There are several issues that are biting us simultaneously on the illegal immigration issue. A few are:

1) [link|http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-ex-prisons25apr26,0,4028778.story?coll=la-home-headlines|California's prisons are over-crowded].

2) [link|http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/25/border-patriol-to-iraq/|There are too few Border Patrol agents, and there are Bush Administration proposals to send some to Iraq].

3) [link|http://www.cis.org/articles/2003/msktestimony410.html|Some companies vociferously complain when the employment laws are enforced].

4) Many cities have many fewer police per unit population than they did decades ago even though crime rates are higher. [link|http://www.lapdonline.org/inside_the_lapd/pdf_view/6257|LAPD Online] (41 page .pdf, page 11). LA has 2.4 police officers per 1,000 population.

There's no place to keep the illegals they catch. Well, just deport them! There aren't enough border patrol agents to handle the workload. Well, they should catch them anyway! There are too few police officers to handle non-violent crimes like these (and immigration is a Federal responsibility anyway). Well, they should make it less appealing to immigrants to break the laws and come here to work! The employers who hire such people have too much support from businesses and enforcement of employment laws is not a priority.

Do you really think that "liberal culture" is the problem?

:-/

IMO, there are going to be 10M+ people here illegally for the forseeable future because 1) We don't want to pay what it would take to increase the size of the prisons and prison workers for 10M more people; 2) We don't want to pay to increase the size of our police forces by maybe 2-5X to get illegals and others off the streets who are breaking various laws; 3) Fences won't solve the problem (e.g. lots of "illegals" are people who overstay their visas and "disappear", and fake documents are getting easier to create).

I think it makes much more sense to change the law so that there is less demand for illegal labor than to get riled up about "amnesty" and so forth. A minimum wage that includes agricultural and food-preparation labor (typically piece-work) might be a good start.

But it'll be too expensive! What happened to Supply-and-Demand? If wages are high enough, legal people will do the work. If costs go up for suppliers, prices will rise and customers will pay the price. That's the way it's supposed to work. As it stands now, the market in the US is distorted because wages for agricultural and similar work can't rise because of the increasing supply of illegal labor.

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who is a little skeptical of the story - 3rd-5th graders are easily impressionable and can make [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sexual_abuse_hysteria|false charges], and prosecutors love a [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Duke_University_lacrosse_team_scandal|salacious story].)

Your points on juvenile crime are well taken. But I don't think that frankly it seems like its the liberal culture in CA and other major metro areas (strongly democrat) that is allowing for the creation of a permanent and extremely violent subculture. (to return to Beep's comment).

Permissiveness is a problem - agreed. But whose fault is it - just the "liberal culture"? I don't think so - I think there's more than enough blame to go around. A counter-example: Meth addiction is supposedly running rampant in the Midwest - not in the major metropolitan areas. Is it a problem in [link|http://www.kci.org/meth_info/meth_in_kansas.htm|Kansas] because they're too liberal? I don't think so.

An argument can be made that we, as a society, have too-often messed up in our application of risk and reward and punishment with our children. Corporal punishment in schools is generally outlawed, so teachers and administrators are left with things like suspension to attempt to change behavior. There seems to be a disconnect between the need to teach children that there are consequences to their actions, and a consensus about the proper way to do it so that they grow up to be citizens who respect others in society.

But why is this the case? Maybe some of it is the "liberal" view of childrearing that spankings are bad. Some of it is over-crowded class-rooms and over-worked teachers. Some of it is low pay that forces good teachers to leave the field. (But the counter-example exists of some schools with very large classes doing very well - but I'll bet you'll find that those classes are pretty homogeneous in culture, etc.) Some of it is too many kids having nothing productive to do after school so they hang out and get in trouble. Some of it is lack of funding for things like regular community police patrols so that kids know they're being watched even if their parents aren't around.

Some of it is the "conservative" view that taxes are always too high and government is always too big and wasteful (unless it's Defense related). Cities and school districts don't have the money to implement programs that would help keep kids out of trouble when they're not in school, at least partially because revenues are too low.

Some of it is the pragmatic problem that young families generally need 2 incomes to have a reasonable standard of living in or near a city, and that to try to live there on one income is nearly impossible with children. That means that parents aren't home as much as they were a few generations ago, and they don't have as good an idea of what they're kids are doing.

I think a strong case can be made that "conservative" approaches to the crime problem (3-strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentences, etc.) make things worse by dumping people who mess up but aren't violent and aren't a threat to society into over-crowded prison systems with very dangerous people. Applying draconian punishments to minor crimes doesn't diminish crime because most people are eventually released. If those people released can't rejoin society, then the problem gets worse. Judges and juries, IMHO, need to be able to examine the people and the circumstances and apply appropriate sanctions - not some cookie-cutter punishment.

I was paddled a lot in 2nd grade - I loved my teacher and enjoyed her attention. The paddlings hurt, but they weren't much of a deterrent. It took me a while to figure out that I could get attention by doing well. ;-) I also got paddled once as a freshman in high-school. I was messing around at a lunch table when I shouldn't have been, a milk carton went flying, and I was whacked a few times for it. I was humiliated and thought it was terribly unfair. It did make me straighten up, at least at lunch. Other kids may have taken the unfairness and humiliation as a reason to do worse things. So I can see the value in corporal punishment to get a kid's attention, but whether it works or not will depend on the kid (and the parents). I do think that schools need to have more options than suspension/expulsion/calling the cops. (Fear of a lawsuit against a teacher or principal is another issue that gets talked about in conservative circles, but I don't know how prevalent it really is. Of course, if a teacher believes the risk exists, it doesn't matter how often it happens in practice.)

I agree that if you're caught with illegal drugs then you should expect to be punished, and deportation should be in order if you're illegal. But I don't agree that this case should be a poster-child for problems with illegal immigration, anymore than [link|http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/10-17-2002-28406.asp|Einhorn] should be used as a reason to restrict trips by US citizens to Ireland.

My $0.02, FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.

1) If you were going to continue your comments on "racist" issues, why didn't you post to [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=285222|this] thread? My comments weren't about race.

2) AFAIK, the ice cream truck driver isn't being offered sanctuary.

3) If someone is arrested, you need to have a place to put them - even if only temporarily. Temporarily housing 10M+ people would be difficult.

4) Even if you have the police manpower to catch people you come across, you still need Border Patrol/INS people to process them, transport them to the border, and put them on buses or planes to get them out of the US. Not to mention [link|http://www.cbp.gov/xp/CustomsToday/2004/Aug/repatriation.xml|the expense] - let's see some ballpark numbers: $1M = 6000 people ($165 per person) to transport illegals from Arizona to Texas, so 10M people = $1.7B. $13M for a 3 month program to move illegals back to their home towns, with 1855 people transported to Mexico in 10 days. At that same rate, $13M = 16,695 people, or about $775 per person. So 10M = $7.8B. Hmmm. It's looking like it'll cost about $10-15B to kick them all out - ignoring the fact that they aren't all Mexican. A program that big will need a lot of agents to deal with all the people - after finding them all, of course.

5)

The main point there is a problem with the "characterization" of anyone opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants as racist. that characterization has been used by some and linked to by others in these forums.

If that was your main point, you could have made it a little better (and kept it in the earlier thread). Racism wasn't my point, at all. I thought I was addressing the topic in general, and your "liberal culture" comment in particular. (In fact, I didn't participate early in this thread because I thought you were just "stirring the pot" and not interested in conversation.)

6) Skepticism about the reporting can stand on its own without reference to the illegal status of the ice cream truck driver.

Finally, I think if you'll reread [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=285222|Ashton's comment] (that you seem to be so worked up about), I think you'll see that he's building a straw-man case against extremely wealthy Republicans who drink $25 martinis. Not saying that anyone opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants as racist. If you have some other comment, or some other person, in mind, you should be explicit. Ashton can be a little opaque to me, sometimes, but I think he was reasonably clear there. ;-)

I'm done. Have a good holiday.

Cheers,
Scott.