It used to surprise me, until the recent Kent State threads. Then I realized how differently some people see the world. There will always be some internet tough guys who say “kid had it coming”.

To me, carrying a gun on your job ought to be a huge responsibility. You ought to loathe the idea of using it, and there had better be a gun in your target’s hand before you do.

Lots of people on the US side of that border have been foaming at the mouth for years for any conceivable pretext to shoot someone – anyone.

Perhaps they are unaware of two ongoing conflicts in the mideast that would afford them all sorts of consequence-free trigger play opportunities?

Hell, if he could do that people would be paying him!

I guess it might cost him his soul or something, but I’d pay to experience zero G floating on the ground.

(Sarcasm or not, that’d be kick ass.)

Nothing like U.S. expansionism at it’s finest..

Forget it. Sorry I took up your time. You may return to the ramparts victorious in your rhetorical mastery.
Great work, mod.

And yes, I have walked in their shoes or ones fairly comparable. Come to think of that, they were more like boots and instead of rocks, we had RPG-7 and Plamya fire to deal with. Not a bunch of scrawny teenage punks with a couple of rocks.

As for you question about the IRS, apparently it isn’t so difficult. The IRS is not all seeing. I have worked at many restaurants where I got a little check each week and an envelope of cash. I have an old friend who is married to an undocumented Mexican who works in landscaping. He gets paid daily in cash. No taxes. My ex-wife’s boyfriend worked construction off the books so as not to jeopardize his disability and Medicaid. Happens all the time. Now fifty miles from the boarder, you might get more scrutiny. And remember, you’re the one who has placed stock in anecdotal evidence. Just saying.

That’s right they should know better than to think I am simply trolling.

Well if I lived in a state that bordered Mexico, sure I would expect a larger percentage of the population to be Hispanic. If you’d like to know I live in NC, which depending on how you look at it sits a decent bit away from the border.

My comment about “little Mexico”…

I suppose it has to do with culture. I am all for people celebrating their heritage. But, you have left your home for one reason or another to venture to a new country. Yet you show little desire to adapt to our customs, or to fit in. Instead you simply have exported Mexico to various parts of my town, city, and state.

So now there are places where everything is in Spanish, simply because the vast majority of people who have moved to the area are Hispanic.

Why am I the bad person for feeling that is not okay? That is not the way these things should work (at least in my mind.)

Twenty years ago the grocery store down from where I grew up used to be a fairly nice one. Now that area is heavily Hispanic, and that grocery store has been sold (a couple of times I think). Needless to say, it’s not that nice anymore. I could point out countless examples like that, everywhere I’ve lived in this state.

But I guess for wanting my community to stay the way it was when I grew up is wrong, and that makes me a bad person.

Not all Hispanic immigrants are destined to become peasants. Most are destined for the underclass, though: 32% of “unauthorized adults” have less than an 8th-grade education. Their opportunities once they arrive here are limited, and they compete with the native-born of all races, and drive down wages.

I have not forgotten about any of the taxes you mention. The property taxes paid on an $800/month apartment are a pittance. Absolutely immigrants pay sales tax. And yes, the businesses they patronize pay taxes. Let’s assume a household income of $50k – how much do you think they pay in total tax? Can it possibly amount to $17,000?

I have not forgotten about lower income whites. We don’t border a country full of lower-income whites who are desperate to immigrate. If we did, we could talk about that.

“You and me” – legal residents? Income tax payers? Voters? You decide – it’s a figure of speech.

From a 2001 report from http://www.cs.rg/rtcls/2001/mxc/rls.html:

� Almost two-thirds of adult Mexican immigrants have not completed high school, compared to fewer than one in ten natives. Mexican immigrants now account for 22 percent of all high school dropouts in the labor force.

� Though most natives are more skilled and thus do not face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants, this study (consistent with previous research) indicates that the more than 10 million natives who lack a high school degree do face significant job competition from Mexican immigrants.

� By increasing the supply of unskilled labor, Mexican immigration in the 1990s has reduced the wages of workers without a high school education by an estimated 5 percent. The workers affected are already the lowest-paid, comprising a large share of the working poor and those trying to move from welfare to work.

Very good arguments from everyone here across the board and definitely makes one think.

Defending yourself or others from a lethal threat is the only time you need to be using a gun against another human being.

Being foolish, I would say it would be pushing it. If you want to walk down any poor, crime-ridden urban area streets shouting racial slurs and think you are going to just waltz out there unscathed I would say “Good Luck”.

Of course it’s a complicated issue. But we have to talk about the facts on the ground now, not about how things were two centuries ago.

from cis.org:

Large-scale immigration from Mexico is a very recent phenomenon. In 1970, the Mexican immigrant population was less than 800,000, compared to nearly 8 million in 2000.

Did any of us (sorry, there I go again) get to vote on this?

Maybe I’m just too naive to think that those could work?

You’re suggesting there’s a safe place for children to play outdoors in Ciudad Juarez? A notoriously bloody city with one of the highest per capita murder rates in the Americas?

That right there sort of answers the question against open borders doesn’t it? We have it bad enough here, with our own problems.

I don’t really know what to think. It’s not right to simply jump out against the Border Patrol, because every single agent thereof is not a jerk neither is every Mexican a saint. Likewise not all Border Patrol agents are super-great guys and not all Mexicans are villains. Were the guys in danger? Is one side exaggerating? There’s not enough conclusive evidence for us to know.

It’s true the agent could have been trigger-happy. It’s also true that, as Xeni said, the boy might have been doing something foolish. Perhaps even as foolish as joining in the rock-throwing and if he did and if the rock-throwing was approaching stoning levels then I wouldn’t say it is a malicious shooting. Maybe he was genuinely fearful and shot, or maybe he figured he would just take one out. But none of us know this yet and while I agree that some shit needs to be done about this border situation it doesn’t appear that assigning fault without knowing the facts is any different from people who try to rile up the masses with ill-considered slopaganda.

I’m not taking anyone’s side here. I’ve been mistreated by the police before and known some great law enforcement officers. By the same token I have watched the family members and loved ones of a murder victim whitewash the victim’s actions and personality even in the midst of their grief and seen families who have to fight (as mine did) a stigma because of assumptions about the victim based on whatever readily-packed criteria were available for that week’s leap to conclusions.

Sorry for all the ramble, it just made me sad to see so many people jumping to conclusions when really any one of the people involved or multiples of them on either side, could be lying.

Kabong out.

I am all for people celebrating their heritage. But, you have left your home for one reason or another to venture to a new country. Yet you show little desire to adapt to our customs, or to fit in. Instead you simply have exported Mexico to various parts of my town, city, and state.

Maybe if you were in Sweden or Namibia, you could make some claim about historical culture. US culture is just Euro culture that’s bulldozed over the natives. Maybe not even that valid. In the last half century, the US has adopted the corporate unculture promulgated by the entertainment-agribusiness-pharmaceutical complex.

In 50 years, Latinos will be the largest ethnic group in the US. Having grown up in New England under the tyranny of old-fashioned Anglo culture, I look forward to that change as a upgrade.

“So now there are places where everything is in Spanish, simply because the vast majority of people who have moved to the area are Hispanic.”

Well, that’s for the same reason that where mostly English speakers live in the states, signs and stuff are in English. We don’t have a national language. Communities change. You know?

JohnnyOC -

“If you want to walk down any poor, crime-ridden urban area streets shouting racial slurs and think you are going to just waltz out there unscathed I would say “Good Luck”.”

So, we’re basing the bar to which we should hold our law enforcement accountable on the conduct of gang bangers?

Step outside the “poor innocent kid” viewpoint and see the confrontation for what it was. Then try to justify it. In my opinion, you can’t.

They’re afraid to unionize because of strict immigration laws. If you favor amnesty then I’ll give you more credit. As long as neoliberal corporate welfare policies like NAFTA, farm subsidies etc. continue to impoverish people to the South of us, there will be a huge drive to cross the border no matter what the risk.

You can choose a progressive humanist approach or a exploitative, nativist one.

And yeah, I do think it’s hilarious that so many self proclaimed ‘liberals’ also have pretty xenophobic views when called out on the carpet. “I’m not racist, but”.