Note that they showed them all holding American flags.

Must have been difficult finding a shot where there were no Mexican flags in frame.

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Actually if it's anything like here in Phoenix they were specifically asked to leave the Mexican flags at home after the poor reception from the first march.

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Not to mention no ANSWER goons.

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I'm not very well-read at all with regards to current immigration legislation.

From a purely statistical standpoint, however, anytime you have rampant lawlessness (which is what lawbreaking on the scale of our current illegal immigration problem really is) you have one or both of the following circumstances:

1) insufficient enforcement, or unenforceability
2) an unjust law, or a law which the majority of people percieve to be unjust.

I would love to see our illegal immigrants turned into LEGAL immigrants, because I believe that their presence in this country is a net benefit. We are not (yet) a welfare state -- if you want to get by in the USA, you really DO need to work. As long as this remains the case, letting people immigrate should be good for us.

Mass amnesty is almost certainly not the right answer. All that does is say "yeah, the law is unjust, but we're keeping it on the books anyway." Admitting your laws are unjust, and then not changing them? That's a confession of immoral, corrupt legislation.

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As I said before, I have no problem with legal immigration. Part of that process is (or at least should be) designed to ensure that the immigrant will not be a burden on the rest of us, and if they don't use up more government services than they produce by their work, I'm not going to argue.

Unfortunately, the majority of illegal immigrants - you know, the ones who don't pay income taxes, either because they get paid in cash or simply don't make enough to cross the line to where they owe taxes - do use more in government services than they generate. That's where I get serious heartburn with it all.

If we actually enforced the laws, and still had an illegal immigration problem, then maybe I'd say it was time to look at changing the laws. Right now, we're not even making a serious attempt to enforce the laws. Our borders are porous as hell. Yes, that includes the northern one, as well. If we do not control our borders, we will no longer have a separate nationhood to protect. The leftists in Congress won't go for that, though, because it deprives them of voters (not the illegal immigrants themselves, but their friends and families).

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Unfortunately, the majority of illegal immigrants - you know, the ones who don't pay income taxes, either because they get paid in cash or simply don't make enough to cross the line to where they owe taxes

An estimated seven million of the estimated twelve million illegal immigrants pay both income tax via autodeduction from their pay (which they never recoup) and into Social Security (which they don't receive). So your majority is in fact a minority.

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Indeed they do.

I'm wondering how it's considered "progressive" to want to allow these people to remain in the country to work for employers which will unscrupulously arrange to have them pay money out of their paycheck into funds they will never be able to draw money out of.

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The Left has to pay for all of their spending some way or other, after all...

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They don't even try to enforce the border. If we were really trying we would be utilizing more border officers as well as predator drones and the like to detect intrusions.

Also, the Bureaucracy of the INS is insane. Once the borders are no longer porous, we really need to work on cutting down the time it takes to immigrate legally from 3-10 years down to 1-2. The INS is known for saying one thing then doing another. You call them to reschedule an appointment, they say it's fine, great, call us when you want to schedule a new one... Then they call you a few monts later and deny your application because you missed the appointment that you told them you needed to reschedule. They also frequently ignore where you say you want to do your interview. MagneticCheeks who is a regular in #schlock_mercenary recently went through that experience where she said she was going to do her interview in British Columbia, and instead they assigned her to go all the way back to Ontario for her interview. Just insanity.

As for amnesty... They violated the law. They should be treated like anyone else who violates a law and be required to pay their debt to society before they can be treated as any legal immigrant would be. They should be the ones forced through the nonsensical INS crud instead of those who came here and followed our laws, no matter how inefficient and hulking the laws may be.

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I'm guessing that the guys with the "We are not criminals" forgot to put in the word all somewhere so it reads; "We are not all criminals" hence putting the point across that indeed not all immigrants are criminals or there illegally.

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If they'd said that, I wouldn't have had a word to say.

This is where the inherent dishonesty of the Left's current approach to the situation comes in, though. Nobody is attacking immigration. Lots of Americans can't stand illegal immigration. That is what needs to be controlled. The Left is conflating the two to attempt to muddy the issue.

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right, and your ancestors did what?

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Immigrated legally. Your point is?

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i kind of doubt it, though immigration policy wasn't well established until the 1870s. it's far more restrictive today

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How do you know whether they were legal or illegal? Yes, mine generally came to the US before 1870, as far as I know. They obeyed the laws as they were then in force. Those laws were much more liberal than those in force today. I see no inconsistency there.

Trying to claim that everyone in the US is descended from an illegal immigrant is both naive and intellectually dishonest, for it's an attempt to divert the discussion from the real issue: Illegal immigrants are, by definition, lawbreakers. Why should we accept someone into our society who's already demonstrated he's willing to break its laws?

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what we're doing is criminalizing what people are going to do. the same thing would happen without a policy of criminalization.

face it, criminalizing things does not stop people from breaking the law. Do people not smoke marajuana, even though it is illegal? Who are they hurting?

you seem to forget that all immigrants (you, me, others) are people. people break laws that cannot be or should not be enforced to begin with.

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We're not even trying to secure our borders. That is the problem.

If the Left has its way, we're going to grant lots of people amnesty, and even citizenship, for breaking the law. That is the problem.

There is no effective penalty for hiring someone who has no right to work in the US. That is the problem.

Fix those, and we won't have an illegal immigration problem.

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you keep assuming that this is simply a PROBLEM. You are using your birth as if it were a right - and it comes off as prejudice to me and many others. what did you and I do, besides being born (of which we have no determination) in the US in the 20th century, to earn the right to work here?

you have to ask yourself, how is crossing a meaningless line is the problem? if you say soveignty so help you God.

PS - not trying to start a flame war, just acccidently found your blog. i'm enjoying this debate, in spite of several presumptions

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If we do not control our borders and limit immigration, then we are no longer a nation, and being an American becomes meaningless.

Put another way, it's highly inconsistent to decry offshoring and then advocate unlimited immigration. (No, I'm not saying you do this, but a lot of other folks do, and don't even see the inconsistency.) If we did not control immigration, we wouldn't have a problem with jobs going where the cost is lower - for those same workers would come here instead.

I don't mind disucssions here. That's why I post opinions.

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well said. you're talking about soveirgnty being useless if you are unable to project it. the funny part is, as far a as jobs go, NAFTA has already lifted our soveirgnty

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you seem to forget that all immigrants (you, me, others) are people.

Do you believe we should allow anyone into the country who wants to be here, regardless of who they are, no matter what their goals, no matter how much they disagree with ideals like "freedom of speech" and "freedom of association" and "freedom of religion", and no matter how many want to come?

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