$1680 a month before taxes is not low wages???

I beg to differ. I couldn't live off of that and I don't even have kids!

yup and yet they find a way. how about the minutemen patroling the border and them building a wall. personaly I don't think they should have the right. after all we are all immigrants legal or illegal.

I agree with Hev; that is a low wage, especially for the provider of a family - though I guess that also depends on where you live.
In my town,
The Living Wage Act was passed two years ago which requires any company having 25 or more employees to pay $9.50 per hour - and that will be automatically phased up to $10.50 an hour next year.

I would also have questions about the nature of the work itself in the place you mentioned...is the work extremely hard on the body? Is it dangerous?
Really,
I do not think Americans are lazy and I know there would be plenty of low-skilled or minimally educated American citizens applying to work at that plant if it were in my town.

I support the Minutemen in everything they do and I admire them for doing what our so-called leaders are too paid off to do.
Citizens have every right to protect their borders from invasion.
Yes,
You are right in saying we are all immigrants.
But you are mistaken in joining the effort to blur the lines between those who have gone through the required efforts to immigrate, and those who have come by night, so to speak.

Questions for you Hayling:

Do you think there are many people south of the border who do NOT want to come here?

Should we just let them all come here?
If not, where should we draw the line?

Do you think it is a good thing that people are coming here from below the border with TB and other diseases - diseases that have been eradicated in our country for years - because they have avoided the health screening that all other immigrants have taken?

How do you like the idea that - thanks to Plyler v. Doe - their children are sitting in the nation's classrooms, some of them WITH these diseases?

How do you feel about your tax dollars subsidizing all the health care that can be provided for them in Emergency Rooms across the country (more than eighty of which have shut down already in CA and AZ because of unpaid bills... but the law demands that everyone be treated with or without ability to pay)?

Behind all the warm fuzzy rhetoric about how "we are all immigrants" is this: the continuous flow is allowed in here as payback from each recent administration to the huge corporations who supported them in elections: payback in cheap labor and permanently depressed wages. It is also believed to be a ticket to getting votes from Hispanic Americans, although in many cases that is untrue (ask me to substantiate this when I am not in a hurry).
And
it is the middle and lower classes who are footing the bill for this payback.

Alright, carry on...

Questions for you Hayling:

Do you think there are many people south of the border who do NOT want to come here?

Should we just let them all come here?
If not, where should we draw the line?

You forgot to mention the fact that some minutemen are going agaisnt the human rights act and assaulting these immigrants. Most of them are racist people who only stop people who are coloured. I would say yes there are a lot of people in South America who do not want to come to the US. Im all for taking the law into your own hands when it is injust but seriously these illegal immigrants usually take all the crap jobs in the US. Are the minutemen helping anythin though? What happens when they catch an illegal immigrant they can't arrest them. They are just now deciding to get into the US other ways and the border is far too big to patrol.

I think you have allowed yourself to believe propaganda. I have not heard of even one incident where that has happened; can you show me one?
And even if did happened once or twice, that is hardly a justification to disparage an entire year's worth of work.
But again, I have not heard that it has even happened.

.

Ehrm..."colored"??

They probably are stopping almost exclusively Latino persons...but of course as we all know there have also been a few middle easterners as well.

.

A lot of people, in other words, who prefer dire poverty with no hope of any relief in the foreseeable future.
Gotcha.

.

Hayling, the few jobs Americans really WON'T do (usually agricultural or physically extreme) are already given to people from below the border to legally come up for certain months of the year.
There is no reason to justify a porous border by means of those jobs.

.

They detain them and call the authorities. And you have a problem with that?

What other ways?
And your comment about the border being "too big to control" is (sorry to say it) absurd.
Since WHEN do Americans throw up their hands and decide the job is too big for them?
Are you kidding me?
We can guard frickin Iraq's borders but not our own?

They detain them and call the authorities. And you have a problem with that? [/quote]

Yes and are they going to put these immigrants in jail? No. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will drop them off at a bus terminal and send them on their way.

What other ways?
And your comment about the border being "too big to control" is (sorry to say it) absurd.
Since WHEN do Americans throw up their hands and decide the job is too big for them?
Are you kidding me?
We can guard frickin Iraq's borders but not our own?[/quote]

The US border is 1,951 miles or 3,141 km for us canadians. Now what say althought this is absurd, that one minutemen can cover 5 miles. You would still need 400 minutemen patroling the border everyday for the rest of the year with no pay. Not exactly a fun job that people would like to take. The border guards in Iraq are trained soldiers who can use any force necessary. Now compare that to your minutemen.

CNN -- Lou Dobbs Tonight -- Aired May 3, 2006 - 18:00 ET

DOBBS: Turning back now to the illegal immigration crisis in this country, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, is taking new action tonight in his aggressive fight to catch illegal aliens. Sheriff Arpaio is deploying his volunteer posse patrol to the Arizona desert in search of illegal aliens and criminals. These posse patrols hope to succeed where the federal government has failed the state of Arizona.

Peter Viles reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A perp walk you won't see anywhere else, illegal aliens arrested for allegedly agreeing to be smuggled into America and making the mistake of passing through Maricopa County, Arizona.

SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO, MARICOPA COUNTY, ARIZONA: I'm trying to get a message out to all the illegals from Mexico to stay out of this county.

VILES: Maverick Sheriff Joe Arpaio believes Arizona's new anti- smuggling law applies not just to coyotes, but to the illegal aliens they transport.

ARPAIO: It's interpreted by the county attorney that those that are in conspiracy with the smuggler can also be locked up. I'm the only law enforcement agency doing it.

VILES: And doing it his way, using some of his vast posse of 3,000 volunteers to patrol the desert.

This volunteer helped round up nine illegals and two alleged smugglers Tuesday morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you get a phone call at 4:00 in the morning from the sheriff, you respond.

VILES: Arpaio's deputies have jailed 120 illegals this year, and this sheriff does not believe in catch and release.

ARPAIO: It's a felony, one and a half years to three years in prison if convicted. So, it's not a misdemeanor. I could very easily turn these people over to immigration. They get a free ride back to Mexico. Right now, they are getting a free ride to the jail.

VILES: Jail space is not a problem. Arpaio is the sheriff who built a tent city of jail cells.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The message has to be loud and clear. We're not taking it anymore. You enter this country illegally, you're going to be arrested, you're going to be deported.

VILES: It's likely, though, the county will face a legal challenge in its use of the new law. At the state level, it is being used only to target the smugglers.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VILES: The sheriff bristled at the suggestion his posse is somehow similar to the minutemen, saying his volunteer posse undergoes extensive professional training and is sworn in under the Arizona State Constitution -- Lou.

DOBBS: Sheriff Arpaio is an innovator, certainly in law enforcement. And he also has great community support for what he's doing there.

VILES: Roughly 80 percent of the votes in the last election. This, Lou, is the ultimate old-fashioned force multiplier, a posse of 3,200 people. He says it's the biggest posse in the United States.

DOBBS: And perhaps setting a model for others to consider.

CNN -- Lou Dobbs Tonight -- Aired May 5, 2005 - 18:00 ET

DOBBS: My next guest was so frustrated with the federal government's failure to enforce our immigration laws that he decided to take initiative on his own. Garrett Chamberlain is the police chief in New Ipswich, New Hampshire. He recently charged an illegal alien caught in his town with criminal trespassing. And that forced the illegal alien to go to court, where he was ordered to report to immigration officials.

Chief Chamberlain has been praised for his initiative and his action, and he joins us tonight from Manchester, New Hampshire. Good to have you with us, Chief.

CHIEF GARRETT CHAMBERLAIN, NEW IPSWICH, NH POLICE: Thank you, sir.

DOBBS: The idea of charging illegal aliens with trespassing. How did this concept even occur to you?

CHAMBERLAIN: Well, what happened was initially the first incident that we had was in July of 2004. We had a situation where myself and another officer made a motor vehicle stop in which we determined that nine of the 10 passengers were illegal aliens who had come into the United States from Mexico into California by a human smuggler. We contacted the ICE office here in New Hampshire, and they advised us if they hadn't been convicted of a crime or previously deported, to go ahead and release them.

DOBBS: Just release them.

CHAMBERLAIN: Yeah, go ahead and just send them on their way. Now, this is two weeks before the Democratic convention in Boston, 45 miles north of the city. You know, these people were freely admitting to us that they were in the country illegally, and that they had been smuggled in.

DOBBS: And isn't it ICE's job to detain them and to remove them from the country?

CHAMBERLAIN: Well, that was my understanding, but they instructed us that they had no interest in the people, and to go ahead and release them. And so before I did, I took a photo of them walking down the highway, and I sent that out on a press release. And that's what got some attention.

DOBBS: And the fact that you decided to charge an illegal alien with trespass -- the legal concept, obviously here illegally, how did the idea of trespass occur to you?

CHAMBERLAIN: Well, what happened was after the incident last July, we had another incident in October, in which we were able to take custody of 11 illegals that were living in New Ipswich. ICE did take custody of them, but I instructed my officers that if a situation occurred where we had another alien that they refused to take custody of, that we would apply the state law, which is under revised statutes annotated 635:2, criminal trespass. What that law says simply is that a person is guilty of criminal trespass if they knowingly enter or remain in any place without license or privilege to do so.

My position was that if Mr. Ramirez was in the country illegally, he was in my town illegally.

DOBBS: And, the fact is, that seems, at first, novel, and then, as you cite the statute, perfectly straightforward, and it seems like a basis for police departments all over the country to deal with the issue.

CHAMBERLAIN: Yes, we thought it was. We contacted our attorney general's office here in the state of New Hampshire. They instructed us that they felt it passed what they call the straight-faced test, and we went forward with it.

DOBBS: And, what has been the reaction?

CHAMBERLAIN: It's been rather positive. I've received hundreds of e-mails from people across the country. Everybody saying thank you for using another approach to this issue.

DOBBS: And illegal aliens in New Hampshire -- isn't the first place you start thinking about there being a problem with illegal aliens. Would you describe illegal immigration as a sizable problem for your community?

CHAMBERLAIN: Well, I -- not necessarily for my community, but I know for the state, it is. You know, we've just been in the news with the issue where many departments have been frustrated by the lack of response from ICE and they just don't report the situations anymore. They basically ignore it.

DOBBS: And your department will not be ignoring it and you will be following up with trespass charges from here on?

CHAMBERLAIN: Absolutely. The judge in the Jaffrey Peterbough (ph) district court, you know, accepted the plea of guilty from Mr. Ramirez and instructed him to report to the ICE office in Manchester within 72 hours.

DOBBS: And, as so often happens in these matters, whether ICE is apprehending an illegal alien, or whether it is local law enforcement or whatever the law enforcement agent, they are told to show up, but no one follows up to make certain they do.

CHAMBERLAIN: Correct.

DOBBS: Any difference in this case?

Well, in this situation what we will do is we'll contact the ICE office, probably on Monday, and inquire if Mr. Ramirez did report as he was instructed. And if he did not, what we will do is file a motion with the court to ask them to issue a warrant for his failure to comply with the judge's order.

DOBBS: All right. Well, Chief Chamberlain, we thank you for being here, and -- extraordinary initiative and perhaps precedent- setting for law enforcement agencies all around the country.

CHAMBERLAIN: Thank you for the time.

I'm beginning to "get" your logic: Because ICE has been in a pattern of slackness and ineffectuality, we should assume nothing can be done differently and we should give up.
Must be a Canadian vs. American thing.
For your information, things are already improving in that department: four planeloads per week are now taking illegal aliens back to below the border - to Honduras to be exact (no matter where they came from and whether or not they committed any other crime).

Not bothered:
1) The Minutemen are an ancillary group; they are not the head and tail of what we have. Moreover, it is not a job and people volunteer eagerly to do it, not that you would begin to understand that.

2) Many people, myself included, support the idea of putting National Guard on the border.

3) There is technology which would maximize the human effort, but is left way underutilized thanks to your pals in the White House and legislature who want to keep the slave labor pouring in.