VIDEO: 'Immigrants Among Us'
Neighbors In Support of Immigrants founder Sylvia Baruch discusses immigrants' contributions.
Pastor Foster and Sylvia Baruch, the chair of the Neighbors In Support of Immigrants organization, discuss her work with the organization and the contributions immigrants make to our community and nation.
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The Rev. Dr. Katrina Foster, the pastor of Incarnation Lutheran Church in Water Mill and St. Michael's Lutheran Church in Amagansett, interviews Hampton Bays resident Sylvia Baruch, the founder of the Neighbors In Support of Immigrants organization, in this episode of "The Hamptons Lutheran Parish," filmed at LTV in Wainscott. Foster and Baruch discuss Baruch's work and the contributions immigrants make to the community and nation.
The interview begins at 3:10.
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St. Michael's Lutheran Church
486 Montauk Hwy, Amagansett, NY (P.O. Box 695) -
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LTV
75 Industrial Rd, Wainscott, NY (P.O. BOX 799)
David D'Agostino
1:44 pm on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Right on, Ms. Baruch.
G. Manaz
3:02 pm on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Where does one start with this video?
1. Throughout your video, the term "immigrants" is used to describe both legal and illegal immigrants. I find this both irresponsible and lame. Why would you bucket lawbreakers with people who went through the correct channels and processes to get their citizenship?
2. The fact that BOCES offers free ESL to adult illegals is sinful. Boces is funded by the State and Federal Gov'ts. This means the funding comes from US Taxpayers. It costs BOCES approx. $9k / adult ESL student / year. That money could and should be going to fund local schools and programs for Americans.
3. Regarding the commercial you saw on CNN... Get your facts straight. The organization is called FAIR. Second, they do not advocate a complete cut-off of legal immigration. If you took the time to research FAIR, you would see they want immigration to go back to traditional levels. Meaning, instead of inviting 1.1M legal immigrants each year, the US would revert back to taking in 250k per year.
4. I nearly fell off my seat when your guest made the statement about illegal workers contributing to SS. As she noted, such a contribution means they stole a SS#. Forget the fact that stealing someone's identity is a serious crime, but I beg you to do the math....
G. Manaz
3:16 pm on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
The amount of money deducted from a paycheck for SS benefits is roughly 5%. Lets assume the said illegal worker has just one kid who he/she sends to our public schools. It costs roughly $15,000 to educate a student on Long Island. ESL kids...tack on another 25%. Thus, the illegal worker with the stolen SS# would need to earn $300k to contribute as much in SS as he/she takes in education.
5. You state they are taking jobs Americans don't want to do? Nonsense. There are numerous Americans, 25 million of them, who are out of work, including college and HS students. Most Americans don't stand at train stations and on street corners soliciting their services, and the ones who do get sent to jail. Talk about double standard.
Fact is, you can drive around the Hamptons and see who it is working on the construction sites. There are plenty of American tradespeople who want to work. But they need to earn $30 versus $15. Somehow the employer thinks he is saving himself $15 by grabbing an illegal. Yet, if he did the math, he would see he pays for it and then some via his property tax, sales tax, etc.
6. It costs this country roughly $120 Billion dollars a year to keep illegal immigrants in this country. They need to go home, get at the back of the line, and apply like the millions who wait to come here the correct way.
7. I won't mention the crime and healthcare.
David D'Agostino
3:11 pm on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
G. Manaz, there are hundreds of thousands of immigrants who do not have legal status, but, in an effort to one day achieve that, have a taxpayer id which means they literally contribute billions to a social security program from which they will never receive a benefit. So who gets that money? Everyone else.
The biggest problem we face concerning immigration, legal or otherwise, is the incredible amount of misinformation that is out there. If you care to read more about how illegal immigrants have literally saved social security, here is a link http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02wed3.html Facts are facts.
G. Manaz
3:25 pm on Wednesday, February 1, 2012
DD: You lost me at hello... There are not hundreds of thousands of illegals, there are MILLIONS upon MILLIONS. Futhermore, according to current laws and programs in place today, an illegal has the ability to get themselves a TAX ID and pay the appropriate taxes. Fact is, few do.
Aside from the $120Billion burn, the biggest problem we face with illegal immigration is SECURITY. We do not know who is in our country. Perhaps I should send you a link to the 9/11 Commission report? Or how about the most recent GAO report that states 70% of illegal crossings go undetected? So please, with all due respect, don't send me a link to the NY TIMES regarding this issue. Why not send me to the ACLU website instead -- its all the same.
David D'Agostino
9:21 am on Thursday, February 2, 2012
G.Manaz,I have the distinct impression that I could send you a link from FOX news and you would still dispute it. As I said, facts are facts. You forget that for a child to attend a school, he must live in the district which means that his family is paying school taxes, either through rent to their landlord or on their own. Something that has always made America great is our commitment to educating all children who live here.
At any rate, I am not here to convince you, but to give rational readers an alternative.
Mo Neill
8:59 pm on Friday, February 3, 2012
don't confuse him with fact David, as his facts make NY Times fact checkers puny, alien, so he won't even read it. & I hope he (man as) doesn't fret that anybody saw his quick change of subject to bring up SECURITY when his claim cheating Uncle Sam (no good patriots would never dream of cheating on their taxes,) was blown off the page with your documentation. And all the subversives pouring over the border might be copy cat bombers of children like Timothy Veigh, who hated big government, esp the U.S.A's. Hey, they've had documented, undocumented, illegal, legal border crossers since Mexcio lost the Southwest & well before that too, but I've missed all those stories about the terrorist suicide bombers that got through the Sonoran Desert to harm Uncle Sam. And what terrorists to instill terror by washing dishes, cleaning houses, watching children, standing in shape-up lines all across the nation to do any difficult, menial work available.
.
8:49 am on Friday, February 3, 2012
David / G. Manaz: Respectfully, having just finished a full length documentary about legal and illegal immigration, I feel comfortable in stating there are holes in both your arguments. At the same time, both sides have valid points, and this is why the topic of immigration, both legal and illegal, is an issue that is never addressed correctly.
I would be remiss not to point out the one comment made by GManaz which is spot on... Having watched the above video, I feel Rev. Foster and her guest disrespected the immigrants who go through the grueling process of becoming a legal immigrant.
Although I am sure the loose use of words was done innocently, if one is to address such a delicate topic publicly, especially on TV, then one should take the correct measures to voice themselves in a way that separates the undocumented from the documented.
If the Rev would like to address this topic again, I would love to join the on-air discussion.
Mo Neill
8:23 pm on Friday, February 3, 2012
Illegal" & legal, documented & undocumented immigration is addressed all the time, all over the media. How many times have you heard "I'm not against immigration, just illegal immigration" (yesterday from Romney, in Nevada) as if the pious soul is against sin, but loves the sinner. What bs! Nobody can make the distinction between who has or has not overstayed their visa by looking at them; nobody can tell is that person in compliance with immigration & who is not by looking at the person. Your distinction is purely rhetorical. To be or not be in compliance with immigration does not a person make "illegal," any more than driving over 55mph on the LIE makes any driver an "illegal." The concept would be preposterous if the consequences were not so punishing and dangerous to those considered immigrant or foreign.
It's not a criminal offense, but a civil offense, what we call a scofflaw, a misdemeaner not to be in compliance with our immigration process. Anti-immigrant senators were defeated by large majority to make it a felony. So speak carefully if you wish to continue your distinctions based on a coherent philosophy of jurisprudence where legal and illegal have large meaning beyond signifiers for those you might or not might think deserve the contempt of being treated as criminal and for whom too many believe the undocumented (or whom we feel might well be) deserve thier daily humiliations, deserve being treated as unclean outcastes & deserve the fear that haunts 24/7.
Boo
11:44 am on Friday, February 3, 2012
Agreed. Illegal immigration hurt legal immigrants as much as it hurts all american citizens. Why is there such "illegal love" out there? Don't people get it? It's such a huge problem and has all kinds of negative impacts on our society. IT NEEDS TO STOP BEFORE PEOPLE TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS! The Government needs to listen to the people.
Mo Neill
9:59 pm on Friday, February 3, 2012
Boo Too Knows. But its all too late, I regret to inform, people have taken matters into their own hands for centuries in our beautiful land of liberty. The history of hatred for immigrants is as old as our country & even before. You know what is the estimate of Mexicans executed by lynching (no trial) from 1860 to 1900? Or the monetary compesation/reward given to men who brought in the ears of a chinaman (read any Asian) they assinated? Did you know that 27 Irish were lynched in San Francisco between 1850 and 1855 for being caught Irish.
Or that 1917 several thousand Mexicans and Mexican-American citizens were forceibly removed from the U.S. by liberty-loving American posses, many of whom were then able to confiscate their homes and ranches in the Southwest. Do read the history of the American Patriotic Party (aka Know Nothings) and their ability to take matters into their own hands, resulting in hundreds of murders. Immigration has many more pluses for our nation than negatives. In fact the very history of our nation is a history of immigration. If the government followed the will of the American people there would a path to compliance with immigration voted upon tomorrow (Sat.) for those here who are not. By a not small majority, 68%, polls show Americans overwhelmingly do not want families deported We must find a path to citizenship for all those who would want it, which would be 99% of those now living in fear of deportation. Some of our best neighbors deserve amenesty.
David D'Agostino
3:49 pm on Friday, February 3, 2012
"IT NEEDS TO STOP BEFORE PEOPLE TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS! "
You clearly are not interested in facts concerning immigration, illegal or otherwise, but are threats necessary to make your point?
Mo Neill
10:21 pm on Friday, February 3, 2012
Into their own hands:
http://www.kued.org/productions/fire/photos_stories/cut_cancer.html
one photo of forced deportation
.
6:57 pm on Saturday, February 4, 2012
... and Moe, and one last thing... It appears that you read what you want to see and ignore all the words as a whole. Want proof? There are 22 comments on this thread, half are mine. Obviously, you have "read" them all, but for some reason you ignore the one recurring, undeniable fact mentioned in each of them.... My name is Dennis, not Dan.
Mo Neill
4:12 am on Sunday, February 5, 2012
still you provide no citation for yr statistics of immigrant criminality!
With the latest, classified high technology to bear upon the border, with the drones & satellites, robotic night vision surveillance, the high number of Fed border agents, immigration police, state & county police, FBI, et al we will never have the security the right claims is lacking. The problem isnt people coming over our southern border. It is that the enormous materiel, state apparatus, manpower and surviellance has caused people to not be able to take the chance to cross back. For centuries people crossed the border going back and forth without obstacle. Now people can't take the chance of returning, the security is so tight they remain here unable to return. Your 'secure border' is a right wing tactical code used a priori to oppose & prevent comprehensive immigration reform, to oppose any practicable solution to allowing people (11 million!) here to come into compliant status with immigration. You would think those who claim they are not opposed to immigration but to illegality would be the first to want to see people to come out from the opprobrium of being "illegal," which in fact the right do not want, calling it amnesty, screeching it rewards law breaking. The solution is not hard, but Repubs have consistantly blocked any solution but police state tactics invading homes in the middle of the night, spreading terror to arrest, incarcerate & deport, breaking apart families.
David Buda
9:53 am on Sunday, February 5, 2012
Dennis, your new movie Trailer looks very interesting. I look forward to seeing the movie. However, today's news reminds us that governmental programs invariably lead to abuses: "Border Patrol agents have racked up daily overtime at a cost of about $1.4 billion in the past six years while the number of arrests of illegal border crossers has fallen to the lowest level in nearly 40 years, an Associated Press analysis of agency records finds."
.
10:09 am on Sunday, February 5, 2012
David:
THEY COME TO AMERICA is a non-partisan film about illegal immigration. I was never much concerned about the topic to be honest, but then one day I stopped outside the 7/11 in Southampton and spoke to Tom (the guy who protests everyday). After listening (and filming) his argument with a pro-illegal-immigrant contractor, I knew there was a movie to be made. I traveled the country in filming this movie. I traveled to Miami, FL., Chicago, Ill., Northern Ca., and various parts of AZ, including Phoenix, Tuscon, Bisbee and Nogales. I also covered the happenings in East and Southampon.
The BP is poorly ran, and terribly managed. You would freak out if you saw what I did; areas with no fence or patrol go for miles at a time. Nighttime.... forget it! BP Agents told me the lights used around fence areas are ineffective. As one Agent said, "They blind us from seeing anything." The overtime is because there are not enough boots on the ground. The drop in arrests are two-fold. (1) The economy is terrible so less people are coming at this current time. (2) The places where the crossing were taking place consistently have changed.
The process of getting into this country illegally is for the most part controlled by the drug cartels. Believe me when I tell you, they are still coming. Here are a few more clips:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheyComeToAmerica
Mike
3:04 pm on Friday, March 2, 2012
I just don't think we should reward illegal immigrant. I love the idea about having them pay taxes, but fact is they will most likely not follow that law either and will take advantage of our hospitals and multiply so much that it will be impossible to get rid of them. They will have children that they know they can't take care of and demand that our Country cater to their needs.
Sorry, they broke the law, make em pay a fine and send them back where they came from.