Either Mexico or US taxpayers,smart money isn't on Mexico.
Not sure whether or not they are going to do that shit again, it didn't work before and its not going to work now.
Sometimes I think I want the wall, and other times I think leave it as is and put more enforcement/border patrol. Either way, this issue is part of the idea of coastal elites(democrats) road blocking most of the Trump administration's plans to govern. Basically they're not letting him govern and hoping he fails in order to move the mid terms. So be it.
Grid lock is usually good for the markets. Even the last shutdown, or sequester, at the beginning of 2013 started the year off in the direction of a 30% gain for the markets total for that year.
Start docking their and their do nothing aides, then see how raises the white flag on the swamp. Those cry baby politicians, all of them on both sides, will starve in the real working world. SHUT IT DOWN!!!!!
Trump's also threatening to withhold Obamacare subsidies unless the Dems cave in on paying for that wall. I'm with @SkiBirther -- keeping those dirty Mexicans out is way more important than stinkin' healthcare for the poor. That Trump is one fucking hell of a negotiator.
Depends on who blinks first, Trump or Congress (both parties). You know who doesn't want the wall? Most of the senators and reps from southern border states. Not because they're soft on immigration, but because they know it's a stupid way to enforce immigration law.
Do any of you really think that "Trump's Wall" will be effective, let alone cost-effective? The coyotes will have at least twenty tunnels a night burrowed under it. More border enforcement and drone patrols? Absolutely. We have many better things on which to use that money.
Keeping illegals out, no matter where they come from is a priority. Ignorant comments about "dirty Mexicans" simply show the poster making them to be an ignoramus and a loser. The poor have always had healthcare and the tax called obamacare never changed that. It just changed the way it was paid for. Health care is not health insurance, but intelligence among progressives is quite scarce. The wall is hopefully a metaphor for a series of measures, not all physical, to protect the border. Kind of funny that walls have worked in Berlin, North Korea, Jerusalem and on and on, but they cannot work here lol.
@SkiBirther - Please try your best to calm down. The Obamacare subsides help pay deductibles and co-pays for a class of low-income people who make too much money for Medicaid. If Trump wants to sabotage Obamacare by preventing these subsides, it could cause the entire Obamacare insurance market to collapse. If he wants to go ahead with sabotage, the blame will ultimately rest with Trump and the GOP. Good luck with that. Pottery Barn rule - you brake it, you own it.
Yes, Obamacare is a tax and ultimately represents a redistribution of wealth.
The whole "wall" idea is the kind of thing only a childlike dipshit could come up with. Using healthcare subsides as a bargaining trip to pay for the wall is just beyond idiotic.
@skibum609 said: "Kind of funny that walls have worked in Berlin, North Korea, Jerusalem and on and on, but they cannot work here lol."
The walls you cite are many orders of magnitude smaller than the US southern border. The wall employed by Isreal is (a) fantastically expensive just from the perspective of the surveillance technology employed, never mind maintenance and staffing, and (b) covers a much different terrain (and less challenging) than the US southern border.
Isreal is willing to pay for that wall because they're trying to keep out terrorists and suicide bombers. Which is a little more critically urgent than trying to keep out a guy who wants to pick lettuce for less than minimum wage.
The other two walls you cite (Korea and Berlin) were built by autocratic governments who wanted to severely limit (or cut off completely) social and economic ties with the nation on the other side of the wall. I'm not sure we want to emulate dictatorships, and we do want economic ties to South/Central America.
If Trump *really* wanted to curb illegal immigration, he'd target the industries that take advantage of the low labor rates offered by illegal immigration: hospitality, big agriculture, maintenance, etc. He could pull that off quickly using money and staffing already under his control.
But he doesn't want to target the big businesses that happily employ illegal immigrants, because the guys who run those businesses are his voting base.
Tell them the truth @ Call Me Ishmael, the ideologues don't want to hear that, they just want to build a wall because they are morons and simple minded.
You know they are whining about another government shut down. Was they one before? I did not notice!! Oh wait was that when the economy started to get better? The government got out of the way and let us actually get some work done?
You could fire a full 1/2 of all government employees and no one would notice, it would just mean the remaining bureaucrats would have 1 1/2 people per job instead of 3 per job and those cock-sucking bureaucrats do not have to pay FICA.
No. Our nuclear arsenal is serious out of date. I hope he does upgrade it.
Looks like he backed down on the Wall... But after his incident with the armada which didn't go near N Korea last week, that's no shocker. Shock me once, Donald, Shame... Shame on you. Shock me.... Uh.... Shock me... You won't get shocked again.
Skibum (and Ishmael) regarding "walls that worked" - there are no historical examples of walls that worked, even temporarily, unless there were turrets of solders with weapons watching the wall and ready to shoot.
The whole wall thing (esp. the part where another sovereign nation will be forced to do something) is Mr. Trumps biggest con and the fact that his supporters are still defending it shows that they haven't thought it through or they are unable to think it through. Or possibly they are so embarrassed by being conned that they are unwilling to admit they've been duped.
Targeting businesses that hire lettuce pickers could reduce significantly the number of illegals that cross over and work here, but there again there will be consequences. If you COULD find Americans willing to pick strawberries and you had to pay them and provide benefits, you would be looking at $10 lettuce and $10 a pound strawberries.
Border states that have done the economic arithmetic have good reasons to be against too much enforcement.
@623 -- Actually, I agree with you. My point was that if Trump (or any administration) wants to curb illegal immigration, then the easiest (and cheapest) way to do that is target the hiring practices of the industries that benefit the most from illegal immigrants.
The first step, though, is to not care about getting a second term...
The industries I mentioned have, for years, poured millions of dollars into politicians' pockets to ensure that tough talk on immigration goes no further than being tough talk.
Perhaps a combo of tough enforcement on illegal hiring along w/ a guest-worker program may be a way to go? I think Bush was proposing something along those lines in the 2000s but the Republicans didn't want it.
The number and type of worker should be the focus. For every foreign worker here on an H1B visa there is a $60,000 plus job that is not being offered to a US worker. In many, probably most visa situations those foreign workers actually displaced a domestic bread winner, often requiring the US worker to train the displacing worker before he/she is fired. So each of these estimated 600,000 H1 workers on visa is equal to 600,000 unemployed high tech, high paid American workers who are out of work.
Incidentally interesting that no one even knows how many of these workers are in the USA. They issue 65,000 new visas each year and have for decades but no one has an actual count for how many are still in use, renewed, overstayed, etc.
Anyhoo, the point is lettuce pickers and grass mowers don't hurt anyone since those jobs are not displacing someone who really wants to work at them. H1B visas (exactly the visas Trump uses to staff his golf courses, etc btw) displace American workers who then end up on unemployment roles. Maybe we should start deporting some H1B visa users.
623: "600,000 unemployed high tech, high paid American workers who are out of work"
You are completely clueless. There is about infinite demand for qualified high tech workers right now. If any American in the field can't find a job probably isn't that he/she is American. It's that he/she is a dipshit. Recruiters literally beat down your door to hire you if are a qualified tech worker.
"... There is about infinite demand for qualified high tech workers right now ..."
In certain segments; often times IT; whole departments have been gutted of all the American workers and replaced by foreigners mainly Indians whom they pay much less to - similar to the craze of a couple of years ago of moving call-centers to India.
Our #1 or #2 concern is being able to file our head count. Naturally we would prefer to do it with people living in the US and especially green card holders or better, since the costs of international relocations is enormous. But even if we just accept that that's impossible and we say we'll relocate from anywhere in the world it still very hard to find enough qualified people.
Anyone who is gutting American workers for cheaper ones, either doesn't require a high talent bar or the management is idiots.
29 comments
Not sure whether or not they are going to do that shit again, it didn't work before and its not going to work now.
Grid lock is usually good for the markets. Even the last shutdown, or sequester, at the beginning of 2013 started the year off in the direction of a 30% gain for the markets total for that year.
Build that wall!
Trump's also threatening to withhold Obamacare subsidies unless the Dems cave in on paying for that wall. I'm with @SkiBirther -- keeping those dirty Mexicans out is way more important than stinkin' healthcare for the poor. That Trump is one fucking hell of a negotiator.
Yes, Obamacare is a tax and ultimately represents a redistribution of wealth.
The whole "wall" idea is the kind of thing only a childlike dipshit could come up with. Using healthcare subsides as a bargaining trip to pay for the wall is just beyond idiotic.
The walls you cite are many orders of magnitude smaller than the US southern border. The wall employed by Isreal is (a) fantastically expensive just from the perspective of the surveillance technology employed, never mind maintenance and staffing, and (b) covers a much different terrain (and less challenging) than the US southern border.
Isreal is willing to pay for that wall because they're trying to keep out terrorists and suicide bombers. Which is a little more critically urgent than trying to keep out a guy who wants to pick lettuce for less than minimum wage.
The other two walls you cite (Korea and Berlin) were built by autocratic governments who wanted to severely limit (or cut off completely) social and economic ties with the nation on the other side of the wall. I'm not sure we want to emulate dictatorships, and we do want economic ties to South/Central America.
If Trump *really* wanted to curb illegal immigration, he'd target the industries that take advantage of the low labor rates offered by illegal immigration: hospitality, big agriculture, maintenance, etc. He could pull that off quickly using money and staffing already under his control.
But he doesn't want to target the big businesses that happily employ illegal immigrants, because the guys who run those businesses are his voting base.
You could fire a full 1/2 of all government employees and no one would notice, it would just mean the remaining bureaucrats would have 1 1/2 people per job instead of 3 per job and those cock-sucking bureaucrats do not have to pay FICA.
Surely you jest.
Looks like he backed down on the Wall... But after his incident with the armada which didn't go near N Korea last week, that's no shocker. Shock me once, Donald, Shame... Shame on you. Shock me.... Uh.... Shock me... You won't get shocked again.
The whole wall thing (esp. the part where another sovereign nation will be forced to do something) is Mr. Trumps biggest con and the fact that his supporters are still defending it shows that they haven't thought it through or they are unable to think it through. Or possibly they are so embarrassed by being conned that they are unwilling to admit they've been duped.
Targeting businesses that hire lettuce pickers could reduce significantly the number of illegals that cross over and work here, but there again there will be consequences. If you COULD find Americans willing to pick strawberries and you had to pay them and provide benefits, you would be looking at $10 lettuce and $10 a pound strawberries.
Border states that have done the economic arithmetic have good reasons to be against too much enforcement.
Be careful what you wish for!
The first step, though, is to not care about getting a second term...
The industries I mentioned have, for years, poured millions of dollars into politicians' pockets to ensure that tough talk on immigration goes no further than being tough talk.
Incidentally interesting that no one even knows how many of these workers are in the USA. They issue 65,000 new visas each year and have for decades but no one has an actual count for how many are still in use, renewed, overstayed, etc.
Anyhoo, the point is lettuce pickers and grass mowers don't hurt anyone since those jobs are not displacing someone who really wants to work at them. H1B visas (exactly the visas Trump uses to staff his golf courses, etc btw) displace American workers who then end up on unemployment roles. Maybe we should start deporting some H1B visa users.
You are completely clueless. There is about infinite demand for qualified high tech workers right now. If any American in the field can't find a job probably isn't that he/she is American. It's that he/she is a dipshit. Recruiters literally beat down your door to hire you if are a qualified tech worker.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/educati…
Like they are calling it in France, "A Digital Proletariat"
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/5/fr…
What we have here was predicted in 1848, "A Crisis In Capitalism".
http://soundbible.com/1375-Whip-Crack.ht…
SJG
History According To Dougster
https://www.tuscl.net/postread.php?PID=4…
In certain segments; often times IT; whole departments have been gutted of all the American workers and replaced by foreigners mainly Indians whom they pay much less to - similar to the craze of a couple of years ago of moving call-centers to India.
Anyone who is gutting American workers for cheaper ones, either doesn't require a high talent bar or the management is idiots.
http://archive.fortune.com/2008/09/30/ma…
SJG