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cb1000rider wrote:I'm not pro-illegal, but the reality is:
1) Our economy will drastically change, especially in Texas if illegal labor isn't an option. Ever wonder why a home here costs $200k and the same thing in the NE runs $450k+

By your logic, California homes should be even cheaper than Texas homes, but we all know that's obviously not true. (California has far more illegals than Texas does.)

There are other factors involved, not illegal immigration.

A combination of available land and lending regulations have kept housing prices comparatively low and helped Texas avoid the real estate depression that dragged down many other state economies.

cb1000rider wrote:2) Illegals contribute to our economy massively. It's hard to quantify this contribution. Is it a net gain compared to the drag on the "free services" that they can get? I suspect it is, but it's a moot point as you can't exactly put metrics on illegal activity.

The net effect on the economy of illegals (both contribution to and demand from) is essentially neutral.

There are places in the United States where illegal immigration has big effects (both positive and negative). But economists generally believe that when averaged over the whole economy, the effect is a small net positive. Harvard's George Borjas says the average American's wealth is increased by less than 1 percent because of illegal immigration.

Since the basis of your argument is so flawed, your solutions must be as well.

Illegal immigration isn't the only problem. Back in 1965 Ted Kennedy and his gang managed to push chain migration through Congress. Chain migration means that once one person enters the country legally, their entire family can. Then each family member can bring their immediate relatives and so forth and so on. Kennedy promised that this would not increase immigration numbers. It would merely be fair. In addition, they managed to remove all the quotas we had for individual countries, claiming it was discriminatory and racist. (If all this is sounding far too familiar, it should.)

The result? In the 60's annual influx of legal immigrants was 321,375. Today it's 1,029,943, more than 3 times as much - ANNUALLY. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the impact of this annual increase in legal immigration. Go to almost any retail outlet in America and you will find someone whose English is difficult to understand and whose birthplace is obviously not America. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. After all, we are and have always been a nation of immigrants. However, the scale of the immigration problem is readily apparent no matter where you live, and that tells you something about where we are headed.

The illegal immigration problem exacerbates the problem. Not only does it increase the numbers coming here, but it builds an underclass that sees the law as merely a suggestion. If I can enter the country illegally and nothing happens to me, in fact I get rewarded with free education, food stamps, aid to dependent children, automatic citizenship for my children and the belief that laws aren't really enforced here anyway. It also impacts legal immigrants insidiously. Why should they go through ten to twelve years of frustrating hoops to come here and become a citizen when all they have to do is walk across the border and then wait for Congress to reward them for their walk?

Beiruty wrote:

chuck j wrote:I do don't gage a man by his education .

Education is the key to higher financial achievements. Even though, I do have uncles who had only intermediate level education, but still they were so successful as businessmen, they raised great generations of theirs.

Education is the key in those days to be successful in the internet age.

While I don't disagree with you, it's not the only path to success. It's probably the easiest one.