"Compared to working in the fields, it was easy"

Revocation of U.S. medical licensure and immediate deportation is in order. Mexico could surely use a US trained neurosurgeon. Time to return the gift. And somewhere out there is a legitimate US citizen who was denied a college spot, another denied a medical school spot, and yet another denied a neurosurgical residency position. A cascade of ill-begotten gains. Harvard should be taken to task and fined for employing an illegal immigrant.

“Internet people are mean.”

You should see us off the internet.

A legal US citizen or resident is the only person who may “fairly” earn money in this country. The rest are criminals. Those taxes paid would be paid just as well by the displaced American would-have-been neurosurgeon who is making a pittance doing primary care thanks to illegal immigration.

One would suspect he was legal by the time he entered medical school.

But hey, who knows?

My problem with illegal immigration is it creates a slave class within the USA. It’s why amnesty doesn’t work. If you snapped your fingers and made every farmworker….or you name the job…..legal……they’d walk off the job and get a better one that requires legal status.

Pay those people better, or mow your own damn lawn.

I find it interesting how people use economic arguments to justify illegal immigration. Becker and Fogel at the University of Chicago calculated chattel slavery was economically profitable right up to the Civil War.

Personally I oppose illegal immigration because it’s wrong. Either enforce the law, or shut down INS or whatever they call it these days, and let everyone in.

But not this “enforce the law when it’s convenient” and ignore it when a liberal can get cheap yard help…..or a conservative gets cheap, compliant labor for the meatpacking plant.

I disagree. It is the same if I hire a citizen to work on my lawn, which I do, without him having obtained the required occupational liscense from the city. He stands in violation of the law, but he still earned the 25$ fairly. I agreed to pay it and he did the work that was agreed to. There was no force or fraud involved. What he is doing is illegal but not inherently wrong. It is only the law itself that declares it so.

I don’t remember the latin terms, but I recall a work of Cicero’s where he makes distinctions between acts that are criminal because they are wrong in and of themselves by natural law and acts that are illegal only because the ruling authorities make them so. While it is necessary for the orderly and effective functioning of the state to enforce the latter sorts of laws, that does not make the person a bad person, a criminal in the deeper sense.

When a man doesn’t have a job, it is not inherently wrong for him to go where there is a job. Murder and theft are wrong whether they are illegal or not. Immigration is not wrong. The Republic has a legitimate interest, indeed a critical need to enforce it’s borders and control entry. To that end, it is indeed appropriate to force those who didn’t follow the rules out whenever and where ever they are found. We haven’t done enough of that.

But this man is an American success story and ought to be admired for his accomplishments in the best American tradition.

As Dick Army pointed out, how many of you wouldn’t run a red light at 2 am to take care of your family when it is stuck on red? Would that make you a criminal? I lied about my age to get work when I was a teenager. I didn’t think the law had any business telling me I couldn’t work. I KNOW that I earned the money that I obtained from that. Now if I lied to get a welfare check, that would indeed constitute fraud and would be inherently wrong.

Wasn’t John Hancock a smuggler, who made his living in violation of the law. Weren’t all the Patriots guilty of treason and therefore criminals?

I absolutely do sleep well at night. I do my part to solve this problem. I do not hire illegals to cut my grass or contractors who do. I am making sure that my roofer hires no illegals. A lot of the Americans ranting about the problems are the ones causing it. I would not knowing give a school slot or otherwise give community resources to someone in the country illegally.

But I still admire this guy, and do think it is an American success story-not Mexican. He didn’t accomplish all this in Mexico-he was nobody there. He isn’t working in Mexico City. He did it here. I don’t know at what point he became a citizen.

Is it fair that Mexico treats American citizens in such a discriminatory manner? No, I don’t think it is—I think our laws on land ownership etc should reciprocate theirs for respective ex-pats. But I am not going to take frustrations about the cowardice and dishonesty of our politicians out by unfounded meanness to someone who looks to be a hell of a guy who deserves my respect.

The fact is that illegals are far more profitable than slavery ever was. Slaves had to be fed and sheltered year round whether there was gainful work for them or not. When a seasonable employer hires a migrant worker for 6 weeks, he doesn’t give a fig for how or whether he will eat in 7 weeks. The slave had to be maintained in this economy. The illegal, when he can find no work, walks home on shanks mare and maintains himself in the Mexican economy. That is why America’s unskilled workers can’t compete with him.