I know this is not going to be well received, so I apologize now.
In other threads I have sided with Rugrunner, in a general sense I have the same basic view set as him with a some what more moderate stance.
That being said Steve *R is right.
When you walk up to a publicly funded hospital, and almost every hospital in America receives some public funding; they have to treat you.
The question at hand is not if illegal immigrants should receive health care, they already do. The question is should they receive preventive and early intervention care. It is much cheaper for the tax payer to pay for a 10 day supply of penicillin then it is for them to pay for a 10 day hospital stay after the infection has gotten out of hand.
However I am all for beefing up the boarders and keeping them out in the first place. Also I would favor making them serve time in a jail setting or work camp if they are caught here. Right now being swept down the Rio Grand is the only deterrent to trying to cross the boarder. Today if we catch illegals trying to cross they are finger printed photographed and drive back to the boarder to try again the next day. There needs to be some real consequences for trying to cross the boarder.
Next are the employers, they have a very real financial incentive for hiring illegals. It is not that illegals do work that most Americans won’t do, it is that they do it for a wage most of us won’t work for. Also a business owner can run a less then safe and or fair shop because he knows his employees can’t or won’t call the authorities. In some of these cases employers have been know to make them work 50, 60 or 70 hours in a week and not pay them any over time. Most of the time the illegals are just happy to be paid for the hours worked, they have no concept of time and a half. There needs to be heavy fines and jail time for employers that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. I know this is going to make it more difficult legal immigrants to get a job and no I don’t have a good answer for how we get past that.
As it stands right now a man living in Mexico with minimal skills would be a fool not to try and cross the boarder. And the only thing stopping someone from hiring him is his own basic sense of right and wrong. Until this part of the equation changes we will continue to have this problem.
I also would like to point out that while this thread has focused on Mexican immigrants these problems hold true with all illegal immigrants no matter their nation of origin.
Steve
