Can anyone justify NOT having the Wall?

Just curious...how do you know that this girl wasn't taking out loans or applied and received scholarships/fellowships? Why is the assumption that the taxpayer is footing her college? I'm just asking because it's a common trope on the alt-right boards that my own son's college (I started paying $27k/yr this month) is expensive because of illegal immigrants. I've yet to find any evidence of this.
The substantial portion of student loan debt is federal debt. A substantial chunk of it is not being repaid. so when students take out loans they can't pay, the taxpayer gets hosed. And when the number of students pursuing college goes up (ie, illegals added to the pool) then the cost go up as well (supply/demand).

When states like Texas decide to treat illegals as not only citizens, but Texans and offer them in-state tuition that money has to come from somewhere.

And while I can't furnish evidence of this, I'm of the opinion that most of these scholarships being received by DACA/Illegal immigrants are being granted on "need" and the ones that are "merit" based are actually just awarded on the fact that the student "overcame so many obstacles to get here." Ie, they came from an impoverished home and still managed to get A's. And while the A's are commendable, I believe what put them over the top for the scholarship was their "against the odds" story and not their actual academic record.

While these scholarships aren't typically taxpayer funded, they still rob the children of actual citizens of this funding.

While you did zero in on the college portion and all I have are anecdotes on that part, there is no denying the primary school portion which is about 5 times bigger anyway.

At the end of the day, the pocket of money they draw from is not the most important aspect of this conversation. It's the one pocket that it doesn't come from....THEIR OWN...that is most upsetting to me.
 
The substantial portion of student loan debt is federal debt. A substantial chunk of it is not being repaid. so when students take out loans they can't pay, the taxpayer gets hosed. And when the number of students pursuing college goes up (ie, illegals added to the pool) then the cost go up as well (supply/demand).

Student loan debt is about the only debt you can't run away from. It has no bankruptcy protection thus if follows you through bankruptcy court. So, even if people are delinquent now, if they ever hope to crawl out of debt they must pay their student loans back.

When states like Texas decide to treat illegals as not only citizens, but Texans and offer them in-state tuition that money has to come from somewhere.

I don't have any knowledge of the system y'all run down there. I do know that there is very little "state aid" in Washington state any more than what all state school students enjoy in lower tuition. We've reduced tuition 15% in the last 2 years thanks to Marijuana tax revenue.

And while I can't furnish evidence of this, I'm of the opinion that most of these scholarships being received by DACA/Illegal immigrants are being granted on "need" and the ones that are "merit" based are actually just awarded on the fact that the student "overcame so many obstacles to get here." Ie, they came from an impoverished home and still managed to get A's. And while the A's are commendable, I believe what put them over the top for the scholarship was their "against the odds" story and not their actual academic record.

That's my point. It's all assumptions without any data. I did a simple google search with "are illegal aliens eligible for pell grants" and found this. Here are the rules to qualify for federal financial aid. Who knows how many qualify under those conditions but "undocumented immigrant" is not among them so you have to be in some "Resident Alien" status.

While these scholarships aren't typically taxpayer funded, they still rob the children of actual citizens of this funding.

What people do with their private money is their prerogative, IMHO. If they want to set it aside to give it to an illegal alien or DACA recipient, that's up to them.

While you did zero in on the college portion and all I have are anecdotes on that part, there is no denying the primary school portion which is about 5 times bigger anyway.

Sorry, as the father of a freshman who just wrote a sizable check for the first semester, college is on my mind. You'll get no argument for primary/secondary public schools. That's a big public cost albeit there is money in local tax revenue being generated albeit still not to recoup the total costs. Of course, if some "Dreamer" takes advantage of their free education to be a contributing member of society that sounds like a social good.

At the end of the day, the pocket of money they draw from is not the most important aspect of this conversation. It's the one pocket that it doesn't come from....THEIR OWN...that is most upsetting to me.

There is a lot of research done on this. The contribution of undocumented immigrants is significant (in tax $$$ and economic value) but it doesn't appear to be equal to the value of services they receive.
 
The AP style manual has been altered once again
Now they are "undocumented citizens"

DJIgADbXcAAgA-6.jpg
 
What if Dreamers paid a $10k fine? That would be nearly $10 billion that would fund a good portion of the wall.
 
Article 32 of the Constitution of Mexico --

Only Mexicans by birth can perform all government employments, positions, or commissions in which the status of citizenship is indispensable.

During peacetime, foreigners shall neither serve in the Army nor in the police bodies. During peacetime, only Mexicans by birth can serve in the Army, in the Navy or in the Air Force as well can perform any employment or commission within such corporations.

The same condition applies to captains, pilots, skippers, ship engineers, flight engineers and, in general, to every crew member in a ship or an airplane carrying the Mexican flag. In the same way, only Mexicans by birth can be port harbormasters, steersmen and airport superintendents.

Mexicans shall have priority over foreigners, under equal circumstances, for all kind of concessions, employments, positions or commissions of the government in which the status of citizenship is not indispensable.
 
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Sorry, as the father of a freshman who just wrote a sizable check for the first semester, college is on my mind.


SH ... as a father with two students now in college. I am with you regarding the cost of college and the method by which those bills are paid.

The govt should simply butt out. Offer benefits as compensation for service to the people; GI Bill, etc. Not simply award money based upon perceived "do gooder" policy.

Society is served when people earn what they have. Being of a particular demographic (race, geography, creed, socio-economic) is no proper justification for awarding funds for anything, let alone to an institution which presumes to equip that person for being independent/contributing members of the society.
 
49,000 border control agents
SH ... where do you find that number?

From CBP ... the number of EVERYONE employed by CBP was 21K in 2012 (IDK why their main page overview is 5 years old!) ...

https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/overview

I'd presume you'd seek to address the number of LEOs actually ON the border on patrol to rebut Carlson's statement ... you know ... to be relevant/all. With all due respect to the clerks, they represent support of the officers' needs, but it's the officers who present the ability to "defend the border."

There aren't but 120K total Federal LEOs ... and the FBI is the largest of which we are aware.

So ... at risk of being @Statalyzer understudy ... ;)

yeah, the southern border isn't terribly difficult to penetrate by those who are motivated and have the intent to do so. Did we grow >11 million illegals???
 
The same condition applies to captains, pilots, skippers, ship engineers, flight engineers and, in general, to every crew member in a ship or an airplane carrying the Mexican flag.
I'm fairly certain they violate this on a daily basis.
 
Article 32 of the Constitution of Mexico --

Only Mexicans by birth can perform all government employments, positions, or commissions in which the status of citizenship is indispensable.

During peacetime, foreigners shall neither serve in the Army nor in the police bodies. During peacetime, only Mexicans by birth can serve in the Army, in the Navy or in the Air Force as well can perform any employment or commission within such corporations.

The same condition applies to captains, pilots, skippers, ship engineers, flight engineers and, in general, to every crew member in a ship or an airplane carrying the Mexican flag. In the same way, only Mexicans by birth can be port harbormasters, steersmen and airport superintendents.

Mexicans shall have priority over foreigners, under equal circumstances, for all kind of concessions, employments, positions or commissions of the government in which the status of citizenship is not indispensable.

Article 33 of the Constitution of Mexico --

Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country.

http://portal.te.gob.mx/en/consultations/political-constitution-united-mexican-states

Pretty racist.
 
While student loan debt doesn't go away, student loan debt can seemingly be put in perpetual deferment and at some point in the future, somebody is going to have to pay the bill (likely the taxpayer). I have a relative that has had the same 9K debt for 25 years. And that was before the explosion of student debt. That system is not designed to force repayment. While it may always stay with you, it doesn't prevent you from going into other debt. It doesn't require timely repayment, it just keeps on extending and deferring.

The data isn't readily available but in this case the supporting information is that we have tens of thousand of immigrants(both illegal and legal aliens) that didn't have anything near the resources to put themselves through college yet they are in college. So you must conclude that their money came from somewhere else. Some may have received scholarships, some may have taken loans, some may have additionally received tuition discounts that were unwarranted. And while I don't contend that the scholarship programs should be dictated to, I do contend that many of these scholarship programs have been swayed to give undue emphasis to the applicants "situation". Also, IMO, these scholarship programs weren't created to award immigrants but the current crop of administrators seem to be out to do their SJW best to do exactly that. You'll never get them to admit this, and they sure as heck aren't going to release their internal metrics and decision making....particularly if my assertion and opinion are correct.

But at the end of the day all you have to ask is where did the money come from for a kid who's parents made $36K. I'm still of the opinion that DACA and the explosion of immigrant children do children of US citizens harm but putting upward pressure on enrollment and thereby demand for college and simultaneously putting pressure on the limited resources available to children of US citizens to pay for said college.

Much like the job market, the influx of illegal immigrants is not the only reason things are the way they are, but they are a much more significant factor than any on the left would like to admit.
 
I'm a little surprised that this DACA move isn't getting more discussion here, because I think it's a fascinating move. Most Trump supporters think Trump is a genius who's playing 4-D chess and outsmarting the rest of the political world. I don't agree with that in general, but they'd have a good point on this move, even though they're the ones getting duped.

Here's why. It's clear that Trump supports DACA on the merits. If he didn't, he wouldn't ask Congress to legislatively codify the program, wouldn't threaten to "revisit" his decision if they don't act, and wouldn't have waited 8 months to get rid of it. However, he's got a problem. He won the Republican nomination by being an immigration hardliner in areas in which his Republican opponents would have been likely to compromise (such as on Dreamers). Or to put it more bluntly, he wanted to flipflop without it looking like a flipflop, so he deployed two strategies.

First, he sent Jeff Sessions out to blast DACA as unconstitutional and blasted Obama for usurping his authority on the program and announced plans to dump the program. (By the way, he's right about this. I actually favor some form of DACA on the merits but doing it by executive order was about the most flagrant abuse of executive authority I've seen in my 29 years of following politics.) Second, he exploited the predictable buffoons in the media. By announcing his plan to dump the program, Trump likely knew the media would frame his move to promote their own narrative that Trump is racist, hates Latinos, mean-spirited, etc., and predictably, most of the media coverage has gone in that direction. They could have made him look like a flipfloper and weakened his base (which would really hurt him), but instead, they predictably stuck by their "Trump is always a monster" rap (which only hurts his support with people who already don't support him) which unwittingly ran interference for him with his base, which assumes that if the media hates him, he's doing something right.

This move also helps Trump in the future. He may be able to use a deal on the DREAM Act to leverage wall funding or other enforcement mechanisms. However, even if he isn't able to do that, if a legislative fix actually passes, he can put the DREAMer issue to bed, which is politically helpful to the enforcement advocates. Why? Because the DREAMers are the people whose deportation is most difficult to defend from an optics standpoint. It's a little like arguing abortion in rape/incest situations. They didn't voluntarily enter the country illegally, are more Americanized than other illegal immigrants, etc. If they are out of the way, it takes a lot of wind out of the "deportation is unjust" idiots' sails.
 
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I suppose my DACA comment is ... how'd mom get over here in the first place in order for baby to be anchored to These United States of America?

So, the heart string of "involuntarily" illegal is really a moot point. Support the CBP with sufficient resource to prevent the premeditated illegal activity. OK, there's a statistical "standard deviation" of those who will slip through, but "The Dreamers" don't become a "class" by themselves. There are simply a relative handful who are here by the actions of another ...

Oh ... and repeal the part of the 14thA which makes a citizen of someone simply because they are born here. It should have been self-evident "natural born" ... to CITIZENS ... in order to become a citizen. This was part of the big govt left's first real expansion of the Fed ... during reconstruction. It wasn't Constitutional, but it was made to be Constitutional in the aftermath of an extremely costly war ... and now look at us.

Had some real visionaries 100 years after the Founders, didn't we! sigh.

My inflation-adjusted $.02 worth.
 
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I suppose my DACA comment is ... how'd mom get over here in the first place in order for baby to be anchored to These United States of America?

Well, Mom and/or Dad got here because for a long time, stopping illegal immigration was a non-priority for the federal government. Democrats liked the political advantages that came with the "demographic changes," and greedy, crooked, and unpatriotic Republican donors liked the cheap labor, and ordinary citizens mostly didn't give a crap.

(One side note - make sure you distinguish between DREAMers and so-called "anchor babies." They are in very, very different legal positions. A DREAMer is someone who was born outside the US and was brought to the country by his parents as a minor. They are illegal aliens. An "anchor baby" is someone who was born in the US to a mother who was an illegal alien at the time of the child's birth. Because they were born in the United States, they are US citizens.)

So, the heart string of "involuntarily" illegal is really a moot point. Support the CBP with sufficient resource to prevent the premeditated illegal activity. OK, there's a statistical "standard deviation" of those who will slip through, but "The Dreamers" don't become a "class" by themselves. There are simply a relative handful who are here by the actions of another ...

From an immigration status standpoint, they aren't a separate class. From a political standpoint, one could argue that they are a separate class, because many of them had no choice in the matter, and many of them never knew their home countries. Suppose a 25 year old dude and his wife hire a coyote to smuggle them into the US, and suppose the wife stuffs their 6-month-old baby into her backpack and brings him or her along and raises him or her through adulthood. It's not unreasonable to be unsympathetic to mom and dad but sympathetic to the child who had nothing to do with the decision to illegally enter.

Oh ... and repeal the part of the 14thA which makes a citizen of someone simply because they are born here. It should have been self-evident "natural born" ... to CITIZENS ... in order to become a citizen. This was part of the big govt left's first real expansion of the Fed ... during reconstruction. It wasn't Constitutional, but it was made to be Constitutional in the aftermath of an extremely costly war ... and now look at us.

The purpose of the citizenship clause was to overrule the portion of Dred Scott v. Sandford that held that people of African descent were not and could not be US citizens and to create federal citizenship primacy. (Prior to the 14th Amendment, someone became a US citizen by being a citizen of a state. In other words, federal citizenship was derivative from state citizenship.) It does not require anybody to be "natural born." It only requires that they be born or naturalized in the United States and subject to US jurisdiction. The "natural born" requirement has to do with the qualification for becoming President of the United States, and either way, a person born to illegal aliens in the United States would most likely fall within the definition of "natural born," because they didn't have to be naturalized.

As for amending the 14th Amendment, good luck with that. Just getting it proposed for ratification would be a monumental task, and you'd need 3/4 of states to ratify it. Democrats fully control 12 state legislatures and control one house in 6 more. That would be enough to stop such an amendment, even if every GOP-controlled legislature went along, which isn't likely.
 
If he were to trade the DACA issue for either correcting the 14th amendment or national EVerify then I could support DREAMERS but if he gets anything less than one of these two issues then it is more of the same on immigration.

DREAMERS is an amnesty bill. If there is not a permanent fix to one of the two above issues then the DREAMERS act is just another signal to the world that all you have to do is make it across our border and at some point in the future the US will cave.
 
If he were to trade the DACA issue for either correcting the 14th amendment or national EVerify then I could support DREAMERS but if he gets anything less than one of these two issues then it is more of the same on immigration.

Changing the 14th Amendment is out of the question. Might we get national E-verify? Maybe, but Trump needs to make that a major priority. I don't see that he is, because he didn't make that a big priority in the campaign. He's more likely to use DREAM to push for the wall, which would be less effective than a national E-verify requirement.

It's a shame, because national E-Verify would do more than a wall or even changing the 14th Amendment. Illegal aliens don't come to the US to have babies who are US citizens. That's a side benefit. They come to the US to work for much higher wages and under better conditions than they'd get in their home countries. Walls and citizenship changes won't change that. E-Verify would.

It would also be easier to attract Democrats on it. Democrats won't go along with changing the 14th Amendment, because they're not going to deny citizenship and voting rights to millions of their voters. That would essentially make California back into a swing state. And they're not going to go along with the Wall, because they'll be under too much pressure to deny Trump such a victory. However, I haven't heard many Democrats make much of an issue out of national E-verify. They could compromise on that without major political repercussions.
 
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make sure you distinguish between DREAMers and so-called "anchor babies."

Roger that ... seems to be the heartstring issue is the baby born here from an illegal. "anchor baby." An illegal minor needs to be deported with mom & dad.

They are different, you're correct, but they are also closely related, practically speaking.

Thanks for answering "how they got here." It was a rhetorical question, but I appreciate the explanation.

I know ... restoring the Constitution seems to be nothing more than a .... DREAM. Noted is the issue of the 14th's day, but that should have been done in a better manner. We now have unbridled expansion and effectively have a suggestion for a national border; both in geography and from a legal standpoint.
 
Roger that ... seems to be the heartstring issue is the baby born here from an illegal. "anchor baby." An illegal minor needs to be deported with mom & dad.

Legally, you're correct. The minor child is subject to deportation just like his or her parents. However, from a political standpoint, this is where deportation looks the harshest. It's much easier to make deportation look bad when the person being deported personally hasn't done anything wrong.
 
His DACA move is geared toward getting a specific outcome. He wants both sides to come together on a reasonable move to bring in the dreamers. They are immigrants who know no other country and are the cream of the crop. However, he also is hoping to utilize leverage to partially fund his wall that he claims Mexico was going to fund.
 
this is where deportation looks the harshest.

and for this to be a significant concern underscores how we are failing in the responsibility to be self-governing from our Founding.

There was once a literal WORLD of difference between the U.S. and the rest of the world ... that distinction is fading and I don't think it's because the rest of the world is adopting the US Constitution pre 1913.
 
They are immigrants who know no other country and are the cream of the crop.
I dunno Deez. Every dreamer I see on TV is something like class valedictorian, going to Yale and coming back to Texas to teach in the inner city. Or maybe an exceptional artist whose beautiful murals serve as a catalyst to a revitalized neighborhood. You have any data points to the contrary?
 

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