(June 23, 2018 at 2:49 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote:(June 23, 2018 at 11:46 am)FlyingNarwhal Wrote: There's a lot of different factors if your talking improving Mexico's infrastructure. One thing we could definitely do to help would be ending the War on Drugs. That would go a long way to help dismantling the cartels in Mexico and in turn make it safer. We've also already tried working a deal with Mexico where we would send immigrants to them. They'll take back their own citizens but they won't take immigrants from other Central & South American countries.
Spending money on another country's infrastructure is a step too far though in my opinion, especially one that shares a border with us. The amount of money it would cost to make significant changes that would have some kind of impact would be astronomical. We're also talking about creating jobs in Mexico, if you're doing it right the US would basically be spending money to potentially have businesses leave the US or at the very least make us less competitive on a global scale.
You have to think, the whole reason people are angry about illegal immigrants coming to this country is because they are taking American jobs and not paying taxes. What your proposing is that the US should help to move American jobs to Mexico and we pay for it in our taxes as well. It would probably face way more opposition then illegal immigration already does.
Why we send billions in foreign aid all around the world? Mexico already has a very aggressive plan for rebuilding their infrastructure but because they lack funding and are so underdeveloped it takes a very long time to get these programs completed, the US could easily invest in Mexico and Central America. Instead we are trying to build a 70 billion dollar border wall that costs 150 million dollars per year to maintain, and it wont stop immigrants from trying to get into the US.
Okay Illegal immigrants are not stealing jobs, because business owners could choose to hire american citizens. Anyone who has ever worked a job knows that when you apply for a job you are asked about citizenship and required to produce identification. Illegal immigrants do pay taxes, someone else has already posted those statistics so I won't do it again.
Also I did not propose that "we move American jobs to Mexico and pay for it through our taxes", I said nothing even close to that. What I propose is that we invest in Mexico's infrastructure to secure our borders rather than trying to build a ridiculous wall.
Yes we send billions in foreign aid, but that is completely different then building a country's infrastructure. We spend about $50 billion in foreign aid, a country's infrastructure costs trillions. Think of US foreign aid similarly to how corporations donate to charities or political candidates, there is typically some kind of benefit in doing so. A corporation might donate to a charity as a tax write off or drum up good will amongst the public, and they donate to political candidates so they can hold some kind of sway over the candidate and future policy. That's how we dispense of foreign aid, it's not just out of the kindness of our hearts. It's to make us look good, promote favorable trade, and gain allies. A large chunk of our foreign aid goes to Israel, so that we can maintain a close ally in the middle east.
Border wall would be expensive, I don't support it, I think most Americans don't support it, and I don't think it will ever get passed. I truly believe Trump talked about a wall to pander to his base.
I work in the construction supplies market, I deal with illegal immigrants on a regular basis. A lot of them are good customers of mine, so trust me when I say I hold no personal qualms against them. There are absolutely ways around being hired as an illegal immigrant. Most of the time it's employers simply paying in cash under the table, which is illegal for both parties. The employers typically avoids paying benefits amongst other things and usually can also pay their illegal employee less. This gives the illegal immigrant a competitive edge against a US worker. Some illegal immigrants pay taxes, not all of them. I already extrapolated the data in a previous post so I don't really want to go into full detail here.
You're not promoting that we directly move jobs from the US to Mexico, but that could very well be the outcome, especially given the fact that it is our neighboring country. For example San Diego, CA is 30 minutes from the border, and manufacturing is a decent part of their economy. If we pay for Mexico's infrastructure, they could in turn offer a lower corporate tax rate because they didn't have to spend the money to build the infrastructure that brings businesses there. In a sense, we've subsidized there ability to be more competitive in getting business to choose their country over ours. So while there may be less illegal immigrants coming to the US, we're still seeing a detriment to jobs because they have gone to Mexico instead. We're also not getting paid taxes from those business, and to top it all off we paid the bill for it to happen.
