Illegal Immigration In California

First off, thank you for accepting the challenge Amphia and keeping things civil. Here in California they get a ton of rights including: drivers licences, instate tuition, law and other professional licences, as well as sanctuary cities. Not to mention all of the programs they illegally take advantage of like Social Security and Welfare programs. You can find these points in an article by LA Times under this title. "California gives immigrants here illegally unprecedented rights, benefits, protections" Look, I understand your position. It's humanitarian and that's great but not at the expense of natives tax dollars and other immigrants who have to wait and come here the right way. It's unfair for both parties. As far as sancuary cities go. They shouldn't even exist. Why have a path to immigration if you have a loophole like sancuary cities where only Mexican's and South American's can utilize cause of their geographic location to the US? Progressives in California over the last 10 years have increasingly placed the so-called "rights" of illegal immigrants over the public safety of its residents. Research conducted by the federal government oversight organization Judicial Water in 2014 documents that 50 percent of all federal crimes were committed near our border with Mexico. Of the 61,529 criminal cases filed by federal prosecutors 40 percent or 24,746 were in court districts along the southern borders of California, Arizona and Texas. Don't know where you got that idea about sancuary cities from? Statistics prove otherwise that sancuary cities harbor violent criminals, a lot of them! You site that all Mexicans are not the only illegal immigrants that come to the US. Your right people do over stay their visas but that's not the problem. The problem is that nearly 1 and 10 California workers is an undocumented mexican immigrant. 52% of illegal immigrants in the US are from Mexico. Being an electrician in the trades in Southern California I can attest to this. Not saying they are the cause but they definitely are the effect! You see buisness owners would rather hire unskilled illegal immigrants over a skilled native simply because those unskilled workers will take a lot less for the job and are easily controlled. This in turn drives the wages down and hurts our economy. It's absolute bs that skilled workers like myself have to suffer because of this. Since the late 1980's construction pay has gone down 40% because of the influx of illegal immigration into the construction trade. You can google these issues in these articles. LA Times: Immigrants flooded California construction. Worker pay sank. Here's why. The other is by Brietbart News: Whistleblower Says Illegal Aliens Have "Taken over Every Trade" in CA Construction, Driven Down U.S. Wages. I don't know why you assume that i think all Mexicans are drug dealers? That must be the media painting a picture for you that all Americans think that. It's an ignorant stance. The truth is yes, some do pay taxes but you gotta look at the bigger picture. Most of them are not. If you look at the total taxes paid by illegal immigrants which 18,968,857,700 and then look at the total national cost of having illegal immigrants in the country that number is 134,863,455,364. Add that up and the total cost of having illegal immigrants in this country and what American taxpayers have to fork out is a whopping 116 billion!!! Do you see the problem yet? The thing about sancuary cities is that they are fundamentally illegal. Its a loophole in the law thst shouldnt exist. It's completely ridiculous that we reward illegal immigrants for breaking the law by giving them sancuary. You site that most illegal immigrants aren't harming society? Well Federal crime statistics seem to think otherwise. Like I said earlier. 40% of all federal crimes in the US come from border towns in the southwest. Do you not see a problem with that? As far as rounding up every illegal immigrant in California, your right it would be a waste of time and resources but, when the feds have a list of illegal immigrants that are violent felons that they are planning on raiding, like what just happened in Oakland we have politicians that are trying to protect them by warning them before the raid. Do you not see that as protecting the rights of illegal immigrants over its own citizens? Because of that warning over 800 illegal immigrants fled the area a lot of them being those violent felons. The one thing I can 100% agree upon is your last paragraph. Your absolutely right, immigration definitely needs to be held by a case by case basis. In other words we need a merit based immigration system like Switzerland has. We should be letting people come in based off what they can offer to the country. Are you a skilled worker? Do you have a degree? Do you have a criminal history? I think if we move more in this direction and do away with all the rights and privileges California gives to illegal immigrants and make them work for a path to citizenship there will be less animosity towards them. This in time will boost the economy and way of life for a lot of working class Americans because they are no longer competing with unskilled immigrants. The effect of this would be more skilled competition in the work place which results in higher wages and better benefits.