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Originally Posted by SonikJesus
I feel very strongly about this issue since my parents used to be illegal immigrants and I know how tough it is. It really pisses me off when people start talking about it when they know nothing of how it feels. These are people that have had everything handed to them their whole life and don't know even how tough it is to be an illegal immigrant.
To the people that say that immigrants come to America and jump right on the band wagon and start receiving benefits, it's not like they are coming over here and living a fucking kick-ass life. They are working in menial jobs and trying to make money. It's not like they have the money to pay taxes. Just because you have money it doesn't mean that they do. Everything is about money. Just because you are rich it doesn't mean everybody else is.
In addition to this, immigrants contribute about $90 billion to the economy each year. That's a fucking big margin.
Oh yeah, I don't know why people get mad when they say immigrants are taking "American" jobs. What makes them think that they are so much better than another human being that they deserve a job more than an immigrant. Just because on a peice of paper it say you're American, you should get the job. I just don't see why they deserve the job more. Everybody needs jobs.
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I concur with a lot of this; I have a few close friends who arrived in Britain from various war-torn areas - where I live there are a lot of (legal and illegal) Bosnian immigrants, and while I was in London (up until a few months ago) I met a lot of different immigrants from around the world. One of my closest friends came from Afghanistan, via most of Eastern Europe. She speaks 7 languages, is more articulate than most English people born here and still considers English her third language. She would get a lot of stick for two reasons - because she was an immigrant (illegally, but she didn't tell everyone that) and because she was Afghani. She would often rip people's heads of for going on about immigrants living off the state because there's always this assumption that they're lazy, stupid and freeloading. None of this was the case, her whole family worked in menial jobs - two cousins of hers were cleaning toilets while in Afghanistan they were trained, practising doctors. They all spoke at least three languages. Most of them had degrees in medical or scientific subject. I think Britain and America are both mongrel nations in so far as there is no real ethnicity or one place that the nations come from.
However, the issue it seems is more one of litigation than it is of compassion. I personally think that we should make the process of immigration a lot easier for other countries, and also work harder on getting regimes in the more unpleasant parts of the world to make it easier for people to leave their homelands if the place is falling apart. I think the 'illegal immigrants' are a symptom of their country's fucked up economy and political system most of the time rather than being 'freeloaders'. But this is the political side of things that so often gets brushed over. British and American foreign policy is largely responsible for the 'illegal' immigrants - you can't get rid of 'them' that easily.