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In a speech Wednesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) declared immigration reform dead. He chastised and baited Republicans in Congress for blocking reform, and declared that winning the White House without the support of a growing Hispanic population will become mathematically impossible. "The Republican Presidential nominee, whoever he or she may be, will enter the race with an electoral college deficit they cannot make up," said Gutierrez. Gutierrez didn't mention the H-1B visa in the speech, but if he's right, and comprehensive immigration reform is indeed dead, then so too is a provision in the bill that would have raised the cap on H-1B visas. Immigration reform advocates have successfully blocked any effort to take up the immigration issue piecemeal. They don't want support for broader reform to peel away.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 28 2014, @11:51PM
Another problem is that America is more lax than other countries in encouraging assimilation. Many people refer to America as a "melting pot," which suggests that immigrants should, you know, melt a little. Lack of a national language encourages immigrant enclaves which perpetuate often-undesirable behavior and cultural barriers. I've personally dealt with being unable to patronize a business because nobody on duty knew English. That is understandable in a place like the Imperial Valley, but totally unacceptable in a large fast-food franchise in an upper-middle class neighborhood (which was my experience). And, things are even worse in Los Angeles when the city is shut down because of a 500,000 man-strong [nbcnews.com] protest about perceived yet undeserved entitlements (and note that the L.A. Times version of the article fails to mention all the flags from other countries flown instead of the American flag). We have a process for immigration, and nobody like a line-jumper. Illegal immigrants are fucking over legitimate immigrants who choose to go through the motions. Nobody should feel entitled to immigrate anywhere without fulfilling all requirements, including the waiting.
Canada [cic.gc.ca] requires knowing at least some English or French and the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship. America requires a half-ass 10-question test, where the immigrant can weasel around the English requirement by using an interpreter. We also need to get rid of "anchor babies" and require that at least one parent must be a citizen of the child is to be born a citizen. We need to scrap counterproductive vote-pandering shit like the DREAM act, [wikipedia.org] and remove all other incentives for illegal immigration.
It used to be a good thing when America's Republicans and Democrats agreed on something, now, when they do it doesn't bode well for the common American citizen. Democrats won't enact productive immigration reform because Muh Latino votes and muh bleeding heart and Republicans won't because Muh big business.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:05AM
one of the most ridiculous things is that christian latinos are traditionally conservative, and would absolutely love to be able to vote conservative, but the GOP is honestly NOT a "conservative" party but a "rich white man" party, and only care about making things 'better' for other rich white men. if the GOP actually treated latinos like, you know, human beings, they'd have basically all the latino votes by default. the democrats dont need to go out of their way to keep latino votes, because the GOP is doing everything they can to drive all minority voters away.