I haven't read through it yet, I need a fresh mind before I do that.
comment, make suggestions, have at it.  THANKS!



[quote]Dear Editor,
Driving down Main Street today I saw something encouraging, people acting upon what they believe in.  I saw people with signs that, if I remember correctly, said “We were all immigrants”, and on national news I saw people with signs that read “We aren’t terrorists”.  Those may all be fact, but because immigration is not the issue being discussed in Washington D.C. I believe these people are very misinformed.  The issue is illegal immigration.
When people cross our borders into the United States illegally they are just exploiting a major security flaw, they may not be a security threat personally, but their way of entering is a very large security threat.  The fact that illegal immigrants are here is also an economic threat in that they do not pay taxes but they do use our public facilities for “free”.
Another point I would like to make is that, for example, when you go into someone’s home you do not put their home down by saying your home is better; it is very rude and discourteous.  By shouting “Viva Mexico”, it seems to me that people want to come here for the benefits of America without becoming an American and embracing America.  Waving the Mexican flag is no different.  Might I remind people we came to America because America had something better to offer us, we are now Americans first and foremost before any other heritage.  It does not make sense to come to America to make it the country you a fleeing, come to America because you love it and want to make it even better.
I have one last point to address, but first I would like to make it clearly known, since some people cannot interpret things correctly, that I support immigration, and with out it I would not be here as I am technically a 4th generation immigrant.  From what I have gathered, at least hundreds of thousands if not now millions of people apply for United States citizenship each year.  They wait in line, file papers, take tests, they gain their American citizenship legally.  Is it fair to the legal immigrants to allow the Mexican border to be open for anyone to just jump the line, the border line and the line for U.S. citizenship?  Could we possibly allow more legal immigrants into our nation if fewer people were cheating their way into our country?

Tyler *******, a 19 year old 4th generation immigrant

[/quote]

While you may believe citizens should be American first, there is a reason people use the terms "African-American" and "Mexican-American." They put preference to African and Mexican and not American, because to them they are African/Mexican first, then American.

And you may accuse people of being misinformed, but it sounds like you're misinformed as well. No one is saying let illegal immigrants jump to the front of the line. No one is even saying give them citizenship. People just want a guest worker program so they can be taxed, etc.

If you do plan to submit this letter, go through it with a fine-tooth comb because it doesn't read particularly well.

There shouldn't be african/mexican/italian/chinese Americans, we should all be Americans.

As far as me being misinformed, where did I say anyone is saying "let the jjump the line", I just ask if it is fair.  Also, I believe MOST people are saying let them earn their citizenship & start a worker program for new workers (not immigrants).

What about it doesnt read well, the whole thing or parts in particular?  Will you please point them out?  I want this to be a very reader friendly letter so it gets my point across to the rather uneducated town I live in.

[quote author=dxoigmn link=topic=14744.msg150358#msg150358 date=1144714611]
People just want a guest worker program so they can be taxed, etc.
[/quote]
I think the problem with this is that it removes a primary motivation of undocumented aliens to work here: they don't pay taxes.

any comments on the letter?

I'd like to submit it tonight so it has time to be read and published this week in our local univ. paper.

[quote author=CrAz3D link=topic=14744.msg150361#msg150361 date=1144715150]
There shouldn't be african/mexican/italian/chinese Americans, we should all be Americans.
[/quote]

Some people just don't buy that America is a melting pot.

[quote author=CrAz3D link=topic=14744.msg150361#msg150361 date=1144715150]
As far as me being misinformed, where did I say anyone is saying "let the jjump the line", I just ask if it is fair.  Also, I believe MOST people are saying let them earn their citizenship & start a worker program for new workers (not immigrants).
[/quote]

You don't say it, but your certainly insinuating some people are saying it is okay for them to jump the line and be granted citizenship. You're arguing a moot point because no one is saying that.

[quote author=CrAz3D link=topic=14744.msg150361#msg150361 date=1144715150]
What about it doesnt read well, the whole thing or parts in particular?  Will you please point them out?  I want this to be a very reader friendly letter so it gets my point across to the rather uneducated town I live in.
[/quote]

Using cliches like"if I remember correctly" certainly draws into question your whole letter. "Another point I would like to make is that, for example," -- wordy. "to make it the country you a fleeing" -- obvious. "I have one last point to address, but first I would like to make it clearly known, since some people cannot interpret things correctly, that I support immigration, and with out it I would not be here as I am technically a 4th generation immigrant. " -- run on sentence. Frankly, it reads like a middle schooler wrote it.

[quote author=MyndFyre[vL] link=topic=14744.msg150365#msg150365 date=1144717534]
[quote author=dxoigmn link=topic=14744.msg150358#msg150358 date=1144714611]
People just want a guest worker program so they can be taxed, etc.
[/quote]
I think the problem with this is that it removes a primary motivation of undocumented aliens to work here: they don't pay taxes.
[/quote]

That is debatable. It's not like they're making millions of dollars every year, where they would be paying the highest tax bracket. These guys are not making a lot of money. Their primary motivation is to make money, they could care less if they had to pay taxes. If anything, that would just motivate them to work more so that in the end it balances out once again. Stop demonizing them, they're just as hard as worker as the next American, if not harder.

I'm not saying people think that we should allow mexican to jump the line I'm pointing out that there are others getting here legally & that jumping the line is unfair.
I think that is pretty obvious.

"to make it the country you are fleeing"...what is obviously 'wrong' about that?
edit: I believe it adds a bit of reality to it.  "dont come to america to make it like mexico, come to america to make it better" seems to be what is happening.  there is so much spanish crap all over the place that sometimes I (an american citizen) dont know what the hell they're talking about.

I will fix that run on, thanks.

I changed a few parts...


removed
[quote]By shouting “Viva Mexico”, it seems to me that people want to come here for the benefits of America without becoming an American and embracing America. [/quote]

added in place of that
[quote].  By shouting “Viva Mexico”, it seems to me that people want to come here for the benefits of America without becoming an American and embracing our values and culture.  [/quote]

I think that it's decent, while it does need some touch ups, and a more formal approach. Audiences become most discouraged by chopy sentencing, awkward wording, and poor grammar. Also, people might become insulted, and see your standpoint as an attack at them. Remember, many people are VERY personal about their heritage, and culture, saying they should come to America to be american would defeat the entire point they came in the first place. America is a land of freedom and choice, where people be what they want to be, permitted they abide by the law  ::)

Overall, if you fix her up, its a 7/10 in my book, for an article that is...

I can assume that I'd get unwelcome responses because the people here are quite misinformed.

This is a letter I wrote to my senators/representative:

[quote]Honorable Senators McCain and Kyl, and Representative Flake,

I am writing to you today with a proposal that will not only solve the problems we face as a country due to illegal immigration, but also the out-of-control spending we face year after year, and the apparent inability of the House and Senate to trim any measure of pork from legislation.  The solution also makes the President directly accountable to the people every time they shop, and so perhaps he will be more judicious in his use of future line-item veto privileges, and we as Republicans can return to the program we have classically supported – minimal government, the right to retain your paycheck, and support for people who obey our laws.

The proposal centers around what has been come to be known as the fair tax.  The “fair tax” abolishes the current tax code, including the bloated IRS, and bases taxes on consumption.  The immediate benefit of this is clear: we eliminate a large part of the federal bureaucracy because it becomes entirely unnecessary.

An immediate concern is that the tax might bankrupt the poor; after all, a tax on consumption, or federal sales tax, would cause a roughly 23% increase in the cost of all goods and services.  This is combated by a monthly rebate issued at the valuation of necessary goods and services based on the number of people living within a household.

Immediately, this refund gives people who would otherwise choose to live here illegally a motivation to be documented; without proper documentation, their cost of living rises significantly.  Because a federal sales tax would be applied universally, there is little or no concern that an illegal immigrant is getting out of paying taxes in some way – anyone living here and using any kind of good or service is paying taxes, and only those who are legally eligible will obtain any kind of assistance.

We’re still faced with the problem of what to do with the several million undocumented illegal aliens living within the United States right now.  Some people would like to round them up, and others would like them to be tried as felons.  Although I believe neither of these options is economically feasible, combined with the Fair Tax program, we can cause the undocumented workers to come to the government to become documented.

We are at a stage in technological development where it should not be an issue for the federal government to set up a national registry of people to cross-check the identification provided (in fact, my church that provides food and clothing for needy people in south Phoenix has a system that tracks IDs for duplicates, as people are only allowed to return once per month).

With as near as we are to full employment, it seems to me that there are in fact jobs that would go unfilled without the labor coming in from across the border.  So, we should set up a guest worker program that enables foreign nationals to live and work in the United States on a temporary but renewable basis, provided that the alien can demonstrate that he or she is employed.  People in the United States under this classification shall not be eligible to receive welfare (as the operative word in the title is “guest worker”), but shall be permitted to have a family here under the same stipulations.  Children may attend public schools.  However, the other stipulation of the guest worker program is that it does not orient the working alien on the path to citizenship.

As I mentioned public schools, we also need to guard against slowing down American children who are in schools that will be populated with the children of guest workers.  We need to set a high standard of competency in English for students of guest workers before they can join the classroom; if that requires several months of immersion teaching, everybody in the schools will be better off for it.

As you know, being a border state, Arizona has also had difficulty in terms of healthcare.  Two hospitals near Tucson last year were temporarily closed because they were not compensated for the care of people they could not turn away.  It is obviously a problem for us to create a law that allowed our hospitals to turn away people, as well.  What we need to do is have the government take bids from private insurance providers.  Illegal immigrants are paying human traffickers thousands of dollars per person to smuggle them here; if we allow people to come in more easily, but require that they pay health insurance, they are still benefiting.  Health insurance would allow these people to go to regular doctors rather than the emergency room for a cold, ear infection, or the flu, paving the way for people with real emergencies to be treated faster, and hospital costs to be less.  We also need to ensure that people are covered for driving insurance; in Arizona, such insurance is required, and should be mandatory at every point of entry.  This insurance can also be bid out by the federal government.

Please note that I am not suggesting the federal government should subsidize this insurance in any way.  That is certainly not my intention.  I work for the municipal government, and we bid out contracts all the time; we don’t always take the lowest bidder, but that which meets our needs.  If estimates of 12 million illegal immigrants are correct, I would imagine insurance companies would be thrilled to have that many new customers.

The final, and perhaps most important, component to this reform is the security of the border.  By making it easy to cross the border legally, and by implementing the fair tax, we are already giving people who want to work motivation to cross the border legally.  Knowing that, we can safely infer that people who are not crossing the border legally have something to lose; they may be drug smugglers or terrorists.  With such a measure, a fence would be unnecessary and in fact may make border enforcement more difficult; drug smugglers are already digging tunnels to get here.  Rather, technology is the solution; high-sensitivity ground sensors that show when tunnels are being dug, unmanned aerial vehicles to spot border encroachers, and radar systems placed strategically along the border can tell us when people are encroaching along the border.

A recent Fox poll found that eight in ten Americans were against a path of amnesty that led to citizenship.  A friend of mine, with whom I went to high school, is a resident alien whose parents have naturalized from Mexico.  He has not yet been able to become a citizen, and he went through the proper legal channels; you can imagine his outrage at the possibility that the people who have shortcut the system would be rewarded with citizenship, and all the rights and privileges that entails.

Please withdraw your support for current measures in favor of a bill that includes this work.  In the meantime, please remember that you are elected to represent the legal citizens and residents of the State of Arizona – not Mexico – and vote accordingly.
[/quote]

Close the damn border already!!

[quote author=powered by nissan link=topic=14744.msg150464#msg150464 date=1144804039]
Close the damn border already!!
[/quote]
uhm, that isnt terribly on topic, however....i agree to an extent the bord should be closed....
check the politics forum if you want to debate about it



and uh, yeah,Myndfyre, thanks for showing me that fair tax thing and making those points in your letter about immigrants wanting to become documented inorder to receive their reimbursement checks.
I think I'm going to rewrite my letter to representatives to include taxation, the fair tax idea, and what you mentioned about immigrants wanting to become documented.

WHOO.
It was in today's university paper as was a letter (from a dude in college dems, sorta funny cuz im from college reps).
I think over all my letter has much more of an impact than his does.
Go me ;)

I've gotten a good few good comments about it also!