Reply #223: I wouldn't say that Americans have inherited everything

[MajorChode]

Our society was built by people who set a firm foundation and it's maintained by constant vigilance and work.

Mexico and many other South American countries were built on corruption from day one. Mexico is a country of haves and have nots. It's the perfect Laissez-faire system (if there is such a thing) and exactly the "utopia" that Republicans seek for the US. They exploit their own people even more readily than the US does and it's fully supported by their government which is almost always in on the action. I don't feel any particular personal guilt for that situation. YMMV.

I agree the fault lies completely with those who exploit and I have never believed the problem can be solved by trying to deport all the illegal aliens or stop them at the border. The crackdown needs to occur with those who give them jobs. Dry up the jobs and they will stop coming and many will self deport. Fix the problem with the illegal aliens and we could allow a much larger number of aliens to legally immigrate. Furthermore I don't blame most of them for coming as generally they and their families are doing very poorly where they were.

As far as the term "illegal alien" goes, it's been around for about 200 years now. It doesn't dehumanize anyone anymore than calling any other group of lawbreakers lawbreakers. A person who steals food because they are hungry is still a thief. Their condition may mitigate or even eliminate whatever punishment they would normally deserve, but it doesn't change the fact that they knowingly broke the law. Again, changing the name in some attempt at being PC does not change the condition. The term has been widely accepted and is both grammatically and legally correct. Inventing new terms with the exact same meaning every few years to temporarily dodge alleged pejorative connotations just to make people feel better about themselves never really did anything for me. I'd rather call people out for using perfectly legitimate terms in the pejorative in the first place. It just makes more sense to me to address the problem rather than the symptom. YMMV.