bobdon000 Anonymous

The membership base of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce has a vested interest in making sure that Mexico supplies them with an abundance of cheap (and often illegal) workers.

I am not impressed by a bunch of men and women who gather together to meet with Mexican authorities to insure that this endless pool of labor continues.

They (chamber members) make a very good living off under-paid, unskilled and sometimes illegal workers; leaving Americans begging for jobs and competing with the migrant Mexican workforce for low-pay.

Stop the legal and illegal immigration and American business would be forced to pay higher wages (and better benefits) to Americans.

Mayor Leppert isn't doing Dallasites any favors by setting this meeting up. He only continues the status quo for corporate and small businesses.

2 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

bobdon000 Anonymous

SD: I favor reasonable levels of legal immigraiton. A slowing in the large number of legal immigrants coming into this country would be welcomed; allowing the US to mainstream the already high levels of legal and illegals who have arrived here in the past several decades(more immigrants than any other period in our short history).

And a remedy to increasing costs (wages, fuel, general inflation) is not more foreign workers, but higher living wages for Americans and new technologies to increase their productivity.

But more to the point is my comments regarding the Chamber of Commerce; whose many members (particularly the food and hospitality industry) have made alot of money using illegal and cheap labor. Their (the Chamber of Commerce members) agenda is more immigration, cheaper labor, more consumers. The Chamber of Commerce is not a friend of working Americans. Mayor Leppert shouldn't be facilitating their agenda.

2 months, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

EdWeirdness Anonymous

Overpopulation, congestion, urban sprawl, crime, pollution, lack of affordable housing, crumbling infrastructure, vanishing farm land and green space, diminishing resources, overcrowded schools and emergency rooms, depressed wages, increased tax burdens, the balkanization of our communities, the overall decline in quality of life, are all the result of unconstrained immigration. Too many people chasing limited resources!

To the extent that the COC wears blinders (the COC and its members are the epitome of parasitic economic opportunism)to any other concern other than "growth for the sake of begetting even more growth" (read consumer spending)they play a major role in influencing Legislators.

Legislators who for the most part remain focused on protecting their phoney baloney jobs and who could care less about their constituents, or the will of America's Citizens.

America is considered "population stable". That is, even if we were able to completely stop all forms of immigration, our population (arguably we are overpopulated based on resources, our ability to feed ourselves from the bounty within our borders, etc,,,) will never be any smaller than it is right now. Given that we are at replacement value (American's born is equal to American's who die), arguments that we will run out of workers is based only on misguided social service models for failing programs (medicare, social security, etc,,,,), and outdated business models.

Like it or not, our ability to provide for our population has a finite limit, a limit based on pragmatism rather than racism.

Business interests, particularly American business interests and the COC, have little or no regard for the long term sustainability of our quality of live. Rather they are profit centric, short term goal oriented.

Corporations are not the benign "family" that the COC would have us believe. And too the extent that even small business is moving in the same direction, American workers and our overall economy are at some jeopardy.

Corporate managers no longer subscribe to the "Ford model" (he paid his employee's enough in wages that they could afford the products they built, thereby expanding the market, etc,,,,), nor are employers answerable in any way to the community. Indeed, small business finds it easier, cheaper, and less fraught with "paper work" to simply supplant their existing workers with illegal alien workers.

American corporations no longer focus on innovation, efficiency, productivity, competition as the "revenue streams", but rather are increasingly dependent on "reducing wage and worker dependency" as a means to return value to shareholders. So much so, that corporations, even those in decline and in jeopardy of failure reward their "temporary leaders" with millions in undeserved, unearned perks and golden parachutes. Thus far, no one has made a vaild argument in favor of "too many people competing for limited resources" serving as a model for sound economic, environmental, social or cultural policy. The COC has likewise only acted to further alienate the business community from the interests of communities they serve. Globalization is a concept that is increasingly falling into disfavor. A reality increasingly apparent as fuel costs and availability are increasingly relevent!

Personally, I make it a practice, and I heartily advocate boycotting any area business that is a memeber of the COC. The fact that many businesses "proudly" thumb their noses by advertising that they are a "COC member" only makes it easier for me to chose the businesses where I spend my money. Heck, the local COC will even furnish you a list of their member businesses. I keep my "boycott list" in the map pocket of my car.

Virtually every industrialized nation, even China and Mexico, have taken steps to end illegal immigration and too curtail legal immigration to only that which is prudent, demonstrably necessary, and above all other concerns, in the best interest of their native populations. Its dangerously misguided to suggest that the United States not do likewise.

America is charitable and compassionate to a fault, but I daresay, if we're to take advise on our governance, it should not be advice from the elitist government of any corrupt nations who's chief export is its own population!

The will of the people (and not the COC) has served us well for the better part of three centuries. Business interests and the COC should not, and must not be allowed to usurp the will of the people, or undermine the interests of America's Citizens.

You do realize that "competition" also means that businesses should be required to "compete" for the American and legal immigrant workers they need? Our policies should not be designed to provide employers with a tax payer funded "low cost alternative" to hiring, training, and retaining American workers, nor should our tax policy encourage (or allow) employers to "take their ball and go elsewhere"!

American's once did all the jobs that the COC asserts they don't or won't do now. If that were truly the case, we are in a death spiral as a sovereign nation. Illegals will advance (with the assistance of an increasingly put-upon American tax payer) and no longer accept these jobs either, resulting in an endless flow of increasingly destitute immigrants queuing up to get in, and fewer opportunities for America's workers. The race to the cheapest bottom line cannot be run on the backs of America's workers or tax payers! Any employer who asserts that they cannot survive if they are constrained to compete for legal American workers probably doesn't deserve to remain an ongoing concern. Certainly not at the expense of American workers and tax payers. How can we advocate the spread of democracy and social equity in other nations so long as we make it easier and far more profitable for residents of other nations to take the easy way out, slip across our borders, and take advantage of American largess?

I daresay, would there even be a United States if our founders had chosen to simply slip across a porous border and not confront the Crown?

We the people only get the government we're willing to accept. The same holds true for any nation. The corrupt, elitist governments south of our border are only too willing to export their poor, their unskilled, their education, health care, criminal costs to America's tax payers.

Any nation that does not control its borders, that does not build the products its consumers buy, or that cannot feed its population from the bounty within its borders will remain at the mercy of foreign interests, and find itself controlled by events outside their realm of influence.

2 months, 1 week ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

EdWeirdness Anonymous

FYI: Since Oklahoma implemented it's "draconnian" policies dealing with illegal immigrants, unemployment in that state has dropped to 3.1% (nationally, unemployment is flirting with 5%, and prior to the Oklahoma laws, that state was likewise tied to the national average). Wages are up overall, and thousands of illegals are no longer burdening Oklahoma tax payers. Employers and the COC are still whining that competing for "lazy" American workers will wreck the Oklahoma economy, but in the absence of mass closures of businesses or an exodus of employers, one must assume such bleating to be the stuff of hyperbole.

Doubtless, some COC employee's may be sweating their phony baloney gigs, as their hysteria and the millions spent lobbying to prevent the economic implosion of Oklahoma (and perhaps many other states) were obviously scare tactics and extremely misguided. Only time will tell.

Apparently, American and legal immigrant workers from surrounding states are moving to Oklahoma to fill the jobs (and the affordable housing) being vacated by illegal aliens. Indeed, statistics are starting to appear indicating that Oklahomans, long out of the job market, are again seeking gainfull employment.

As aliens crowd into sanctuary states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, etc,,,), more American workers will find it desireable return to the job market, or perhaps simply decide to relocate to non-sanctuary states like Oklahoma and Arizona. Arizona Employer's, early adopters of the new reality are thought to be the main beneficiaries.

2 months, 1 week ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )