Lend A Hand

Wow, long time no see huh?

I know it’s been quite awhile since my last post and all I can say is that. as far as I can remember,  last year was the worst my family has ever lived through. Too many things went wrong and too few went right; financially, medically, emotionally, socially, in every way.

While things were keeping me away I did a lot of thinking about changes I wanted and needed to make both to my business and to my life. I wasn’t sure if blogging was something I wanted to do anymore, or if anyone would benefit if I continued.

Finally I decided I was trying to go about it in the wrong way for me. I am a casual, real, down earth person. Just a woman with a husband, three kids, and a cat. I have lots of opinions and thoughts about the way things are, the way they should be and the way they could be. From time to time people have told me these insights are interesting and I should do something about them.

So I will continue to blog. I’m throwing away the preset monthly topics and plan to ‘wing-it’ a bit more. I think the more real-life tone will add to the blog. Every post won’t have as clear a purpose but I hope you will get at least something from each one. Of course I want to know how all of you feel about this and if you have any suggestions, I will be glad to consider them.

To begin with I would like to chat about something I have been thinking about for the last few days. I’m sure most of you will remember when President Obama said this in a speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004:

“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.” -Barack Obama

Do you also remember this little statement attributed to Aesop and repeated by numerous politicians since then:

“United we stand, divided we fall.”?

Even our Pledge of Allegiance talks about our nation “Indivisible”.

And yet we do divide ourselves in all sorts of different ways. Democratic or Republican, Conservative or Liberal, Rich or Poor, Northerner or Southerner, Christian or Jewish or Muslim or well this list could go on and on forever. Are you pro-life or pro-choice? Are you for or against gay marriage? Even groups such as Stay-at-home moms and Working moms have been know to go a few rounds in the ring.

My sons are at that wonderful teen age when everything is still black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. It is a happy place to live but a really, really annoying place to visit.

We’re all wrong. We’re all right. Everything comes to us in shades of grey – really. It is a massive waste of time and energy to fight each other about these things while the world is crumbling apart around us. Who knows? Maybe if we solve some of the big problems plaguing our nation, the little issues won’t matter as much anymore.

If I may have a little literary liberty here…

Only United will we Stand, Divided we can only fall. Looking forward to your comments.

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This month topic was a controversial one – illegal immigration – but I hope I showed both sides of the subject. Obviously illegal immigration is a drain on our country but trying to deport approximately 12 million people probably isn’t a viable solution.

Next month is July – the month of Independence Day and the birthday of our nation. So to celebrate the occasion, I’ll be talking about Patriotism. How to love your country, some important patriots, and what the future of America might mean for those of us who hold patriotism in high regard. And while we’re at it we’re going to have some fun for the holiday.

Enjoy the sun, the fun, and the fireworks.

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While illegal immigrants are criminals who should not have snuck into our country, the companies that employ (or should I say exploit) these undocumented individuals are just as in the wrong.

As citizens, taxpayers, and American workers we need to let our city and state officials know that we demand tough penalties for businesses caught employing illegal immigrants.

First of all, all employers should have to use E-verify to ensure the legality of their hires. Companies should be more than happy to comply since this would protect the companies from “accidentally” hiring illegal aliens and being susceptible to fines for breaking the law.

Second we need to demand high fines and temporary closing down the businesses who exploit illegal workers. Our government has to make it more appealing to not hire illegal immigrants than it is to hire them.

Once the jobs dry up for illegal immigrants, America won’t be the sanctuary that it is now. While I’m not naive enough to believe it will completely stop illegal immigration, it will significantly reduce the number of aliens coming into the country illegally.

So write to your governor, senators, and representatives to demand that they put preventing companies from hiring illegal immigrants high on their list of priorities.

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For this post I’m mostly going to discuss illegal immigrations coming over from Mexico.

About half of the people in Mexico live in poverty with approximately 1 in 5 living in extreme poverty. It is a tough place to live and take care of a family. A few miles away there is a land where the federal minimum wage is $6.55 an hour and going up. Even if they make less than minimum wage they still have a better chance here than where they are now. They know the trip will be dangerous and they know they may even die. But to them it is worth the risk rather than live a life in poverty.

So who can blame these souls for wanting to sneak into America? Do some of them come here to exploit our system? Yes. Do some of them come here fleeing prosecution for crimes committed in their own country? Sure. Do some of them come here planning to work hard and improve their future and their children’s futures? Absolutely.

But do pure motives make up for the fact that they are breaking the law? Do the ends ever justify the means? I can’t say it is. I can only say I have sympathy and compassion for people who feel they have to leave their families and communities behind in order to have a better chance to survive and thrive. Would you condemn a man who stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family? Probably not.

I want illegal immigration stopped, no doubts about that. But I also think we need to do more for our neighbors to the South.

No doubts about that either.

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Most of the topics concerning illegal immigration I have only studied in depth but when it comes to health care I’ve actually conducted an interview in the health care field who can confirm most of what I read through research.

Since the majority of illegal immigrants work jobs under the table or in low level positions, few of them have health benefits through their employers (one of the reason employers like to hire illegal immigrants.) Some have health care through state aid (at taxpayer expense) but many just use the emergency room as a doctor’s office.

Basically for every ailment, large or small, they go to the E.R. where they have to treat you even without insurance and don’t ask for residency status. Oh, and they don’t ask for payment at the time of service either.

Due to the stack of medical bills unpaid by these illegal immigrants, the government has to dish out millions of dollars every year. Many hospitals find themselves forced to close, file bankruptcy or sell out due to lack of money. Illegal immigration is partially to blame for this tragedy.

Not to mention the patients who have to wait hours for emergency medical treatment due to waiting rooms crowded with undocumented residents.

America’s health care system has enough problems as it is. Insurance rates for patients and doctors are sky high. Even though our premiums keep going up, our benefits keep getting worse.

Do we really need a few million people sucking up our taxpayer money every time they become ill?

Certainly not.

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Oddly enough there are two groups of illegal immigration: those trying to get in and those whom are already here.

The obvious answer to what do we do with those not yet here is to keep them out. Not so obvious is what to do with the 12 million or so illegal immigrants who are already here.

On one side, people and groups believe they should be given amnesty – the right to stay without fear of deportation or legal prosecution.

Some people believe we should have open borders and let anyone in who wants to come in. They also believe amnesty would allow illegal immigrants to climb up out of their present status. Personally I don’t think that’s what would happen. Illegal immigrants are already here acting as if they are doing nothing wrong. They are counterfeiting documents and using fake Social Security numbers.

On the other hand, most people agree that mass deportation isn’t feasible. It seems impossible (and expensive) to deport 12 million people.

I’m in favor of doing our very best to keep illegal immigrants out of our country while making a commitment to work with the illegal immigrants already here. We need to charge fines, ensure that they can be paid, walk each person or family through the steps of nationalization giving preference to children and adults with U.S. born children. Likewise any illegal alien with any type of documented criminal activity, here or in their native country, needs to be deported.

Will this be difficult? Absolutely. Will it take time and cost money? Yup. But I believe that working towards “One nation indivisible” is totally worth it.

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I came across this interesting article on Philly.com.

U.S. officials are putting together songs on Cd’s to attempt to make crossing the border illegally less appealing. The songs are created to sound like up-tempo Mexican folk songs with lyrics about crossings – gone – wrong.

An example of one such songs

“Before you cross the border, remember that you can be just as much a man by chickening out and staying. Because it’s better to keep your life than ending up dead.”

Apparently many of the stations in Mexico that play the songs and the listeners tuning in don’t know who is really behind the bouncy by tragic ballads.

To read more about this form of deterrent: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20090524_Agents_hope_border_ballads_strike_a_chord.html

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Most conversations I hear about illegal immigration talk about the economic effects or terrorist danger to America. Apparently there is also a great deal of criminal activity on the part of some illegal aliens.

The crimes include drug dealing and trafficking, home invasion, insurance fraud, welfare fraud, auto theft, identity theft, counterfeiting documents, sex trafficking, rape, molestation, assault and murder. That’s a pretty long list, huh?

Today I’m only going to talk about the drug-related crimes. It’s estimated that illegal immigration supplies 80% of the methamphetamine in the U.S. In 2005, the feds believe that as much as 2 million kilograms of marijuana was brought into the U.S. over the Mexican border. Now it’s fair to say the majority of illegal immigrants in the United States aren’t involved in drug trafficking but the ones who are do more than enough to cause real drug-related problems here.

To illustrate how troublesome these bad apples (illegal bad apples at that) can be. The Wake County North Carolina Sheriff’s office reported that while Hispanics made up only 5.4% of the population, 46% of drug-trafficking arrests were Hispanic.

*It should be noted that the previous report did not differentiate between Hispanics here legally or illegally.*

Even looking at all the data and statistics:

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

It is difficult to know how much drug trafficking is being done by illegal immigrants or legal immigrants or both working together. It seems to me that a lot of sites start by claiming to be talking about illegal immigrants and then before you know it they drop the term illegal and then before you realize is “immigrant” turns into “Mexican” or “Hispanic.” I’m starting to see why law-abiding Hispanic citizens are angered by the way this illegal immigration debate is being carried out.

What do you think?

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I’m going to try and be as unbias as possible about illegal immigration. I researched data from many sites – both pro-immigration and anti-immigration. You’ll have to throw in the word ‘illegal’ yourself, these groups don’t always make this distinction.

Not surprisingly I found that much of the data contridicted itself. In both cases, the group repeatedly beat the same drum over and over. Pro-immigration point out that illegal immigrants make up an important part of our nation’s workforce and many pay taxes into social security that they’ll never be able to take advantage of.

On the other hand the anti-immigration groups talk about increased crime rates, drug trafficking, stealing American’s jobs and sucking our social services dry. So what side of the fence are you on? Here’s the stats:

Pro-immigration

1. While many people automatically assume a person of Mexican descent is an illegal alien, only 33% are actually undocumented. As for the remaining illegal immigrants 22% come from other Latin American countries, 13% from Asian, 6% from Europe and Canada and 3% from elsewhere. (That leaves quite a few percentage unaccounted for…)

2. Illegal immigrants pay the same taxes as everyone else in America. Sales, income and social security tax. Even property taxs are paid because landlords figure them into rent prices.

3. It isn’t that illegal immigrants don’t want to learn English or assimilate (mix in) with American culture. Sometimes they are only planning on living here a couple of months or years and working hard to make money to take or send back home.

4. Illegal immigrants do not steal jobs from American. They work jobs that Americans don’t want to do. In fact the gap in employment between dropouts (citizen dropouts that is) and high school graduates has stayed relatively the same since the 1980s.

I tried to find some pro-immigration or objective information on crime statistics from illegal immigrants but was able to find only vague comments and editorial opinions with no facts to back them up. When it comes to terrorism they make a good point when they say that none of the terrorists from 9/11 came across the Mexican border. It just doesn’t make sense to me, however, that the fact that people can sneak into this country somehow doesn’t increase the chance of terrorists sneaking in.

Now for the other side of the story (and my 2 cents too)

1. The Department of Homeland Security found that 70% of illegal immigrants are Mexican. I have read other reports putting the figure between 54 and 80 percent.

**I don’t understand what difference it makes whether an illegal immigrant is Mexican or not. I don’t think anyone should be assumed to be here illegally no matter what they look like. I also don’t think a criminal should be given a break due to proximity or population. Just because there are a large group of Mexican people living in this country doesn’t mean they ones who are breaking the law are any less wrong.

2. Bear Stearns (Wall Street investment firm) estimated that the U.S. is losing $35 billion a year to income tax collections from off-the-books jobs. Meanwhile Harvard Professor, George Borjes, has stated that illegal immigrants displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars in 2005.

**This is a touchy one for me. I have met and known too many people who are out of work who would have been happy to get anything. When pro-immigration groups claim these are jobs “Americas don’t want to do” they always seem to forget to add “at the same wage.” Employers get away with paying slave wages far below the minimum wage forcing illegal immigrants to work two of more jobs.

3. I’m pretty sure we can all agree that there are sub-cultures in America and Hispanic people are no different. I’m not really sure that illegal immigrants are any more hesitant to learn English and adopt the American culture than legal immigrants. People want to be with people they feel comfortable with. Common language and common culture are bonds that aren’t going to be broken just because they cross the border. However I think they should make the effort to join the American culture as well. As for saying some illegal immigrants don’t learn English because they don’t plan to be here long, just a few months or years to earn some money, well isn’t that a problem in itself?

4. Each year, an estimated 1,880,000 Americans will lose their jobs  because of immigrantion – the majority of whom are illegal. Providing welfare and other state services to these unemployed Americans costs more than $15 billion a year.

When all the stats are in and the data combed over and the debate heard out, I still revert to my original position of a law is a law and those who break them are criminals. Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime – it victimizes all involved. The only people benefiting are the greedy and the criminal.

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