2016 US Presidential Race - Mod Warning in OP

Billy86

maryishere wrote: »

At least Trump wants to get America back on its feet. National debt nearly doubled during Obama presidency, and also increased during the Clinton Presidency. That is not sustainable.

All the presidential candidates will tell you "want to get America back on its feet" - it's a statement that doesn't actually really mean anything.

National debt has increased under every president since Regan (I think Clinton's was the smallest increase and he was the only president who had it going in the right direction, something Bush quickly undid). The problem with Trump is that what plans he has given us would tank the US economy. That wall idea is unaffordable before even looking at the biggest cost - enforcement and maintenance, and drop kicking ever illegal out at the same time will cause massive short term problems, thus only making the wall plan worse.

It's a great example as to why he has gone bankrupt four times, for more than his own value, for being too reckless and aggressive too quickly. It's also why the Economist rates him winning the election as about the 5th biggest risk to the global economy... tied with jihadi terrorists.

maryishere

Billy86 wrote: »

That wall idea is unaffordable before even looking at the biggest cost - enforcement and maintenance,

Trump said he would make Mexico pay for an impenetrable wall along the southern US border. Until Mexico pays for a wall, Trump proposes increasing fees on visas for Mexican CEOs and diplomats, cutting foreign aid to Mexico, and impounding "all remittance payments derived from illegal wages." Tens of millions of illegial immigrants are taking a lot of money out of the American economy. Even if just some of them were deported, it will help unemployed Americans get jobs again.

Billy86

maryishere wrote: »

Trump said he would make Mexico pay for an impenetrable wall along the southern US border. Until Mexico pays for a wall, Trump proposes increasing fees on visas for Mexican CEOs and diplomats, cutting foreign aid to Mexico, and impounding "all remittance payments derived from illegal wages." Tens of millions of illegial immigrants are taking a lot of money out of the American economy. Even if just some of them were deported, it will help unemployed Americans get jobs again.

Those people will need to take below minimum wage jobs, or a lot of companies and industries are going to suffer. His Mexico plan has been laughed at for good reason though, and it's similar to why the Economist lists him as being as dangerous as jihadi terrorists for the global economy.

Christy42

maryishere wrote: »

Trump said he would make Mexico pay for an impenetrable wall along the southern US border. Until Mexico pays for a wall, Trump proposes increasing fees on visas for Mexican CEOs and diplomats, cutting foreign aid to Mexico, and impounding "all remittance payments derived from illegal wages." Tens of millions of illegial immigrants are taking a lot of money out of the American economy. Even if just some of them were deported, it will help unemployed Americans get jobs again.

So he wants to increase the number of Mexican's trying to get into America illegally?

Mexico isn't paying for that wall and Trump knows it. I also think it is cute that people think a wall will do very much.

JPNelsforearm

Billy86 wrote: »

Those people will need to take below minimum wage jobs, or a lot of companies and industries are going to suffer. His Mexico plan has been laughed at for good reason though, and it's similar to why the Economist lists him as being as dangerous as jihadi terrorists for the global economy.

If you cant afford to pay someone a living wage you dont deserve to be in business, simple as.

The wall needs to be built in some form or another.=, in conjunction with a beefed up DHS and deportation facility. The toll of illegal immigration only makes local news.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2016/03/illegals_held_in_vicious_framingham_rape



Federal immigration officials are requesting detainers on four illegal aliens accused of a heinous attack on a Framingham couple in which the woman was raped and her boyfriend was beaten and threatened with death, the Herald has learned.

Two of the illegals had previously been deported to Guatemala, said Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement spokesman Shawn Neudauer.

I thought we were going to die. I really did. And I didn’t care if I died as long as I could save her and get her out of there, that’s all I cared about,” said the 
boyfriend, whose name the Herald is withholding.

“I’ve lived (in Framingham) my whole life and I never imagined anything like this could happen just walking down the street,” he said. “The worst part was I felt like I couldn’t do anything.”


If Trump doesnt sort out the border and Trade situation he will be a failure and a charlatan, as that is what he is running on. Incidents like the above are driving his campaign, Illegal immigration is irrevocably changing the US.

maryishere

Christy42 wrote: »

So he wants to increase the number of Mexican's trying to get into America illegally?

Mexico isn't paying for that wall and Trump knows it. I also think it is cute that people think a wall will do very much.

A wall done a lot to stop Eastern Europeans getting to the west, until it was taken down. Technically, it is possible.

Billy86

JPNelsforearm wrote: »

If you cant afford to pay someone a living wage you dont deserve to be in business, simple as.

And then when those businesses owners and employees lose their jobs. And then they're on welfare. And then taxes have to be raised to pay for that welfare. And then working people have less disposable income to spend themselves, and the cycle begins...

I'm not saying illegal employment is right, but pulling the rug out of a workforce of 10mn+ all at once is absolute suicide. And a fantasy, in terms of actually pulling it off.

The wall needs to be built in some form or another.=, in conjunction with a beefed up DHS and deportation facility. The toll of illegal immigration only makes local news.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2016/03/illegals_held_in_vicious_framingham_rape

Illegal immigrants commit crimes, legal immigrants commit crimes, permanent residents commit crimes, and citizens commit crimes. Not a shock to anyone.

Illegal immigrants actually tend to commit less violent crime though, which might come as a surprise to some.

People will still find ways in, there is no two ways about that. Consider it a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing... the fact is you cannot stop the flow of illegal immigration. You can try to limit it, but at a very high cost - and at a certain point, the tax payer will simply not put up with that cost. Ironically enough, Republicans would be the first to (perhaps literally) get up in arms over such a thing.

If Trump doesnt sort out the border and Trade situation he will be a failure and a charlatan, as that is what he is running on. Incidents like the above are driving his campaign, Illegal immigration is irrevocably changing the US.

And that's part of why most of the rest of the world is equal parts amused and perplexed by this election cycle - Trump's plan for immigration is a guaranteed failure.

Overheal

maryishere wrote: »

At least Trump wants to get America back on its feet. National debt nearly doubled during Obama presidency, and also increased during the Clinton Presidency. That is not sustainable.

I'll leave this here and let it speak for itself...The Obama administration is already on track to bring the budget back under control from the decisions it was forced to make during the economic collapse by the previous administration. That is also in spite of health care reform, VA reforms, other spending programs, and conservative sponsored tax cuts.

InTheTrees

maryishere wrote: »

A wall done a lot to stop Eastern Europeans getting to the west, until it was taken down. Technically, it is possible.

You know The Wall was only in Berlin right? Perhaps you're thinking of the "Iron Curtain" that was the intensely militarized border between east and west?

Overheal

Manach wrote: »

It could be argued that too much state intervention also has a root in the Flint water issue. I've read some books on the Detroit region, which Flint seems to be related as part of the same governmental structures. Post 1960s the growth of the state was marked in that area, but the tax base remained stagnant and then shrank. A large portion of the tax went to dubious projects, not core infrastructure, as a means to reward specific voter stakeholders and not the general community. In Detroit by Lebuff, this is chronicled with the main example being the skeletal fire department striving to fullfill its duties despite of the large government and its practices.

Yet those decisions and events had little bearing on the water infrastructure. The water wasn't even contentious until a couple years ago. This was a boneheaded move to shave a few dollars for local politics; federal oversight didn't exactly push that along. That's quite a stretch of the imagination.

eire4

maryishere wrote: »

At least Trump wants to get America back on its feet. National debt nearly doubled during Obama presidency, and also increased during the Clinton Presidency. That is not sustainable.

To be fair the national debt in the US has no partisan lines at all. Both Republican and Democratic administrations going back to Regan who doubled the debt during his 8 years in office have been guilty in this regard.

Black Swan

maryishere wrote: »

At least Trump wants to get America back on its feet. National debt...

Precisely how will Trump reverse the federal deficit? What precise and detailed plans does Trump have, that can be studied and evaluated objectively and quantitatively by statistical analysis, rather than simple, mob appeal, subjective statements out of his mouth, or useless superficial slogans on a web site lacking empirical support? Links please.

Overheal

Heres an Academic Paper analysing his plan if you have a coffee handy http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/2000560-an-analysis-of-donald-trumps-tax-plan.pdf

Here's a more digestable take on that same paper: http://fortune.com/2015/12/23/donald-trump-plan-tax-policy-center/

An analysis of Donald Trump’s tax plan by a research institute reveals two interesting points: the U.S. government would get a lot poorer, and the wealthy would get a lot richer.

In the Tax Policy Center’s analysis of the Republican candidate’s proposal, the institute said that Trump’s plan would reduce federal revenues by $9.5 trillion over its first decade, and an additional $15.0 trillion over the next 10 years. Including interest costs, the Center said, the proposal would add $11.2 trillion to the national debt by 2026.

To put that into perspective, Trump’s tax plan would cause the debt to GDP ratio to hit 180% by 2036, the Center found.

Right now that ratio is a few points above 100% http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp

KingBrian2

Christy42 wrote: »

So he wants to increase the number of Mexican's trying to get into America illegally?

Mexico isn't paying for that wall and Trump knows it. I also think it is cute that people think a wall will do very much.

Mexico is haemorrhaging people. Many are even entering Mexico illegally in order to get into America. It is a transit destination and the drug cartels own the state. Mexico is in a poor state. Student unrest, gangland killings and endemic corruption. Trump's policies would actually be good for that country only the media in the US refuse to accept that Mexico is a "clear and present danger" to American citizens. I would add even more so than Jihadi's. Terrorists in Mexico running around with sub machine guns. A climate of fear in excess of anything even in Syria. These are facts. Unreported truths that people ignore.

Overheal

KingBrian2 wrote: »

Mexico is haemorrhaging people. Many are even entering Mexico illegally in order to get into America. It is a transit destination and the drug cartels own the state. Mexico is in a poor state. Student unrest, gangland killings and endemic corruption. Trump's policies would actually be good for that country only the media in the US refuse to accept that Mexico is a "clear and present danger" to American citizens. I would add even more so than Jihadi's. Terrorists in Mexico running around with sub machine guns. A climate of fear in excess of anything even in Syria. These are facts. Unreported truths that people ignore.

Basic vetting of your argument before posting it will really prevent it from being shown to be based on completely false assumptions...

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/

More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.
Net Loss of 140,000 from 2009 to 2014; Family Reunification Top Reason for Return

JPNelsforearm

Billy86 wrote: »

And then when those businesses owners and employees lose their jobs. And then they're on welfare. And then taxes have to be raised to pay for that welfare. And then working people have less disposable income to spend themselves, and the cycle begins...

I'm not saying illegal employment is right, but pulling the rug out of a workforce of 10mn+ all at once is absolute suicide. And a fantasy, in terms of actually pulling it off.

Illegal immigrants commit crimes, legal immigrants commit crimes, permanent residents commit crimes, and citizens commit crimes. Not a shock to anyone.

Illegal immigrants actually tend to commit less violent crime though, which might come as a surprise to some.

People will still find ways in, there is no two ways about that. Consider it a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing... the fact is you cannot stop the flow of illegal immigration. You can try to limit it, but at a very high cost - and at a certain point, the tax payer will simply not put up with that cost. Ironically enough, Republicans would be the first to (perhaps literally) get up in arms over such a thing.


And that's part of why most of the rest of the world is equal parts amused and perplexed by this election cycle - Trump's plan for immigration is a guaranteed failure.

How will the business owners and employees lose their jobs? The only "employees" losing their jobs are the illegal kind, those who suck up more in services than they put back in, in addition to depressing the wages of blue collar jobs. Again, if you cant run your business without peasant labour(subsidised(in the form of schools, healthcare etc) by the taxpayer I might add), you dont deserve to be in business.

Not true. Illegals commit a lot of crime, "Between 2008 and 2014, 40% of all murder convictions in Florida were criminal aliens. In New York it was 34% and Arizona 17.8%.
During those years, criminal aliens accounted for 38% of all murder convictions in the five states of California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and New York, while illegal aliens constitute only 5.6% of the total population in those states.
That 38% represents 7,085 murders out of the total of 18,643."

"While illegal immigrants account for about 3.5 percent of the U.S population, they represented 36.7 percent of federal sentences in FY 2014 following criminal convictions, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data obtained by Breitbart News.

According to FY 2014 USSC data, of 74,911 sentencing cases, citizens accounted for 43,479 (or 58.0 percent), illegal immigrants accounted for 27,505 (or 36.7 percent), legal immigrants made up 3,017 (or 4.0 percent), and the remainder (about 1 percent) were cases in which the offender was either extradited or had an unknown status.

Broken down by some of the primary offenses, illegal immigrants represented 16.8 percent of drug trafficking cases, 20.0 percent of kidnapping/hostage taking, 74.1 percent of drug possession, 12.3 percent of money laundering, and 12.0 percent of murder convictions."

http://www.cairco.org/issues/united-states-crime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIBiGVk9-o8

You most definitely can seal off the border, the US has the largest sophisticated military in the world. I'll try find it, but some colonel in the Army Rangers wrote a very good article on how you'd do it, its complete naivety of the US army and its capabilities to assume it cant be done, with drone technology, air assets, cameras, fencing, boots on the ground combined with a tough deportation rate the flow would cease to a trickle.

Hande hoche!

Overheal wrote: »

Basic vetting of your argument before posting it will really prevent it from being shown to be based on completely false assumptions...

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/

That's a fair point. Is there not considerable migration from Central America via Mexico?

Overheal

Hande hoche! wrote: »

That's a fair point. Is there not considerable migration from Central America via Mexico?

You tell me, find some sources?

KingBrian2

http://www.ibtimes.com/mexico-struggles-manage-central-american-migration-1634278
Here's a source for you to indulge in.

Hande hoche!

Overheal wrote: »

You tell me, find some sources?

"Since October, officials have deported 28,808 Central Americans and 128,000 Mexicans"

http://www.latimes.com/nation/immigration/la-na-immigration-children-families-20160308-story.html

B_Wayne

20 years from now, US will still have no wall, the world won't have imploded and US debt will continue to rise as it has done since WW2, and treated as if it's rise is unique to the current present. :rolleyes:

Overheal

KingBrian2 wrote: »

http://www.ibtimes.com/mexico-struggles-manage-central-american-migration-1634278
Here's a source for you to indulge in.

That shows that ironically election politics are helping to drive a spike of people north, but the chart also shows a lot of dips in the immigration numbers.

Isn't it funny how we have to spread freedom to oil rich countries in the Middle East but down near US controlled Panama we don't seem to give two ****s about people being shot in the streets for extortion bribes? That spike if I recall correctly was well publicized at the time, largely consisting of children in refugee status.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/13/us/immigration-undocumented-children-explainer/

"Since October, officials have deported 28,808 Central Americans and 128,000 Mexicans"

http://www.latimes.com/nation/immigr...308-story.html

Result of the same problem.

Ironically calls for building the wall it seems is going to drive more impulse immigration across the border ahead of it - which is politically convenient for those that want the wall. But to me it just feels a lot like we're shutting the bulkhead on people leaving a burning section of the ship.

Reagan was never a fan of the fence and neither was GHWB. Reagan of course, is famous for actually tearing down walls...

Black Swan

JPNelsforearm wrote: »

The wall needs to be built in some form or another.

The Trump Wall is a nonsensical, over-simplistic mob appeal approach to reduce illegal immigration by Trump. Mexico will not pay for it, no matter what Trump proclaims from the podium:

The GOP presidential hopeful insisted in October that if elected, he would build a wall along the Mexican border and get Mexico to pay for it. But Calderon, Mexico's president from 2006 to 2012, told CNBC on Saturday that there was no way that Mexico would pay for it.

"Mexican people, we are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall!" Calderon said.

Further, it's doubtful that a corporate bought-and-paid-for US Congress will pass economic sanction legislation that would threaten US trade interests (and US corporate profits and stockholder ROI) between Mexico and USA. This Trump Wall is just so much mob appeal bluster out of Trump's mouth that flies in the face of long standing trade arrangements between nations, showing Trump's extraordinary and total ignorance on how government and international diplomacy works. Given Trump's ZERO experience in governance and ZERO experience in international diplomacy, it's no surprise. If elected president, former CEO Trump cannot say "You're fired!" to elected US Senators and US House Representatives.

Furthermore, the Trump Wall will not block the millions of persons entering the US legally as tourists or on visas, who overstay their visas or their tourist time allotments. No Trump Wall blocks such persons. Yet another example of Trump's simple-minded, superficial, and supreme ignorance of the complexities of illegal immigration in America:

According to a 2006 Pew Hispanic Center study, nearly half of the 12 million-plus illegal aliens in America arrived legally with temporary, non-immigrant visas. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that a “substantial” percentage of America’s illegal population is made up of visa overstays — their estimates range from 27 to 57 percent. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in a 2004 report on visa overstays that DHS may be significantly underestimating the magnitude of the visa overstay problem

JPNelsforearm wrote: »

Federal immigration officials are requesting detainers on four illegal aliens accused of a heinous attack on a Framingham couple in which the woman was raped and her boyfriend was beaten and threatened with death, the Herald has learned.

Two of the illegals had previously been deported to Guatemala, said Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement spokesman Shawn Neudauer.

This so-called evidence is only anecdotal, representing 1-case, statistically insignificant, and exemplifies the low level of arguments used by Trump to justify his over-simplistic and massively expensive Trump Wall. How many criminals are mentioned in this example, a total of 4 out of 11 to 12 million estimated illegals? Typical blustering Trump fans the sensationalist flames and plays to the emotional fears and anger of his followers, citing one or two cases out of millions of crimes occurring in the US, most committed by naturally born US citizens and those in the US legally:

For more than a century, innumerable studies have confirmed two simple yet powerful truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin...

Granted, the governmental, diplomatic, and economic issues that pertain to both legal and illegal immigration are highly complex, and certainly not addressed comprehensively in this post, but an over-simplistic Trump Wall proposed policy on illegal immigration is ludicrous and impractical.

JPNelsforearm

Black Swan wrote: »

The Trump Wall is a nonsensical, over-simplistic mob appeal approach to reduce illegal immigration. Mexico will not pay for it, no matter what Trump proclaims from the podium:



Further, it's doubtful that a corporate bought-and-paid-for US Congress will pass economic sanction legislation that would threaten US trade interests (and US corporate profits and stockholder ROI) between Mexico and USA. This Trump Wall is just so much mob appeal bluster out of Trump's mouth that flies in the face of long standing trade arrangements between nations, showing Trump's extraordinary and total ignorance on how government and international diplomacy works. Given Trump's ZERO experience in governance and ZERO experience in international diplomacy, it's no surprise. If elected president, former CEO Trump cannot say "You're fired!" to elected US Senators and US House Representatives.

Furthermore, the Trump Wall will not block the millions of persons entering the US legally as tourists or on visas, who overstay their visas or their tourist time allotments. No Trump Wall blocks such persons. Yet another example of Trump's simple-minded, superficial, and supreme ignorance of the complexities of illegal immigration in America:

Its not a literal "wall" as in miles and miles of poured concrete, as I said in my post, its rigorous border enforcement by the military, drones, patrols, heat cameras in conjunction with police action and deportations by DHS and police forces. The US military, national guard, engineers and Air force elements are capable of sealing the border, the fact you dont think so is hilarious, the US military is the most sophisticated and battle hardened force on the planet and they are just coming off the back of two wars with tonnes of equipment, they can easily police the border, which is, in fact, their main job. The idea that the border, or any border cannot be secured is a myth.

Trade deals have cost Americans jobs, whether its Trump, Sanders, Hillary or Bloomberg, this needs to be addressed. Trump and Sanders are the only ones addressing this.

"International governance", "international diplomacy", all false symbols and rituals, nothing is permanent, the US holds the whip hand, the have the money and the might, so a few oligarchs get their noses put out of joint, so what? Those legislators will have to answer to the same people who voted in Trump, you are sidestepping the brewing discontent that Trump has tapped into, all of those people will not be content with "oh its a trade deal, its how things are done, sorry", no matter who is in charge, the genie is out of the bottle.

This so-called evidence is only anecdotal, representing 1-case, statistically insignificant, and exemplifies the low level of arguments used by Trump to justify his over-simplistic and massively expensive Trump Wall. How many criminals are mentioned in this example, a total of 4 out of 11 to 12 million estimated illegals? Typical blustering Trump fans the sensationalist flames and plays to the emotional fears and anger of his followers, citing one or two cases out of millions of crimes occurring in the US, most committed by naturally born US citizens and those in the US legally:



Granted, the governmental, diplomatic, and economic issues that pertain to both legal and illegal immigration are highly complex, and certainly not addressed comprehensively in this post, but an over-simplistic Trump Wall proposed policy on illegal immigration is ludicrous and impractical.

It was one example of the reality on the ground as to why people are flocking to Trump., I posted the crime stats on the other page, illegals are over-represented in all forms of crime.

Dealing with illegal immigration is simple, it just requires will.

Overheal

Its not a literal "wall" as in miles and miles of poured concrete, as I said in my post, its rigorous border enforcement by the military, drones, patrols, heat cameras in conjunction with police action and deportations by DHS and police forces.

Sounds awfully expensive.

the US military is the most sophisticated and battle hardened force on the planet and they are just coming off the back of two wars with tonnes of equipment, they can easily police the border, which is, in fact, their main job.

eh... Manic Moran's turf really, but you're wrong here.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/defenseandsecurity/a/Posse-Comitatus-Act-The-Military-On-The-Border.htm

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of U.S. military forces to perform the tasks of civilian law enforcement such as arrest, apprehension, interrogation and detention unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

The Posse Comitatus Act was originally enacted due to the feeling of many members of Congress at the time that President Abraham Lincoln had exceeded his authority during the Civil War by suspending habeas corpus and creating military courts with jurisdiction over civilians.


It should be noted that the Posse Comitatus Act greatly limits, but does not eliminate the power of the President of the United States to declare "martial law," the assumption of all civilian police powers by the military.

The president, under his or her constitutional powers to put down insurrection, rebellion, or invasion, may declare martial law when local law enforcement and court systems have ceased to function. For example, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt declared martial law in Hawaii at the request of the territorial governor.

What the National Guard will not do on the Border


The Posse Comitatus Act and subsequent legislation specifically prohibit the use of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines to enforce the domestic laws of the United States except when expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. Since it enforces maritime safety, environmental and trade laws, the Coast Guard is exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act.

While Posse Comitatus does not specifically apply to the actions of the National Guard, National Guard regulations stipulate that its troops, unless authorized by Congress, are not to take part in typical law enforcement actions including arrests, searches of suspects or the public, or evidence handling.

What the National Guard will do on the Border


Operating within the limitations of the Posse Comitatus Act, and as acknowledged by the Obama administration, National Guard troops deployed to the Mexican Border States will, as directed by the states' governors, support the Border Patrol and state and local law enforcement agencies by providing surveillance, intelligence gathering and reconnaissance support. In addition, the troops will assist with "counternarcotics enforcement" duties until additional Border Patrol agents are trained and in place. The Guard troops may also assist in the construction of roads, fences, surveillance towers and vehicle barriers necessary to prevent illegal border crossings.

Under the Defense Authorization Act for FY2007 (H.R. 5122), the Secretary of Defense, upon a request from the Secretary of Homeland Security, can also assist in preventing terrorists, drug traffickers, and illegal aliens from entering the United States.

Posse Comitatus: Where Congress Stands


On Oct. 25, 2005, the House of Representatives and Senate enacted a joint resolution (H. CON. RES. 274) clarifying Congress' stance on the effect of the Posse Comitatus Act on the use of the military on U.S. soil. In part, the resolution states "by its express terms, the Posse Comitatus Act is not a complete barrier to the use of the Armed Forces for a range of domestic purposes, including law enforcement functions, when the use of the Armed Forces is authorized by Act of Congress or the President determines that the use of the Armed Forces is required to fulfill the President's obligations under the Constitution to respond promptly in time of war, insurrection, or other serious emergency."

The USMC, USAF, Army, and Navy cannot act on US soil in domestic matters (including Border enforcement) without an Act of Congress, which has not been given. Certainly calling it "their main job" is entirely incorrect and misleading.

The idea that the border, or any border cannot be secured is a myth.

Strawman Argument: nobody ever said that it could not be secured. What the argument is, is that it is neither politically or socioeconomically expedient to do so.

JPNelsforearm

Overheal wrote: »

Sounds awfully expensive.eh... Manic Moran's turf really, but you're wrong here.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/defenseandsecurity/a/Posse-Comitatus-Act-The-Military-On-The-Border.htm

The USMC, USAF, Army, and Navy cannot act on US soil in domestic matters (including Border enforcement) without an Act of Congress, which has not been given. Certainly calling it "their main job" is entirely incorrect and misleading.Strawman Argument: nobody ever said that it could not be secured. What the argument is, is that it is neither politically or socioeconomically expedient to do so.

Thats "operating" on US soil, slightly different from securing the border, much of which would involve the creation of a buffer zone on mexican territory.

Its not "awfully expensive", the troops are already hired, all the equipment already paid for. Eg: "As of January 2014, the U.S. military operates a large number of unmanned aerial systems: 7,362 RQ-11 Ravens; 990 AeroVironment Wasp IIIs; 1,137 AeroVironment RQ-20 Pumas; and 306 RQ-16 T-Hawk small UAS systems and 246 Predators and MQ-1C Grey Eagles; 126 MQ-9 Reapers; 491 RQ-7 Shadows; and 33 RQ-4 Global Hawk large systems

So the role of the US military is fighting foreign wars?:rolleyes: The role of every military is to serve the people, to defend the Nation, to protect vital national interests, and to fulfill national military responsibilities. Pretending there is some massive, legal or otherwise, impediment, is utterly false, its in national security interests to have a secure border. A stroke of a pen is all thats necessary.

"The US Army exists to defend the US from foreign invasion, which is expressly authorized by the US Constitution. Guarding the Mexican border was the Army’s primary peacetime mission until 1940, and no one ever declared this was in violation of this 1878 act. The US Border Patrol wasn’t even formed until 1924, so claiming the intent of this law was to prevent US Army troops from guarding the border is absurd. The map at left shows US Army forts in Texas in the late 1880s when the entire US Army had fewer than 40,000 soldiers; it has 500,000 today. Clearly, defending the US border was a primary mission of the US Army for decades after this act was passed.Some may argue that Chapter 18, Section 375 of Title 10 US Code prevents military personnel from direct participation in law enforcement. However, defending US borders from foreign invaders is not law enforcement, it’s the basic purpose of the US military. While defending these United States from invasion, civilian law enforcement may be called upon to assist the US military. Does anyone believe the Border Patrol must operate fighter aircraft because the US Air Force can’t intercept aircraft crossing into the US because that’s “law enforcement”?

Not a strawman, and I quote "the fact is you cannot stop the flow of illegal immigration", I contend you can, quite easily, it just requires willpower, same as in the Mediterranean.

Billy86

JPNelsforearm wrote: »

How will the business owners and employees lose their jobs? The only "employees" losing their jobs are the illegal kind, those who suck up more in services than they put back in, in addition to depressing the wages of blue collar jobs. Again, if you cant run your business without peasant labour(subsidised(in the form of schools, healthcare etc) by the taxpayer I might add), you dont deserve to be in business.

There are about 5.1mn illegal workers in the US. There are about 8mn unemployed in the US. This means that those currently unemployed would need to match up pretty much perfectly in terms of a) skills, b) geographic location (with the US being fecking huge), and c) churn & demographic difficulties. It's not remotely realistic.

Meet John. John owns a construction company. John has staff who are not legally entitled to be, like many construction and landscape companies in the US. John used to have 20 staff members, now he has 12. John has contracts that John now cannot fulfill because of this gap. Not only is John struggling to find new staff, but of those qualified... John cannot afford to pay them what they want. John has four contracts on the go, all of which are now in massive jeopardy as John explains the situation to his clients. John now loses those contracts, and unable to find staff to fill the position, John is out of business. Now John and his 11 American workers are on the dole.

Pat lives across the street from John, he never liked John so it taking a bit of pleasure in John getting his comeuppance for his previous business practices. But Pat isn't happy, because the coffee and donut he gets on the way to his own job that used to cost $5 now costs $12. John's local place had to increase the price to offset the cheap labour they lost.

Tim owns that cafe, but Tim also knows he is going out of business. Why? It's partly to do with the price rises for his 15-strong staff (6 of whom were illegal) meaning he is seeing fewer and fewer customers while still having to pay his staff those higher rates. But it's really because half the building was in the process of being renovated, but the company who were doing it (owned by some lad called John) closed down. Tim had carefully budgeted for that renovation and now with the work half done, he's unable to find anyone to do it for an even near affordable rate for him. So Tim knows that it's done, and is going to have to start letting staff go almost immediately.

What has been achieved here is getting rid of 14 illegal workers, but at the cost of two businesses and 20 peoples jobs.

Of course Mary works in a steady job for a solicitors where there typically were very few illegals beyond perhaps courier and custodial staff; Mary is content on this front. If anything, they'll be getting extra work from the fallout. What Mary is not content about is the speed at which her taxes are rising to offset (and indeed support) those 20 unemployed (and their families).



You also claim illegal immigrants take more from services than they give - do you have any source for this?

Not true. Illegals commit a lot of crime, "Between 2008 and 2014, 40% of all murder convictions in Florida were criminal aliens. In New York it was 34% and Arizona 17.8%.
During those years, criminal aliens accounted for 38% of all murder convictions in the five states of California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and New York, while illegal aliens constitute only 5.6% of the total population in those states.
That 38% represents 7,085 murders out of the total of 18,643."

"While illegal immigrants account for about 3.5 percent of the U.S population, they represented 36.7 percent of federal sentences in FY 2014 following criminal convictions, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data obtained by Breitbart News.

According to FY 2014 USSC data, of 74,911 sentencing cases, citizens accounted for 43,479 (or 58.0 percent), illegal immigrants accounted for 27,505 (or 36.7 percent), legal immigrants made up 3,017 (or 4.0 percent), and the remainder (about 1 percent) were cases in which the offender was either extradited or had an unknown status.

Broken down by some of the primary offenses, illegal immigrants represented 16.8 percent of drug trafficking cases, 20.0 percent of kidnapping/hostage taking, 74.1 percent of drug possession, 12.3 percent of money laundering, and 12.0 percent of murder convictions."

http://www.cairco.org/issues/united-states-crime

Nice source - Breitbart and the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (read: Reduction)!

I don't know how to break this to you, but... that was completely fabricated bullsh*t. Which is to be expected from Breitbart.

I'm not just talking slight bullsh*t either. I mean that the guy who wrote the piece from Breitbart completely inflated the numbers (by up to 500%!), and the guy who came up with the report in the first place himself said they were talking the whole thing out of context and misquoting it. Not only that, but the report itself was not even based on hard data. It was knowingly fabricated bullsh*t, propping itself on a shoddy report with basically no factual grounding.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/aug/17/tom-tancredo/tancredo-muffs-illegal-immigrant-murder-stats/

We got into the weeds of each source, and the fact is neither provides an accurate look at the percentage of murders committed by criminal aliens in those five states.

...

The real figure may be impossible to know; Texas appears to be the only one of the five states that actually keeps track of convictions of criminal aliens.

...

He said "criminal aliens" accounted for 38 percent of murder convictions in five states between 2008 and 2014.

In fact, the presentation offered numbers for 2005 to 2008.

That's not the only issue. The presentation’s author, James Simpson, told us he had emailed Breitbart about Tancredo’s use of his presentation. "(Tancredo) quoted the whole thing incorrectly," Simpson told PunditFact.

...

We tried a variety of ways to reach Tancredo and did not hear back. [funny that, eh?]

...

The agency’s latest report covers June 1, 2011, to July 31, 2015. In that time, 344 noncitizens were convicted of homicide. In about the same period, Texas had 4,571 murders. (There’s a difference between calendar and fiscal years, but as of this writing, the differences balance out.) So based on counts of actual cases, criminal aliens account for 7.5 percent of all homicides in Texas.

That figure is striking because it is one-fifth as large as the number Simpson gave in his presentation. Simpson said, "Illegal aliens have committed 35 percent of all murders in Texas since 2008."

...

The numbers from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a widely respected source, are also imprecise — which is obvious from all of the report’s cautionary notes.

...

And the margin of error for the overall tally of homicides, as well as other crimes, was +/- 20 percent.

The GAO was clear about the lack of precision in its results. A close look shows why anyone should use them with great caution. [didn't stop Breitbart running with it though, did it?]

...

Further, in Florida, he reported three times as many killers as our estimate, and his percentage of all homicides due to criminal immigrants in Texas was about double the official number (albeit for a different time period).

...

But Simpson’s figures must be based on some statistical assumptions, not raw data, because his total is larger than the number of individual cases examined by the GAO. And Simpson told us "the whole thing is difficult to understand frankly, and they couldn’t explain it very well over the phone either. I may have to go back to them for clarification."

...

Also, Simpson compared the number of immigrants convicted of murder to the total number of murders. Tancredo said the percentages referred to all murder convictions. Since many murders go unsolved, that statement is clearly incorrect. This error underscores another way that Tancredo misquoted Simpson's work.

...

The bottom line is this: Even the man who generated the numbers, which Tancredo then misquoted, expresses uncertainty about their precision.

...

Tancredo used the wrong time period. He thought the baseline number was homicide convictions when it was actually all homicides. Most important of all, he took the presentation he relied on at face value and ignored the hard numbers available from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

...

We rate this claim as False.

On the other hand, you can look up how an estimate 1.6% of illegals in the US are in prison while 3.3% of native born Americans are. That's based off info from the American Community Survey - an official government body.

You most definitely can seal off the border, the US has the largest sophisticated military in the world. I'll try find it, but some colonel in the Army Rangers wrote a very good article on how you'd do it, its complete naivety of the US army and its capabilities to assume it cant be done, with drone technology, air assets, cameras, fencing, boots on the ground combined with a tough deportation rate the flow would cease to a trickle.

I guess it's fortunate there is a crazy amount of wilderness around Appalachia, because that's going to take a lot of magic money trees by the sounds of it.

And people would still find ways around it. That's humans for you... we're a sneaky bunch if nothing else! See: the Cairco/Breitbart article above.

InTheTrees

JPNelsforearm wrote: »

Thats "operating" on US soil, slightly different from securing the border, much of which would involve the creation of a buffer zone on mexican territory.

Wait what? This just gets better and better.

So in addition to the wall, the plan is to send the US Military to take over Mexican Territory to create a "buffer zone"?

So trump plans on invading Mexico??

Skylinehead

JPNelsforearm wrote: »

Thats "operating" on US soil, slightly different from securing the border, much of which would involve the creation of a buffer zone on mexican territory.

Is this statement attributable to Trump, or did you make it up? It's one thing building a wall/fence/whatever you want to call it, quite another to try and get another country to pay for it....and then there's going off the deep end and actually invading sovereign territory.

Christy42

JPNelsforearm wrote: »

Thats "operating" on US soil, slightly different from securing the border, much of which would involve the creation of a buffer zone on mexican territory.

Its not "awfully expensive", the troops are already hired, all the equipment already paid for. Eg: "As of January 2014, the U.S. military operates a large number of unmanned aerial systems: 7,362 RQ-11 Ravens; 990 AeroVironment Wasp IIIs; 1,137 AeroVironment RQ-20 Pumas; and 306 RQ-16 T-Hawk small UAS systems and 246 Predators and MQ-1C Grey Eagles; 126 MQ-9 Reapers; 491 RQ-7 Shadows; and 33 RQ-4 Global Hawk large systems

So the role of the US military is fighting foreign wars?:rolleyes: The role of every military is to serve the people, to defend the Nation, to protect vital national interests, and to fulfill national military responsibilities. Pretending there is some massive, legal or otherwise, impediment, is utterly false, its in national security interests to have a secure border. A stroke of a pen is all thats necessary.

"The US Army exists to defend the US from foreign invasion, which is expressly authorized by the US Constitution. Guarding the Mexican border was the Army’s primary peacetime mission until 1940, and no one ever declared this was in violation of this 1878 act. The US Border Patrol wasn’t even formed until 1924, so claiming the intent of this law was to prevent US Army troops from guarding the border is absurd. The map at left shows US Army forts in Texas in the late 1880s when the entire US Army had fewer than 40,000 soldiers; it has 500,000 today. Clearly, defending the US border was a primary mission of the US Army for decades after this act was passed.Some may argue that Chapter 18, Section 375 of Title 10 US Code prevents military personnel from direct participation in law enforcement. However, defending US borders from foreign invaders is not law enforcement, it’s the basic purpose of the US military. While defending these United States from invasion, civilian law enforcement may be called upon to assist the US military. Does anyone believe the Border Patrol must operate fighter aircraft because the US Air Force can’t intercept aircraft crossing into the US because that’s “law enforcement”?

Illegal immigrants are not invaders. The logic to get there is mind boggling. Do you accuse people of assault because they walk up to you? No serious definition of the word invaders can be used to describe unarmed and unorganised civilians sneaking into your country.

A buffer zone in Mexico is an invasion. You are going into Mexico with armed soldiers to create that zone. Weren't you anti war? I mean sure Mexico probably won't resist purely because they would be destroyed if they tried but it is an invasion. That is complete bully boy tactics right there and incredibly immoral. Added to this the fact that individual Mexicans may organise themselves to resist (and I wouldn't blame them).

Also if there won't be an actual wall what is Trump expecting Mexico to pay for? Also why can't I hear about these details from Donald Trump. Pretty sure he never said anything about a buffer zone.