"It is sad to hear people like Bill essentially say that immigrants are wounding our country and that the wound won't heal if all we do is use band aid fixes... what? he didn't say exactly that? Well that doesn't matter since he still sounds suspicious."

No, I DIDN'T say exactly that. What I DO say is that we have laws that are 'supposed' to regulate immigration. Someone needs to answer the question "Should those laws BE enforced?" If the answer is 'yes', the next question is either "How?" or if the answer in 'no', the next question is "What now?"

Those of you who advocate leniency and 'paths to citizenship' and 'amnesty' need to reflect on 'exactly' what what is implied in such policies.

Ron Davies, at 10:53PM last night said "If you ever make "go home" and get in line a condition for path to citizenship, no illegal immigrant will ever come out of the shadows voluntarily".
Yes, that's probably true....and if you do NOT make it a condition, those who ARE waiting in the legal line in Mexico, who may be suffering, would have a pretty good reason to cry "foul!"

I have seen no answer to this dilemma....do we just shrug and say, "Hey...we give up. No more rules, lines or waiting, since everyone agrees that strict enforcement is too hard and we can't design a fair solution. Everyone just come on over and take your chances about finding homes and jobs...but don't complain when the job market won't support you HERE any better than it did THERE."

This is not about mean ol' Bill wanting to be hard-nosed and demanding nice folks be rounded up like cattle and deported...it's about SEEING the long-term consequences of ANY policy! (drilling for oil in the Gulf leads to spills...nuclear power can bring on Three-Mile Islands... allowing people to build in 10 years flood plains means regular rescue and billions in damages)...and the list is long.

What I did was try to construct a list of consistent policies....I was not suggesting they were 'happy' policies or 'easy' policies. Perhaps MY list can be disputed...but it needs to be disputed by providing BETTER alternatives that ARE more than just a band-aid.

   I can imagine the debates among the Native Americans in the 1600s to the late 1800s..."Should we try to keep these intruders out? Or make friends and accommodate them?" Could it be that no matter WHAT the decision, the result was inevitable? Is it now the case that this country has no choice? If so, the laws need to reflect that, and we need to quit spending money on enforcement and making people take chances walking across those deserts artbrooks describes. If we do that, we need to realistically confront the logistics implied by such a decision....like... how does fairly unlimited immigration affect this new health-care legislation? You can supply many other problems in education, housing, broadcasting...
If we do NOT wish to accept the idea of free-for-all immigration, then someone needs to find GOOD answers to my list. If there are to be any limits, there must be some way to enforce those limits fairly...which means considering those waiting on LEGAL lines, as well as those who snuck in awhile back and were just lucky or good at hiding.

Much of my life has been spent with civil-rights as a background theme. I WANT everyone to be happy, free, respected and comfortable...and I spent time in Mississippi in 1964 advocating for those whose ancestors were forcibly dragged FROM their native lands. I also have spoken out for those whose ancestral lands were invaded by....US... Now I have to decide how to think about 10s of millions who want to come here from Mexico and Central America. I am trained in philosophy, and I SEE the inconsistencies in applying both pragmatism and compassion in this situation....and it hurts!
All that is why I said WAY back up there ^ that:

"From: Bill D - Posts - PM
Date: 28 Apr 10 - 02:25 PM

Some of the various opinions I read above seem very thoughtful and reasoned...and, except in certain cases, very moral and civil......but some of them also start from some arbitrary position with embedded premises, and do not really address or account for some practical considerations."

There is a concept in environmental policy called "carrying capacity"....it is just what is sounds like, the theoretical limits of what any system, large or small, can sustain on an ongoing basis. It can be applied to rats in a cage or to entire continents.....or to the entire planet.

When my father teased my brother & I by asking ."If you were carrying all the feathers you could carry, could you carry one more?", he didn't begin to see all the implications. The problem is, we don't KNOW how many we can carry....and we don't know what may trigger major problems before the theoretical limit is reached. I don't drive way over the speed limit because the danger, from the law and my own reflexes, increases with speed. Some DO. Ask them how they decide.

Ok....most of you quit reading this a long ways back...for those who are still here, or who have skipped to the end, just be aware that I try to insert all the disclaimers and qualifications and explanations I can reasonably (see?) manage in my opinions....and I am STILL not able to divert out-of-context objections. So be it.

The population of Earth is now about 3 times what it was when I was born, and many of those people are not doing well and are unhappy where they are. There are no easy solutions to this. What this thread is about is only a subset of the overall situation. Think about it.