Florida passed a draconian anti-immigrant law July 1 and immigrants, the people who do a lot of the low paying and back breaking work, are fleeing the state. Gee, who could have predicted that? One thing the law now requires is hospitals to demand documentation. That one will definitely kill people since if you go you now risk deportation if undocumented. The main mistake seems to be that the bill included a requirement that employers use the government legal immigrant verification system and a fine of $1000 a day for employing undocumented workers. Politicians who voted for the bill are begging business owners to have the bill explained to them āin privateā while insisting the bill is ājust politicalā. Excuse me? Iām sure they want to explain that they have no more intention of enforcing these laws against employers than they do the laws already on the books. Florida has low unemployment right now so this should have quite an impact on business even if laws that target businesses arenāt enforced. This impulse to inflict cruelty on our fellow humans even when it should be obvious weāre hurting ourselves is astounding. The proverbial cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Itās all, imo, going to implode. Somehow (the Cheeto-faced shit gibbon perhaps?) permission to be and legislate overt bigotry (including pro-xtian favoritism) has occurred and is exceedingly popular. Those lower and middle class citizens who think that current GOP policies are desirable are screwing themselves. I canāt help but think (hope?) that this raging bonfire will burn out soon.
We got our own DeSantis groupie running Alberta for the next four years, with the āTake Back Albertaā Christian nationalists pulling the strings. She is fuckinā stupid, arrogant and goddamn it, claims to be an atheist
Edited to add: her pet project is privatized healthcare. 
fuckinā dipshits
You guys(and gals) up there actually elected a self proclaimed atheist to public office? Never saw that happening anywhere any time soon.
Geeez, at least Trump pretends to be a christian, and keeps his shit stain off atheist. That someone who is openly claiming to be an atheist can get elected is surprising. It would never happen here. Too bad she seems to be doing the bidding of the worst kind of christians there are.
Just goes to show that atheists donāt corner the market on decency. 
I honestly do not know why this is such an issue for the USA. I have traveled the world. Every country I have ever been to, requires me to produce legal documents to show I am in the country legally. I can not drive a car, open a bank account, get a job, or go to the hospital without showing my alien residence card. I am allowed to vote in all local elections as long as I show my ID. I can not vote for President. In places where foreigners frequent, immigration will occasionally pop in and ask for IDs. I have had two Philippine friends hauled away for being in the country illegally. Also, I was once 3 days late getting to immigration. They fined me $100 per day. And they were not nice about it. I paid my fees, and renewed my visa, with admonishments to be on time. America is the only country in the world that just allows people with no justification for being in the country to wander the streets. I donāt get it? I have absolutely no problem with showing an ID to vote. I have no problem with rounding up people who are in the country illegally.
What really needs to happen is that the government needs to step in and make it easier for businesses and families who want to hire foreign workers to do so easily, without a lot of red tape. America needs to draw a much deeper line in the sand when it comes to immigration. There are no āAnti-immigration laws.ā There are immigration laws. If you donāt follow the law, you are in the country illegally. Thatās called āBreaking the law.ā
" Miami ā A controversial Florida law which took effect Saturday no longer recognizes driverās licenses issued to undocumented immigrants from other states, among other restrictions."
I could not agree with this more. If you are undocumented, you are in the country illegally. It really is that simple.
āThe run-up to the new law has sparked protests by immigrant workers, from those in the tourism and hospitality industry, to those who work in agricultural fields.ā
Now immigration needs to go to the protests and check everyone for ID. Anyone in the country illegally can be rounded up. (Okay, that is a violation of the 4th amendment and I donāt agree.) Anyone legitimately breaking the law can have their ID checked. If they are illegal, they can be deported.
In the case of my Philippine friends getting picked up by immigration police, they were in a bar. The establishment has the right to check the IDs of anyone being served alcohol. Hint, if you are illegally in the country, stay out of drinking establishments.
No problem with this either. US employers have long taken advantage of undocumented workers. This sounds like a fair solution. Document your workers or pay the price.
This is the exact same process I went through to get my job. However, as I work in the school system, I also needed an FBI background clearance and a local police department background clearance. I also needed to submit certified copies of official university transcripts. My FBI background needed an Apostille. Once all this is done and all the documents are completed. Only then, was I given a letter of sponsorship to enter the country. Then I met my employer, I had 90-days to apply for my residence card. Without the card, I was uninsured, I could not get a bank account (My employer could not pay me.), I could not drive, and all this was pretty damn fair as far as I am concerned. Countries have the rights to protect their borders. People visiting those countries need to follow the law in those countries.
I agree that our immigration process is a mess and needs fixing, but instead of making it easier for people who legitimately want to work and make an honest living, theyāre listening to the white nationals and xenophobes who say theyāre taking our jobs or are all drug traffickers. They have no intention of actually enforcing laws against employers or shutting down businesses by hauling off a large percentage of their workforce as undocumented. Enforcing these laws would greatly stop illegal immigration, but instead they make a show of only punishing the workers. They literally kidnap a few people with false promises, often derailing people trying to immigrate legally, and haul them off to other states. Then they pass petty laws that target them. All the while their states industries are humming along on undocumented labor. A disgusting show to win the votes of the ignorant. Itās estimated that there are millions of undocumented workers, many of them doing hard to fill jobs. Many of the jobs are seasonal or temporary and do not lend themselves to long drawn out processes. Unlike many countries, this country was literally built on immigration, so itās little wonder we donāt match their enforcement of immigration laws. Trying to make hard lives even harder for the sake of votes is appalling. We need to do better. I would like to see some of our best minds working on it, instead of the hypocritical ass hats who only care about votes.
In Canada we have pretty strict immigration laws and processes.
Most countries do.
Iām keeping my assumption up 
ā¦I just did a quick google search and apparently weāre easier 
(I had no idea).
Some employers encourage undocumented workers, immigration enforcement looks the other way, and money is madeā¦just not by the workers.
Then there are large businesses that āsponsorā foreign nationals to come the the U.S. and work for them. The companies hold the workers visa so that they cannot quit without deportation.
Like I said. Make it easier for employers to hire migrant workers. The process is completed. At the same time - even though there is red tape - once you have done it a few times, itās not that bad. I have gone through the process beginning to end 3 times in 27 years. The first time was the worst, Korea was not computerized. The third time was a cakewalk. America finally had its shit together and could handle the requests. for apostles from foreign workers.
I donāt know how they are doing that, when they are loading them into buses at the borders and shipping them off to the midwest. (Like you said, the system is fucked-up.)
And we should gladly meet them at the border, issue them 3 month visas, vet the suspicious ones, and send them on their way. Perhaps the border patrol would be better used by providing supervision to busloads of workers being hired to do jobs in specific locations. They could escort the workers to the locations, ensure they were treated properly and all terms of their contracts met, and then escort them back to the borders. Anyone AWOL and trying to illegally stay in the USA, could have a warrant placed on them for arrest. These people want to work, let them work. Give them the opportunity to make money and return home to feed their families. Find a way to facilitate the process and make it easy for them and easy for us. (Iām just talking out my ass - brainstorming - but there have to be solutions out there if one thinks outside the box.)
On that, we can both agree!
Iām glad we can agree on something. Youāre never boring and Iāve learned a few things here and there. Iām sure Iām out of my league, but thatās never stopped me before 
.
That is a wonderful idea. Sadly, I think there are simply too many xenophobes standing in the way of itā¦for no other reason than phobia and hatred.
I agree with everything you said.
But . . . we can take it a step further.
The United States is, arguably, the wealthiest country in the world.
Yet in order to live as we do, we have to take from everywhere else. We are about 6% of the worldās population, yet we put out 35% of the climate changing greenhouse gases, for example.
I see the immigration crisis as a consequence of our greed and short-sightedness. The people in other countries would have more if our country didnāt use politics and capitalism to take their resources . . . so our greed and sense of entitlement is a part of what created this problem
Manifest destiny was taught by politicians in the mid 19th century who were trying to garner support for a war to the white population of the U.S. That lesson stuck. It was embraced. It was cuddled, fed a rich diet, and was never disciplined. We are still battling it.
How are we supposed to make their skin not be brown? Because Iām convinced that is the real āproblemā.
Heh, Iām reminded here that even an individual such as P. J. OāRourke, who in the past was considered āright wingā, remarked upon the absurdity of the Mexican border situation in Holidays in Hell (ISBN 0 930 30683 9), a copy of which I own, and from which we see the following:
That was just the opening of a chapter in which OāRourke deployed his unique brand of humour upon the whole Mexican border issue, and that was way back in 1986, a long time before the rhetoric was inflated to suppuratingly fascist levels by Trumpian demoagoguery.
The encounter in question he details above has its own share of hilarity attached thereto. Readers familiar with such concepts as nuance will appreciate someone such as OāRourke being candid about this in what follows:
He has other apposite observations to make in that chapter, such as:
Then there was the incident invovling the drug smuggling stakeout. Again, replete with hilarity. OāRourke had been warned in advance, that any smugglers would probably be armed, possibly heavily so, and would not hesitate to spray machine gun fire in the direction of anyone getting in the way of their activity, which of course made him, shall we say, willing to pause for thought. Again, his account makes for fun reading:
And finally, as if to illustrate how low discourse has sunk since 1986, read this - the final words in the chapter from someone who was nominally a Republican at the time:
Could you imagine a present day Republican writing any of this?
Indeed, he understood, way back then, that if someone is living in a seriously bad shit hole, as opposed to a mediocre and tolerable shit hole, theyāll be strongly motivated to get out and find somewhere better. This is especially the case, if:
[1] The shit hole in question has little to no tradition of democratic government, or has been plagued by rampant corruption throughout living memory;
[2] As a corollary of the conditions in [1] above, ordinary people living in said shit hole feel powerless to change the circumstances at home.
Why risk being found in a ditch minus your head and your hands, or having the secret police pass 240 volts through your genitalia, if the alternative consists of simply exiting the country in question, and finding one where you stand a chance of being able to make a living minus such threats? The same goes for people in countries where rich nations are dropping bombs on them, in order to steal their oil.
Unfortunately, the US in particular stored up a lot of trouble for itself in this vein in the past, by organising coups and destabilising various other countries, in part for ideological reasons, and in part to facilitate corporate looting of said countries. Chile being a case in point, where Salvador Allende was ousted and replaced by the viciously murderous Augusto Pinochet, whose reign of terror was one of the most vindictive and hellish in post-WWII history. Kissinger has a lot to answer for in this vein, to the point where many consider him a prime candidate for charges of crimes against humanity to be served.
But of course, that pernicious tactic known as āblame the poor and powerless for the malfeasance of the rich and powerfulā is particularly prevalent when immigration is discussed. Here in the UK, weāre having our own episode of near-fascist xenophobia in government, courtesy of the utterly vile Suella Braverman (who really should know better than to inflame and validate the sort of racists who would set fire to her in an instant), where this tactic is being pursued with obscene zeal by a Tory government that is shot through with corruption.
Though finding constructive solutions to difficult problems is too much like hard work for such people.
As a Canadian, I by and large keep my nose out of the USA border issues.
We happen not to have the same circumstances BUT should the day arise that American citizens are crossing illegally into Canada ā¦ Iād be happy to hire them as illegal underpaid help 
Well that would be the most you could do to make us feel at home! 
This is a very interesting phenomena. When you look at countries with many poor people, you donāt always find a poor country. I have been to the Philippines many times and so I will use it as an example: āInequality remains high: the top 1 percent of earners together capture 17 percent of national income, with only 14 percent being shared by the bottom 50 percent.ā What about the poor in China? Another of my favorite countries to visit. The richest 10% own an increasing share of Chinaās total wealth and the share held by the bottom 50% own less. And what is happening in America, our middle class is vanishing. The middle class, once the economic stratum of a clear majority of American adults, has steadily contracted in the past five decades. The share of adults who live in middle-class households fell from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2021, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. In the fourth quarter of 2022, 68.2 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned three percent of the total wealth.
When we talk about countries having more or less than other countries, we really have to look at the distribution of wealth, job opportunities and education opportunities in various countries. With so many poor people in the Philippines I can hire someone to work for me, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, and pay them 20,000 pesos, for the month. Thatās $400. Business have no reason to pay more. If employees demand more, they simply fire the employees and hire the next hungry person in line. Thatās the way it is. Most of the Philippine people end up working more than forty hours a week and even on Saturdays. This is life in the Philippines. The rich get richer and the poor get fucked as they go to Church and pray.
In short, it has nothing to do with the USA being a rich nation. It has everything to do with the distribution of wealth in each nation and how the poor are cared for. I think we are beginning to find that our in our own country as the incidence of people living on the streets increases.