Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsrgv.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!vassos
From: vassos@utcsrgv.UUCP (Vassos Hadzilacos)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Immigrants ("illegal aliens") in the U.S.
Message-ID: <541@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 2-Dec-84 15:18:19 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.541
Posted: Sun Dec  2 15:18:19 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Dec-84 15:53:54 EST
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 31

> Here's a small example [of something good the U.S. Government does]:
> the millions of illegal aliens in the States.  These aliens, although
> not as well of[f] as American citizens, are much better off than
> their friends in their home countries.

There are many different reasons why people from other countries,
particularly Latin American countries, go to the U.S. Not the least
of which is the extreme economic deprivation and political repression
they face in the countries of their birth. Present and past U.S. foreign
policy is the primary cause of this predicament. Name nearly any country
in Latin America, look in the index of a decent history book and count
wars, invasions, and military coups inflicted upon that country by U.S.
governments. To suggest that the U.S. government is being or has been
generous to the peoples of Latin America, be it in their own countries or
in the U.S. as immigrants (or "illegal aliens", if you wish) is, at best,
wearing rose coloured glasses over your blindfold -- more likely the height
of cynical hypocricy. (If someone burnt your house and then let you
sleep in their pigsty, you wouldn't call that generosity, would you?)

> We could just kick them all out and send them back to their respective Latin
> American countries, but we're not doing this.

Of course "you" couldn't "just kick them all out". Moreover, "you"
wouldn't even _want_ to "just kick them all out". Among other things,
who would be picking "your" fruit and vegetables at starvation wages?

> We're hardly even requiring them to become legal aliens.

I'm having a little trouble following the logic here. Do you mean
that "you" are making them some kind of favour by not _requiring_
them to become legal aliens?  Oh, how very nice.