Ay, yo, how about ppl here ship money to the Red Cross instead of workshopping ways to justify indentured servitude?

Of all the "make the mexicans work for us to earn documentation" schemes one can cook up, making the policy something about helping out in a 500 year flood is just about the worst.

Some more caring souls...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30...arvey-1686147/

Jesus. ****. There are literally millions of undocumented immigrants in the country right now that have endured years of working under harsh conditions with no promise of citizenship. Every single one of them deserves citizenship, like, years ago. Yet the political party you support has actively opposed this because they and their base a full of xenophobic bigots. Aren't you like 80? How are you not aware of this. ****.

This. The joke is Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans brown because so many legal and illegal Hispanic workers moved there to do construction work for years. The search and rescue work doesn't need unskilled hands, it needs people with boats and search and rescue crews. The clean up is basically picking up things and putting it into dumpsters, sure that could use unskilled labor but for a few weeks at most. Demoing and construction is going to take years though.

In any case, the more American way is to let illegal immigrants in, let them do their work when needed, them after their done turn the screws to them and kick them out. I'd say the attitude behind let's let immigrants do the dangerous work is more indicative of aforementioned method than any kind of honest quid pro quo.

Any legislation that includes a path to citizenship also includes fines paid by undocumented immigrants. Should liberals vote against such proposals?

Not that I think David's idea would work, but should we really say "No! These immigrants must accept their shadowy legal status and risk of deportation until I see a proposal that is 100% pure morality-wise."

Since opposition to immigration reform is based primarily on racial animus, Trump supporters would never accept this kind of proposal. These people get excited about deporting class valedictorians who have lived in the US since they were two years old. This wouldn't fly.

Who cares if it makes economic sense if it gets people citizenship status? This is the kind of proposal that has a lot of rhetorical value because it can provide high-profile positive examples of undocumented immigrants to counter the "border-hopping murder-rapers" angle on Hannity. It also highlights the racism of the far right position on immigration.

I'm not saying it would work or doesn't have some major drawbacks, but looking at it from purely a cost-benefit POV isn't really the point.

Illegal immigrants are going to do a majority of the hard cleanup/recovery work, doing demo work, hanging new Segway, etc, anyway.