natural resources, and has everything it needs to create a strong, vibrant, diverse economy.

Instead of promising amnesty to illegals, the U.S. government ought to be pressuring the Mexican government into reforming Pemex - the state-owned oil company - and doing what they have done in Alaska - distributing royalties from sales of Alaskan crude to all Alaskans.

I haven't run the numbers yet, but I bet you that if you were to do that in Mexico, the average Mexican would see their income jump many times over - and you would create a larger middle class, boost the retail and consumer-goods manufacturing sectors, and give millions of Mexicans one more reason not to head north. (If I were designing the program, Mexicans would be ineligible if they lived more than 2 months outside of the country each year.)

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at December 7, 2005 10:15 AM

Bill, nice to see you chime in with a well-reasoned response. As I've said before, I have no problem with us securing our borders, actually, it's pretty obvious that we need to do it.

But let's talk about terminology here. You are correct that most people prefer to stay in their own country. Even my wife would prefer that if it weren't a, well, if there wasn't widespread poverty. But to call the US a "welfare state" and imply that's why people want to come here is just plain wrong.

They come here to work, not to get handouts. And they pay taxes just like us. (Most illegals don't pay federal income taxes or social security, but, let's face it, their low wages have no income tax and they're not collecting SSI. They still pay all local taxes and state taxes in TN, as well as federal gasoline taxes.)

There's not a lot of difference between our positions. The anti-immigration crowd, which you've oddly invited to your website, has a very different agenda.

Note this quote:

"It's like we're becoming another Los Angeles. These Hispanics are trying to overwhelm us."

Now, you tell me, does the speaker care about legal or illegal immigration? Or is he/she simply expressing an anti-Latino sentiment.

To about 99% of us, it's obvious.

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 7, 2005 12:19 PM

Michael is right. The bigotry is evident in the choice of words.

Hispanics are "trying to overwhelm us," they are merely making a better life for themselves.

Posted by: brittney at December 7, 2005 2:50 PM

Michael wrote: The anti-immigration crowd, which you've oddly invited to your website, has a very different agenda. Note this quote:

"It's like we're becoming another Los Angeles. These Hispanics are trying to overwhelm us."

Just to clarify, the "overwhelm us" comment was made by a commenter to a post published at this blog, not by the writer of the blog post. So when Michael or Brittney uses that quote as an example of bigotry, if they are trying to say that I or Donna Locke are bigots based on that quote, they are misrepresenting things badly.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at December 7, 2005 4:00 PM

I am just now getting to this. I have been away from my computer. I will post a response to some comments here in a little while. Stay tuned.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 7, 2005 4:06 PM

Just to clarify, the "overwhelm us" comment was made by a commenter to a post published at this blog, not by the writer of the blog post.

It's not from a comment on a blog post.

Again, Bill, I ask this question. Please answer it directly. Is the "overwhelm us" comment bigoted or not?

I'm not asking anything else. If you choose to try to sidestep it again, it's a "yes".

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 7, 2005 5:44 PM

Just lost an hour's work of commenting. Had it typed it here, forgot to copy it, went to another Web site to get something, came back and my very long comment was gone. Will have to do it over. Frustrating.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 7, 2005 8:09 PM

I searched my blog and found no post by myself or Donna Locke using the words "overwhelm us." So, if it wasn't from Donna or myself, and it wasn't from a commenter, then what you are doing is asking me to respond to something that was said somewhere else, not here. Sorry, I won't play that game.

It is simply unfair to ask person A to take responsibility for something person B said, and even more unfair if person B didn't say it from or on person A's platform or stage.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at December 7, 2005 10:25 PM

"See, employment has a very different meaning in different countries."

Exactly! Especially when you don't account for cost of living differences, type of government etc. What does it cost to live somewhere else? N.Y. cost's about 23% more than D.C. and the salaries in N.Y. are proportionately higher.

With N.Y being 100, Manila is 48.9 in comparison, ranked 143 out of 144 of major world cities for COL. IOW it's cheaper to live in Manila than the U.S. Then factor in taxes and government. See COL

That being said, I have no problem whatsoever with someone wanting to immigrate here legally like your wife Michael. She has a profession in a field that is severely short of resources and will only get worse as the nation ages. I am NOT anti-immigrant. I'm pro controlled immigration at levels that can be effectively managed without depressing the current economic lifestyle America's current citizenry is accustomed to.

While there are those who are in favor of throwing open the doors wider and enlisting the force of the Fed to confiscate more taxes to subsidize it. And it's from wide open border crowd that I'm tired of hearing "they only want to come here for a job." Some do and some don't.

The problem is the unchecked massive migration from all over the world in numbers that can not be assimilated. This is creating problems for both immigrant and citizen alike.

Evidently you missed my earlier post where a study showed that immigrants are using welfare services at a higher perentage as a group than citizens(40% compared to 23%). In other words they are consumers not investors of the American dream more so than citizens.

Even though illegals do not pay income taxes, nor property taxes, you can't equate that with no cost. Their influx alone increases the burden on the local citizen with schools, health services and other higher indirect costs. All borne by the local and federal taxpayer.

This lays the financial burden unfairly on honest hardworking people with no hope that any presidential administration is willing to address. Bush provides $3B to border state hospitals that are going bankrupt from the hundreds of billions they are losing to illegal patients and they can't even establish whether the patient is a citizen or not because it may be demeaning?! Yet they see nothing wrong with strip searhing or feeling up a 90 year old granny at the airport. Criminy!

Michael, take a look at some of the fair immigration web sites to see the impact uncontrolled immigration is going to have on your way of life in the coming years. You may find that with the sell out of America by the D.C. potentates, you and your lovely wife may want to emigrate to the Phillipines.

Posted by: Rick Forman at December 7, 2005 10:32 PM

Ah, Bill, so much trouble answering a simple question. I'm not asking you to take responsibility, and, by the way, dodging the question again means the answer was "yes".

But you already answered it, didn't you? I mean, you went to all the trouble to discredit Brittney and me by pointing out that that quote appeared in the comments on your website and wasn't said by the poster (who isn't identified). You're wrong, but the mere fact that you go to this effort to discredit it/us speaks volumes.

Now, if you are going to all that trouble to dance around the issue, the issue must be a little warm, right?

Before the obvious conclusion, I would invite you to do a little Googling, Bill. Then you tell us who the quote is from. This is a no-brainer.

You probably should have done that *before* you decided to let her post here.

Oops, did I just let the cat out of the bag?

By the way, Bill, I don't think you're a bigot. I never said you were, nor have I implied it. You just haven't screened your posters very well. So, now you're in a tough position, and lashing out against me and Brittney isn't going to help.

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 7, 2005 11:00 PM

What's wrong with someone voicing their concern about being "overwhelmed" as L.A. has been in the last few years by illegals from Mexico? It's put a huge burden on the the city's infrastructure, health resouces, criminal justice system, schools and on and on.

“In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens,” reported a blistering Winter 2004 City Journal exposé entitled “The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave.” City Journal also noted: “up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.”

In southern California, “a confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang … is illegal.” These gang members collaborate with the Mexican Mafia “on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations,” committing an “assault or robbery” in L.A. County every day.

A 1996 Los Angeles Times report on the 18th Street Gang “included descriptions of innocent bystanders being murdered by laughing cholos (gang members).”

Guess what group is beginning to complain about it loudly now Michael? The legal migrant workers because the prevailing wage rate is being driven down. Sounds like the Phillipines does it not?

Instead of throwing out baseless accusations of bigotry or racisim try debating the issues with substantiated facts. That tactic doesn't wash on blogs like it does with the MSM.

Posted by: Rick Forman at December 7, 2005 11:00 PM

This will be long. Bear with me. Though some folks have made it a personal crusade to shut me up, their efforts often provide fresh opportunity for me to get information to the public. Such is the case today.

In 1999, an illegal-alien driver slammed into my daughter, injuring her and starting a long and almost unbelievable nightmare for my family. We were lucky: my daughter survived; many have not. I stepped up my involvement in the immigration-control movement, did a lot more research, and became a spokeswoman for that cause.

It wasn't something I particularly wanted to do, but I didn't see many other volunteers. I had been a Sixties activist in a number of causes, including environmental preservation and civil rights. As in other causes and movements, only a few spoke out publicly in the beginning, but eventually many others gained courage from the few and joined us.

I've been interviewed by a number of newspaper reporters. All of them knew their paper's bias and most wrote for it. In fact, a few reporters, knowing I'm a former reporter, have told me their editors cut, rewrite, or kill their stories in order to preserve the paper's bias/advocacy on immigration issues.

There's a definite media bias against us. Immigration control and reduction have been given short shrift or no shrift at all, especially in the big papers, though the balance has improved lately. The news media's practice of advocacy rather than journalism has hurt, possibly fatally damaged, our republic.

I'm leaving out some worthy mentions here, but the fairest, most professional reporters I've dealt with on the immigration issue were Rick Badie of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Monica Whitaker of The Tennessean. Badie writes a column now for his paper. I believe Whitaker is no longer with The Tennessean.

The worst "reporter" I've dealt with was Jeffrey Gettleman, when he worked for The Los(t) Angeles Times. Gettleman is the originator of the "quote" cited by Michael Chaney in his comment above. Gettleman attributed the quote to me in an Aug. 21, 2001, story he wrote for the L.A. paper. I never said it. He made it up. He fashioned those two sentences from what I said to him and made them sound the way he wanted them to sound. Anyone who knows me knows that is not even the way I talk. And that is confirmed by the unfailingly accurate quotes attributed to me in a number of AJC news stories at the same time, when, as usual, I minced no words. The AJC staked out an editorial position advocating driver's licenses for illegal aliens and opposed us on most every other front, but we did get some fair play there, once we broke down the door.

I was living in an Atlanta suburb, leading the Georgia Coalition for Immigration Reform, when Gettleman, who had moved to Atlanta as a bureau chief for his paper, called me for an interview and asked me for other sources for his story about immigration. The Los Angeles Times hasn't done a fair and balanced job on immigration reporting and, perhaps taking a cue from the California film industry, loves to play up Southern stereotypes. Jeffrey probably thought we would never see his story way over there in California. But we did. A Marietta, Ga., police officer and I immediately contacted the L.A. paper's editors and reader's rep and told them we had been misquoted. A media watchdog sent the paper and me a link to a published complaint about twisted reporting by Gettleman, a complaint by some public officials in Mississippi, I believe. I don't have that link anymore, but a quick Googling today turned up this.

The police officer demanded a retraction and an apology and was quoted in an AJC story ("Marietta officer says L.A. paper misquoted: Remarks about Mexican workers were another's" by Charles Yoo, Aug. 25, 2001) as saying he repeated complaints to Gettleman that business owners had made about day laborers, and Gettleman reported their words as the officer's. I knew the officer was telling the truth, because one of the business owners, an immigrant herself, had said the same things to me once.

For my part, I asked for a retraction and the publication of a letter to the editor denying the "quote" attributed to me. The Los Angeles Times blew us off -- no retraction, no correction, no LTE, no apology, no justice. I posted the chain of events on my Web site, sent the link to reporters, and wrote off The Los Angeles Times.

I sent Gettleman a very strong letter. He e-mailed me and wanted to take me to lunch. I didn't go.

Gettleman seems to be a very smart and energetic guy, but his behavior during his one-hour interview with me was a fascinating, even stupefying, study in unprofessionalism. At one point, he said, "You probably like high testosterone levels, don't you?" Answered with amazed silence, he said, "I mean sometimes . . . " Well, I wasn't going there. Not with a kid young enough to be my son anyway. I could only wonder where in Atlanta we might send young Gettleman for help with etiquette and hormone control.

Gettleman went on to write for The New York Times. Pause for laugh.

All the predictions I made to The AJC and to Gettleman have come true. Georgia now has many of the problems California has because of massive illegal immigration from all sending countries. Schools, hospitals, public services in general, are overwhelmed, and Georgians are losing jobs to cheap labor. Same here in my native Tennessee.

As for the "overwhelm" "quote" that I did not say but which was attributed to me: what I actually supplied to Gettleman and told him to explore were quotes attributed to Sam Zamarripa in two news stories. Zamarripa is now a Georgia state senator championing illegal aliens but was then and possibly still is chairman of the metro Atlanta Latin American Association. He was quoted in a March 6, 2000, AJC story by Maria Saporta ("Metro 'diversity tour' proves an eye-opener . . .") as saying to Lyndon Wade, the retiring executive director of the Atlanta Urban League, "Your song may be, 'We shall overcome' . . . our song is, 'We shall overwhelm.'" Zamarripa was quoted by The AJC on another occasion as saying, "We shall overwhelm," a slogan that has cropped up in what many call the Mexican reconquista movement.

A Feb. 6, 2000, story in The Rocky Mountain News quoted University of New Mexico professor Charles Truxillo as saying: "Republica del Norte," the Republic of the North, which would include the present U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, plus southern Colorado, along with several current Mexican states, is "an inevitability." The new "Hispanic homeland" should be brought into being "by any means necessary."

I began to see a pattern.

Former U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres, D-CA, while he was a member of Congress, said the following to a Latino crowd at a meeting of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in 1996: "We are a swing vote - the kind of swing vote that I've just described to you can cause governments to fall or to rise. This organization, its Southwest Research Institute, has been moving in this hemisphere . . . in Nicaragua - in El Salvador - in Mexico . . ." -- recorded on Voice of Citizens Together/American Patrol's videotape Immigration: Threatening the Bonds of Our Union, Part II.

I could supply many more examples of what I consider subversive, anti-American speech and action on the part of open-borders advocates, and it isn't restricted to Latinos. I've seen and heard it myself on recordings made undercover by off-duty law enforcement officers I know, law enforcement officers employed by a government that betrays them daily. Most of you simply don't know what is going on and you don't grasp that your tax dollars are funding it.

Juan Jose Pena, Hispanic activist and vice chairman of the Hispanic Roundtable, may have put "armed rebellion" on hold "because we just didn't have the firepower," but at this point I have to agree with Pena if he indeed said this: "I've studied lots of civilizations. The United States is just like any other empire. It's not going to live forever. Eventually it will break down because of the stresses." And the silence.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 8, 2005 12:56 AM

Michael - As Donna explains in her comment, you have been trying to get me to defend/respond to/attack a quote that was a fabrication by a Los Angeles Times reporter.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at December 8, 2005 7:03 AM

Michael - As Donna explains in her comment, you have been trying to get me to defend/respond to/attack a quote that was a fabrication by a Los Angeles Times reporter.

According to her.

Bill, let me lay this out for you here, and I'll respond to Donna's post later.

A lot of us here like your blog because we see it as the best source for TN political information. Your coverage of the legislature is great. I don't read the Tennessean, or NCP, or anything else, so this is where I get that information.

While you're far more conservative than I am, I at least respect your position and, frankly, don't mind it as I know your bias ahead of time.

Most of us here think Donna is an extremist (to put it nicely). It looks to me like she was a little anti-immigrant, then her daughter suffered a horrific car accident caused by or at least involving an illegal alien, and she had a natural response to that. Most people end up in counseling to work through such issues.

Her positions and yours have little in common. You both want to ship illegal aliens back to Mexico. Other than that, there is no commonality.

Like me, you want to see us strive to get the best and brightest scholars from other countries over here. Donna sees them all as job-stealing forners who are simply taking a job from an American. They don't understand the concept of an expanding economy where jobs are created.

If you'd take that 5 minutes to Google her name, you'd find writings where she talks about had badly the economy is doing, of course because of Mexicans. And it's an environmental issue, too. Oh, and a population spiraling out of control issue (that has been debunked so many times it can't get off the floor).

While she was talking about how badly the economy was, Bill Hobbs was telling us how great the economy was doing, all because of Bush.

I'm not on a personal crusade. The bottom line is that you have a reputation, and you're putting it on the line.

Your choice, but not the one I would make in your shoes.

At this point, you've spent so much time attempting to defend (by sidestepping the questions) that you'd have even more egg on your face if you did the right thing. Donna doesn't need your help, anyway. There are about 1000 free blog services out there.

One more question, Bill, and I expect you to ignore it, too, as you can never directly answer questions. But here it is:

If George Bush is right about everything, why is he so wrong about the immigration issue?

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 8, 2005 8:32 AM

Michael, you're playing a losing hand. Only two people are first-hand witnesses to the disputed quote - Donna Locke and Jeffrey Gettleman. Gettleman has a huge credibility problem as he has a history of fabrication of quotes. Given that, the likelihood that Locke is telling the truth is higher than the likelihood Gettleman is.

As for GWB, I have never said he is "right about everything." He's been wrong on a lot. Spending too much, cutting too little, failing to veto things he should veto. On some things he has been a disaster. But he's got two big things basically right: The war, and tax cuts.

He's horrible on immigration.

And, um, actually I don't support shipping all the illegals back to Mexico. I do support reforming our laws - and pressuring Mexico to reform its political and economic system - so that many of them decide to go back, and want to go back.

I do support legislation denying non-emergency public services to illegals.

I do support cracking down on employers who knowingly hire illegals.

I do support building a wall - physical or of troops - along the border to stop the inflow of illegals, among whom in recent years have been found people from the Middle East, highlighting how our southern border is a huge security risk.

The economy is doing well, but could be doing much better if government wasn't having to raise taxes higher and higher to pay for services to illegals. And wages would be better for people in the low-skilled jobs if there was less competition for the jobs because there were fewer illegals here.

I'm not oblivious to the counter-argument on economics - that if we did'nt have all these illegals, there'd be no one to build houses, landscape the yards, pick the veggies, etc. And there is some truth in it.

But the answer to that isn't to do nothing about illegal immigration - it is to STOP illegal immigration and reform our LEGAL immigration system so that we can have whatever level of LEGAL and SECURE immigration that is economically advantageous to us as a nation and can be assimilated culturally.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at December 8, 2005 9:18 AM

That's exactly what the president is proposing, bill.

Posted by: jimmy at December 8, 2005 10:12 AM

And, um, actually I don't support shipping all the illegals back to Mexico.

Donna does, though she can't explain how that would work, exactly.

It's funny watching you attempt to argue with me so that you can be on Donna's side, when in fact we agree on almost everything in this debate (and if you don't support shipping them back, well, that leaves very little).

Now, Bill, another hard question (I know, I know, I've been tough on you lately): if you don't support Bush's plan, and you don't support shipping them back, well, what exactly do we do with 10M people who are here illegally?

I don't expect an answer.

A couple of minor corrections follow.

Rick - illegals pay property taxes. If I'm wrong, then please let me know where they live, as I'll move to that area and save money.

Hmm, also Rick - With N.Y being 100, Manila is 48.9 in comparison, ranked 143 out of 144 of major world cities for COL. IOW it's cheaper to live in Manila than the U.S. Then factor in taxes and government. See COL

Yeah, it's cheaper to live in Manila. Reread my numbers (or, more likely, read them for the first time). My wife makes something like 20 times as much here. The cost of living is half as much.

Do the math.

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 8, 2005 10:56 AM

As I've pointed out, attrition through enforcement is a good way to get a handle on illegal immigration. That would include truly secured borders and as many deportations as we can get.

Even within the immigration-reduction movement, there are varying opinions on how to deal with the massive problem at this point. If you have no one taking the hard stands -- for strict law enforcement -- than all you get is compromise and more of the same problem. That has been shown by the increased illegal immigration that followed every amnesty of the past.

Anyone can get on a blog or someplace and impugn my motives and call me ugly names. It's meaningless. I could say Michael Chaney is a socialist and terrorist sympathizer. Would that make it true? Anyone could call the Border Patrol racist for trying to do their jobs -- which Mexico does. Does that make it so? And by the way, Michael, you are the only one I've noticed using derogatory terms for immigrants in comments on this blog.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 8, 2005 1:59 PM

Yes, Donna, you could call me ugly names. Problem is, you'd have scant evidence to back it up. When I point out that most people in the anti-immigration crowd are nothing more than bigots who use the "illegal immigration" card to appear mainstream while railing against all immigration, I have reams of evidence to back that up.

When I asked how sending the Mexicans back would work the first time, you linked to two articles, which looked like two variations of one writing, in which the author passed off the idea of raiding businesses to find illegal workers as a normal action that would be commonplace if he had his druthers. I'm sorry. In America, we find that idea either creepy, chilling, or both. That's why you're not mainstream, and why your little movement isn't mainstream.

When the KKK and neo-Nazi groups are the others pushing your agenda (even though you've carefully separated yourself from them), you have to wonder for a minute about all this.

When your opinion is based on how badly the US economy is doing and how high unemployment is, even though the economy is growing and we're at full employment, well, yet another minute to wonder.

Your problem seems to center around the tragic episode which you and your family endured 6 or 7 years ago. Again, I urge you to seek counseling. Do a google search on your name and ask yourself if that's really what you want the world to see you as.

Seriously. Think about this:

http://www.teamgop.org/blog/archives/2005/06/wrong_way_to_ma.html

Is that you? Because that's what we see you as. Sad, eh?

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 8, 2005 6:13 PM

Michael, you're desperate, and I have detected more than a little chauvinism in your attacks on me. There are men commenting on this blog, often directly to your comments, and men all over this country who are saying exactly the same thing I am saying, but you have chosen to direct your vile and baseless attacks at me only. Hmm . . .

My opposition has thrown mud at me for seven years. None of it stuck. For good reason.

I don't play the politically correct game, and that drives some people mad. As George Orwell wrote, "In a world of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

Your arguments, aside from baseless personal attacks on me, center around your statement that you are married to an immigrant. Well, guess what. I grew up with immigrants in my family, including a Latino aunt, all of whom side with me in this immigration debate. Many of my close associates in this cause, including those heading grass-roots groups in Georgia, California, Virginia, and some other states, are immigrants or are married to immigrants. So it is pretty stupid to call us anti-immigrant or any of the other names you have come up with.

You simply want me silenced. Just admit it.

Posted by: Donna Locke at December 8, 2005 7:31 PM

No, Donna, I want your opinions stated in as many places as possible. That's why I point out your writings at other places, and draw attention to the real agenda.

I want people to see what you're all about, because you're not mainstream and you don't represent America.

I have a friend- a staunch conservative and a legal immigrant- who was also against illegal immigration and talked about it some. When I showed her the article that you linked to describing how all immigrants were costing us scads of money, well, she changed her mind.

You're like Howard Dean, John Kerry, and a host of others with whom I don't agree. I very much want you to talk- I'll give you the microphone. I want people to know what you're about.

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 8, 2005 9:50 PM

Michael,
Unless illegals pay cash for a home, it's SUPPOSED to be illegal for them to obtain financing. Although the fed and major lending institutions are blatantly ignoring the law thus consuming resources intended for lawful citizens or immigrants.

The majority of illegals rent therefore they don't pay the property taxes the landlord does. I know they do indirectly however as in a lot of cases with greater occupancy than most tenants, the allocation per resident is less. And with migrant workers who live on the agribusiness property, the business owner pays the property tax for the dwellings not the worker.

Did your wife live in Manilla or a more rural area? Even in Tenn. there is a big disparity in wages from a rural county to Nashville.

I'm not knocking your wife. As I said, I think it's great she had the opportunity to immigrate to the U.S. "legally" to provide her much needed professional skills.

Posted by: Rick Forman at December 9, 2005 10:30 PM

Rick, if apartment dwellers don't pay property taxes, then a whole lot of American's don't pay, either. Sorry, you argument doesn't hold water. Anyone paying to live on land that is being taxed is being taxed. Period. It might be passed through as part of the rent, but they're still paying it.

Mexicans without an SSN pay every single tax that we pay save for Social Security. They're probably not going to ask for retirement money.

My wife is from Metro Manila. The wage that I quoted is from the best hospital in that city, Makati Medical Center. I shudder to think what she would have been paid elsewhere.

They do what people around the world do: walk as much as possible, have as many people as possible in a house, their house has no yard (land costs more there than here in Nashville, in absolute cost per square meter), they eat a reasonable number of calories per day, restaurants are a very rare luxury (even McDonalds), the list goes on and on.

Posted by: Michael Chaney at December 10, 2005 8:56 AM

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