Bush: We must close the borders of Iraq. Hey George, what about ours??

I have to agree with that. There is no way to stop illegal immigration, especially through the Mexican border, by simply adding more guards. If you dug a moat between the U.S. and Mexico and filled it with crocodiles, illegal immigrants would just learn how to pole vault.

Two routes of reducing illegal immigration:
1) reduce demand for illegal immigration out of Mexico and Central America by helping improve their own employment rate and economy. Not likely, because big U.S. companies like cheap Mexican labor in the border towns.
2) Implement a national ID card system with special cards for guest workers, who have a right to travel and work in the U.S. for limited periods of time as long as they have no criminal record. As posted above, institute severe penalties for employers who don't check cards. If a contractor wants to get a house built cheaper or a rich couple feels like saving money on a housekeeper, that's just too bad.

Also one thing to keep in mind is that the immigration system is in a pretty flawed state today -- which hurts not only American security but also legal immigrants, who might wait years just to get an application LOOKED AT because the bureacracy is so behind when it comes to processes and computer technology -- but on the other hand, there was never a time when it was perfect. In the early days of the 20th century up until sweeping immigration reforms in the 60s, the rules for allowing in immigrants basically worked like this:

1) Italians and Irish discouraged
2) Jewish VERY strongly discouraged, especially Eastern European
3) Absolutely, positively, at all costs, NO CHINESE!!!! (See Chinese Exclusion Act 1882-1943)

Right now we have a system without racial restrictions, but which is very strongly biased in favor of family reunification; this favors groups that already have a heavy presence in the U.S. and hurts groups that don't. I just think immigration reform has to come as a result of careful, balanced thinking. In other words, what kind of policies have worked for other countries, and what hasn't?What DOES work about American immigration, and how do we maintain the good things it does for our country while working on reducing the negatives?

 

The Chinese Exclusion Acts have an interesting legal history, too. The Californians actually tried to keep Chinese Americans born to aliens in California from being treated as U.S. citizens.

This is where the line of cases came from that declared that the fourteenth amendment applied ONLY to former slaves.

I'm happy to say that the absurdity of this position was sufficiently obvious to snuff out THAT argument pretty quickly.

"All persons" means ALL persons.

Of course, tied to these arguments were the Exclusion Acts which dealt with immigration. Since no one has a RIGHT to immigrate to the U.S., these Acts survived every challenge.

Weird. They built the railroads that opened the American West to settlement. Then, they were no longer necessary and looked upon as a threat to Our Way of Life. Seems like us Americans are always looking for a working class devoid of political rights...

 

here's a way for someone to make himself rich off of people against imigration

http://www.reportillegals.com/

 

Directors of CIA and FBI Warn of Security Threat at Our Southern Border

"In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, three of the nation's highest ranking homeland security officials issued a chilling and unambiguous warning that al-Qaeda will exploit lax border enforcement to infiltrate terrorists and weaponry into the U.S....al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations will use our poorly guarded border with Mexico to launch another lethal attack on American soil. ..."