In the broad range of pre-history and history, the beautiful flora and fauna and topography of the Americas was first usurped by the humans who came over the landbridge and attacked the peaceful animals to make houses out of their skins and clothes, tools, and weapons from their bones and sinews. Makes me gorge rise to think of it.

After millenia of this kind of rampant abuse of their fellow creatures spread up and down the entire grand continent. Then came the vile Spanish and perfidious English to steal the land from under the existing inhabitants and enslave the populace in order to grow the murderous vegetable we call tobacco, and feed the poor of old Europe on inadequately processed grain, thus giving their own people pellagra when the indigenous population had on their own developed the processes to liberate all the nutrients that maize had to offer.

After the conquest of South America by the horrible Spanish and Portuguese and their Church, the dominaition of North America by the awful Dutch, English, and French, and their churches, were brought forth the hosts of Europe as cheap labor to lay railroad tracks and blast big big holes through the scenery, not to mention dig up huge tracts of overburden to obtain gold, silver, copper, and coal. When Irish, Norwegian, German, Swedish, Russian and Polish labor failed to satisfy, the capitalists reached across the Pacific to bring in Japanese, Chinese, Polynesians, to toil in the fields, dig in the rock, scrub the dirty clothes, and cut down the forests.

Througout this period, the original exploiters, the natives, had limited opportunities to play the plunder game or be exterminated. The other exploiters who had settled to the West and South had been for the most part dispossessed of their settlements to the West and forced South. But they could send their children north across the boarder to pick the fruits and harvest the grains, for very little money and practically no protection under the law.

The above has nothing to do with what is right, or legal. It's simply the way things were. And by the way, bad as it might sound, it was a hell of a lot better than the way the inhabitants of Europe conducted their affairs.

The 'system' as constituted has LONG permitted illegal immigration as a cost effective method of getting certain seasonal jobs done. More lately, with the commoditazation of labor, labor has taken advantage of the opportunities afforded, and the hardworking people of the south have expanded into territory that has rewarded them with pay. They have taken the opportunities to make their situations legal and been foisted off on a system that has purposely and cynically used them as a subterranean commodity within its huge economy.

Comes now an honest attempt to regularize the situation. If it is done half intelligently (a miracle in the current political climate), it would be most welcome, because it is not just a matter of justice, but it is also a matter of national security.

I have my doubts, because the necessary fallout of such a bill would be the necessity of enforcing it which would mean an honest enforcement of the southern border. I'll believe it when I see it.

Spanish is a noble tongue. Mexican food is an underappreciated culinary achievement. Mexicans and South Americans are also underappreciated by most Yanks.

We don't know how lucky we are. Bring 'em on!