Poll: Do you care about your fellow citizens more than people from other countries?

[woolfe9999]

No! It has nothing to do with conservative vs liberal and everything to do with breaking the law. What part of illegal do you not understand?? Why is it okay for some to wait patiently in line with their H1B visas and others to jump a fence and demand citizenship immediately?

The very fact that Mexico treats immigrants to its own country as 3rd class citizens should tell you something. We should not condone illegal immigration, ever! We have a culture here and I for one don't want it overrun with people who prefer to set up enclaves here and never assimilate. And I get the sense that "liberals" if you absolutely must distinguish vs "conservatives" on this issue, I'd say that the libs are more ambivalent about asking immigrants to assimilate. But either way, you can't have 100s of thousands of illegals pouring into your country, using your free medical care at the ERs, public schools, and other public services.

Yes, there are plenty of scumbag right wingers who would gladly continue to look the other way so they will continue to have cheap gardening and lawn cutting labor. But there are plenty of rich lefties who prefer not to cut their own lawn either.

I consider myself a conservative and am very black & white on this issue. I actually cut my own lawn (one of the few who do in my neighborhood) even though I could well afford to outsource it, because I don't want my kids thinking that lawn cutting and taking care of a home is 'for the help' and secondly because I don't believe in encouraging illegal immigration (to which many landscaping services hire day laborers for). And I am absolutely for fining the sh*t out of other businesses that hire illegals to discourage the continued lawbreaking by scumbag employers too.

Understand that I know why illegals keep coming here...to make a better life. But our failure to secure our borders is also hurting my fellow Americans at the lower end of the income scale, and it bothers me greatly.

Has it occurred to you that these immigrants set up conclaves in part because they're illegal and that fact makes it far more difficult for them to integrate?

I don't disagree about the illegality of it being a reason to oppose it, not do I think we should just have open borders. In fact, I think we should wall off the borders. However, I don't feel the level of indignation about the issue as some people do, in part because I'd probably do the same thing if I lived in a country with a shitty economy that afforded me little to no opportunity and I had children to support and raise. But also because morality/=legality in any precise and linear sense. Many people excuse or just don't feel all that strongly about particular types of law breaking, i.e. possessing marijuana, but when it comes to illegal immigration, somehow the fact that it is illegal, in and of itself, justifies what appears to be high levels of moral outrage directed at the immigrants themselves. I can understand many of the arguments for cracking down on illegal immigration, but I don't understand the animus towards the immigrants themselves and I don't think it can be explained merely by reference to the fact of its illegality.

- wolf

 

[cwjerome]

American citizens first for many of the same reasons I would put the air mask on myself first, and for that matter, put it on my wife second over a perfect stranger. Rational, practical, and emotional issues are involved...

 

[zinfamous]

Of course I do.

Doesn't mean I don't sympathize with others and look for them as outside examples of what works and doesn't work in various cultures and systems.