Betty Cooney is for change and fast change. I guess it is about flexibility or did this clip not really say anything?

Fair point Dick, it may not seem like much in the Spectrum context.

Yet, in the world of local churches and institutional Adventism, this sort of articulated desire for change is a start, especially from the inside where status quo producing platitudes usually command the camera.

I ordered the videos like this because by the time we get to Bruce, it's pretty clear that change means getting serious about the world beyond the time borders of the Sabbath.

I'd love to see a whole Adult Lesson for a quarter devoted to Adventism and the environment, with short 5-10 videos online (shot by young Adventist filmmakers) that a Sabbath School teacher could show at the start of each discussion. They could be streamed online, so one would only need a laptop and some wi-fi or another network connection.

Walt Disney had it right a long time ago. "Its a small world after all." From at least 1888 the only communication within Adventism has been top down. Spectrum is a singular voice in Vox Pop. But who monitors it to get a "sense of the field". We have reached a point in both politics and religion when "I feel you pain" is not enough! Certainly if anyone could product a Quarterly with the dimensions that Alex suggests it would be Clif.

We've got the Sabbath right, We've got tithing right, We've got the Time of Trouble right, We've got E.G. White right,
we've cooled Daniel and Revelation, we've got the pope's number, we've got the final generation right. Now just watch 60 minutes prove us right. Oh yes, keep your survival gear up to date: Right? We have statistians working daily keeping track of where we have been and how far we have penetrated. Sounds impressive. Just don't forget the 13th Sabbath Offering! After the treasurer of the General Conference skims it, there is not enough left to send a comptroller to the field with the check. But the pictures are priceless. Tom

I like the idea of 5 - 10 out of the 13 Sabbath in a quarter. keeps the videos from becoming routine. Environment is not the only subject that could be spurred by a well done short video.

My wife is a "legal" immigrant. The issue for me is illegal immigration. There is a responsible and irresponsible way to deal with migrant workers and other border crossers. We can ignore the law, which is being done, which creates a disrespect of law or create a responsible alternative.

I have traveled a lot in the world and every place I have been requires a passport when arriving by air. Nations have the right and obligation to know who is in their country and also know how any services are being paid for and by whom.

Presently in the US, illegal immigrants are putting enormous pressures on state and local public health and services.
This could be stopped by requiring all employers to have a certificate of need for workers. The workers are then registered through immigration to that sponsor. Families are permitted only if likewise the sponsor is responsible for any social services that the worker/family uses...weather by payrole or ultimate responsibility for bills incurred. This should not be a charge to taxpayers at large as it is not equitable.Violators will be prosecuted and employers may lose there right to conduct business for violations.

The problem will be dramatically reduced.

Children born of "illegals" should not have automatic citizenship but that is reserved for citizens alone.

If there is a desire to increase legal immigration levels, let those acceptible levels be decided by public policy and require that immigrants get in line for possible citizenship.
it is inequitable to allow those who broke the law to bypass those who went through lawful procedures desiring to become citizens.

Alex

Do you think it appropriate to run a piece on Rep. Tom Landos who recently died? He was a very outspoken champion of human rights. He was one stand-up guy! Tom

Change for the sake of change is dangerous. Sometimes I think the only motivation for liberals is to constantly change.

Illegal immigration should be enforced by law and people should be sent back to whatever economically lacking country they came from so god fearing American Christians don't have to care for their health needs with "public" money that would be better spent on missiles and guns. That is what Christ would have done.

If we exploit illegal immigrants by paying them low wages and by failing to provide them with health coverage, then we should stop complaining that they are "putting enormous pressures on state and local public health and services."

What we need to do is to close our borders, create a national identy card, impose heavy penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, make it easier for legal immigrants to come into our country, pay those who come decent wages, and make sure employers cover them with health insurance.

Nic, Did you say anything different from me? Except they do not feel exploited but gratefulfor a job.

Pat: Most illegals do not feel exploited for two reasons: Taxpayers provide them with health services, which should have been paid by their employers; and because, due to a favorable Exchange rate, they can support their families who stay behind in their countries with the minimum wages they earn here.

I quoted you for the simple reason that there has been too much misperception in the media about the taxpayer's cost of providing illegals with free health care. There is no free lunch. If we tolerate a corrupt system where workers are paid minimum wages without health insurance, then we get cheaper produce at the market, but end spending money to provide those illegals with free health services.

Besides, we are at great risk from criminals and terrorists entering through the porous borders we tolerate. It would be much better to close the borders, punish employers who hire illegal workers, demand that employers provide immigrants with health coverage, and encourage foreginers to enter our country legally. The cost of our produce and many other services will increase, but taspayers will not be burdened with providing free health coverages for immigrants.

We are basically in agreement. My aim was to emphasize the fact that there is a better way to correct the present policy on both legal and illegal immigration. Perhaps I should have clarified that my reference to "complaining" was not focused on you but rather on the media.

Yah, Peter, Christ would have sanctioned saving money to buy missiles and guns and kicked everyone out of Israel who wasn't a Jew. That's what His message was--to divide the world into factions of Haves and Have-Nots. What a humanitarian Christ was! I can just see him wielding his rifle as he patrols the US border. "You people stay over there. This is my country."

From the contributions made on this topic Pat Travis gives the most ideal scenario for attacking this problem. Too bad he isn't running for President!

I agree with Pat's comments; I was a country director for ADRA in Africa and any country that I wanted to visit always required proper documentation including a visa and if I was going to work while in country I was required to have a properly executed work permit. Our laws require this but the sad fact is that they are not being enforced.

The problem with illegal immigrants is that they are undocumented and don't have the required permissions to come to the US or to stay and work here. Therefore they are breaking the law and are criminals. Just because our laws weren't always vigorously enforced does not absolve the one who broke the law, namely the illegal immigrant.

There is also a cost to each of us for illegal immigrants and I believe it is far higher than Nic postulates. For instance, I have a son in college which is a considerable expense some of you personally know. If we were illegal immigrants we would receive most if not all of his college education free. How is this fair to the US Citizen?

Yes, we should seriously consider the true cost of illegal aliens to each one of us not only in reduced personal safety as a result of increased crime or terrorist threat but also the increased financial burden to American taxpayers. See the documented information below:

Illegal Aliens Cause Massive Cuts For US Seniors
http://rense.com/general79/seniors.htm

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally who cannot speak a word of English! http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.0.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education on American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on Welfare and Social Services for illegal aliens.
http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10. Illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During 2005 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens crossed our Southern Border and as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U.S. from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report. http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National Policy Institute "estimated the total cost of mass deportation between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period."
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants in the United States".
http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml or http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecente...

Total cost is a huge... $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!

After reviewing this and other information publicly available on the subject can anyone say that the cost of illegal immigration is not a tremendous burden to American taxpayers and that all the related crime, security, entitlement and infrastructure problems associated with illegal immigrants is not a serious problem?

Yes, the solution is simple... enforce our laws and require proper documentation and work authorization for each immigrant! Those who come here legally we should welcome. Those who try to come here illegally are breaking the law and should be apprehended and promptly returned to the authorities in their country of origin.

David, you have covered all the problems with immigrants. That is not too difficult. But to come up with a concrete solution that can be put into practice today, is the real problem, isn't it? What do you or anyone propose for the estimated 12 million illegals living and working in the U.S. right now? Everyone recognizes that it is an impossibility to deport them. Some have been living here for years, raising families and are taxpayers.

Tell us HOW you would solve this problem, not repeating it like a broken record. Have you, or has any politician today come up with a viable solution that will both allow the present illegals to continue working here, and what will be the result of the economy without their work? Do you know how many are working, paying taxes here today? Why not furnish us that information?

They are currently working in housekeeping, construction, producing and harvesting the food we eat; work that the U.S. workers won't do. The government can't force others to do the work. Give me you solution. A 20 ft fence along the borders is not going to solve this one; and now the Texas landowners are refusing to give the goverment permission to trespass and build on their land, often taking many acres. Assessing the problem is easy; answering it is much more difficult.

Never thought I'd see the day when an Adventist suggested having a national ID card.

Maybe the times *are* a-changin'. ;)
jen*

From this morning's NYTimes:

"To great fanfare in October 2006, Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, signed a new law requiring 6,000 contractors working for the county to affirm that their employees were not illegal immigrants, prompting fear of impromptu inspections and roundups of Hispanic men.

Since then, county officials have found exactly one worker without proper immigration documents, after conducting two sweeps of a total of 33 contractors last summer and fall. A second worker at the same construction company, North Star Concrete, was initially suspected, but the $9,500 fine regarding his status was "

All that fuss for one guy? And they're asking contractors to do the AG's work?

David: I agree with you that those who entered the U.S. illegally are law breakers, but the majority of them should not be labelled as common criminals. They have no right to be in our country, but I am with Elaine that deporting 12 million illegals overnight is not feasible. Many of their children have never been outside of the U.S., and this is the only country they have ever known.

Allowing these illegals to sneak in was wrong, but deporting them en mass would be a greater wrong still. What we need to do is to close the borders first, and then penalize those who hire illegal workers. This will require the issuing of a national I.D. for everybody. Once these measures are implemented, we may discover that, like Elaine has pointed out, the problem has been overblown out of proportion.

Thanks for all the links you supplied; nevertheless, I wonder whether you have checked the math and the source of the data. I was puzzled by the fact that, according to one estimate the cost of the presence of illegals in our midst was calculated to be 338 billion while another source indicated that the cost to the government was 26 billion. This seems to be a significant discrepancy to be credible.

Regarding the 10 billion shortage when the income in taxes paid by illegals is compared with the cost of services supplied to them, let me say this: What can you expect when most illegals are paid minimum wages? If illegals were paid wages comparable to those earned by legal residents, there would be a surplus instead of a shortage. This is why I have said above that there is no free lunch: If we consider the benefit afforded us by cheap labor, then the cost of free services to these illegal workers should not surprise us!

Many have argued that illegal workers are doing work that no legal resident would perform. This is a fallacious argument. I do not believe that we would starve. What would happen is that the cheap labor would disappear, and the vacuum created by the absense of illegal workers would be filled with workers who are paid decent wages. Besides, we can always make it easier for legal immigrants to enter the country.

Like Elaine has stated, if the cost to the economy following the deportation of all illegals were computed, we might discover that we have over estimated the real cost of the presence of illegal workers in our country. Nevertheless, whether this is true or not, for fairness sake for all legal immigrants, as well as for security reasons, we need to close our borders ASAP!

Is it true that anyone who is not a citizen is thought of as an alien? Can't be good for intelligence and awareness levels to have the rest of the world thought of as aliens (who generally come by spaceship ;) )

Personally I can't see why anyone would want to go to the US but maybe I haven't lived in Mexico before to get some perspective.

Do you really believe that employers are willing to pay white kids higher wages for the same jobs? Fat chance, thats what causes inflation which means higher health care costs for the average hard working citizen which means higher costs for free health care which causes more borrowing from Chinese Communists which causes uncertainty which causes civil wars.

Why should healthcare not be a basic human right? Or failing that I might appeal to the lesser aspect of following Christ's example to try to appeal to so-called Christians. How much did the US spend on its defence systems? What if that were used for humantarian aid for immigrants? What if people were healed for free? It is possible, real life Christian countries are actually offering free health care (shock horror), although I must say that some of the countries are actually just nice without religion (not possible!!!). The tax collector didn't keep his money from Christ questioning who it would be paid for and what their motivation and luck in life was. Why should it be different for the tax-payer?

Mexico should be an exception though because it is a Terrorist Country. Can't encourage terrorism, except when its existence means more freedoms for citizens to carry guns and shoot people who attempt to shoot others. Typical reactionary policy would say you give freedoms until immediately after someone uses them. Afterall, is there really a huge crime rate in countries where people aren't free to take guns everywhere? NO! Magic isn't it that when you don't give people guns they won't be able to shoot people with them. Fancy calling a country an Terrorist Country. Sorry, that was what brought that rant paragraph on.

Security conscious people wouldn't allow everyone to get access to guns, and then not allow them to use them to shoot aliens in big Christian mobs down in Texas when they come across from alien lands one night. If they are illegally there they deserve to be shot by citizens. Amazing how similar this sounds to whole field of presidential candidates (Right/Left Red/Blue etc etc, they are all the same lucky for bipartisan Adventist citizens planning to stay in the lucky country). Maybe you will have your country locked up properly soon.

Congratulations on proclaiming the message of salvation and hope to the world. (I can't seem to be able to stoop to say the US has Love given the negativity of this discussion between self-labelled Liberals who are normally the most loving members of society)