As you probably know, there are many--legal--Hispanics in Nevada. Sen Reid realizes he desperately needs their votes. So he is pushing for a comprehensive bill dealing with illegal immigration, and most definitely including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.   Like Gov Brewer, he will be able to say to the group whose votes he is angling for, that he did everything in his power to get it done now.

The difference of course, is that Sen Reid's approach, besides helping him politically, is the right thing to do. Gov. Brewer's is dead wrong.

We've been over this several times before.   Without a path to citizenship, no illegals will come out of the shadows. Nor would any other rational person. Any suggestion that the 11 million illegal immigrants can--or even should--return to "country of origin" is perfectly senseless.    They do many jobs Americans do not want.   Many have been here so long that "country of origin" is a feeble joke.

It is also pointless to suggest a crackdown on employers.   Many illegal immigrants are employed in the agricultural sector. A crackdown, particularly in border states, will only encourage them to move their operations elsewhere--Mexico is an obvious choice.   Yet supposedly those who yell loudest to crack down on employers are also complaining about jobs leaving the US.

The idea of changing current birthright citizenship is, like others of the so-called "anti-amnesty" group, a recipe for disaster.    Anybody who doubts this should look at France recently, which has a large group of young people who are not citizens--and therefore feel no stake in the success of the country--in fact, since jobs for them are hard to come by, they are prone to violent protest.

It is also a canard to suggest that illegal immigrants are responsible for much violent crime--for the obvious reason that they do not want to call attention to themselves, and therefore would tend to try to keep any interest of the law in them to a minimum. I have read, I believe (but can't locate the source right now) that for instance I believe it's El Paso, close to the Texas-Mexico border, has in fact one of the lowest rates of crime.