But Patricio, wasn’t it you who wrote, “We have been knocking, but it seems that nobody wants to come to answer the door and shake our hands”

I’m sorry. That IS a lie. Or at least it’s the opposite of the truth.

Again. This country answer the door to those who knock MORE generously than any other nation as we allow MORE legal immigrants than all other nations combined.

Next time you write to us – write with the truth in mind about our generosity.

Then take into consideration that there ARE terrorists and folks with tuberculosis and drug movers coming across our border. You CAN’T act like ALL folks coming here illegally are just poor people looking for a job.

Two points:
1) The poor people looking for a job need to “knock on the door” as you say and then come here legally
2) The people who insist on coming here illegally need to stop because we need to protect our nation from so many factors. It’s like having a front door that is locked on your house… and not letting people just climb through the windows.

Respect is the key.

Please respect us.

Great… I’m selling my house and moving in to yours !!

What is your address? Or are you a hypocrite?

You see? There are rules and laws. We have the right to national security. We have the right to be a generous nation allowing more legal immigrants than all other countries combines.

Take your platitudes to other nations and see how accommodating they are. You will find they aren’t even half as generous as we are and you will find yourself in jail…

Please start referring to us truthfully as the most generous and accommodating nation on earth. Please respect our laws and come here legally as we allow more legal immigrants than all other nations on earth.

Thank you for following these rules… I’ll be waiting for your house key and address if not…

Unfortunately today i worked 14 hours and tomorrow does not look any better. Your time and effort for writing these opinions deserve the same treatment of my part. I promise i will write you back with all respect.

I do not agree with Great White Rat. There is so much to say after your comments.

Of the incalculable changes in American politics, demographics, and culture that the continuing surge of migrants is causing, one of the most profound is the breakdown of the distinction between legal and illegal entry. Everywhere, illegal aliens receive free public education and free medical care at taxpayer expense; 13 states offer them driver’s licenses. States everywhere have been pushed to grant illegal aliens college scholarships and reduced in-state tuition. One hundred banks, over 800 law-enforcement agencies, and dozens of cities accept an identification card created by Mexico to credentialize illegal Mexican aliens in the U.S. The Bush administration has given its blessing to this matricula consular card, over the strong protest of the FBI, which warns that the gaping security loopholes that the card creates make it a boon to money launderers, immigrant smugglers, and terrorists. Border authorities have already caught an Iranian man sneaking across the border this year, Mexican matricula card in hand.

Hispanic advocates have helped blur the distinction between a legal and an illegal resident by asserting that differentiating the two is an act of irrational bigotry. Arrests of illegal aliens inside the border now inevitably spark protests, often led by the Mexican government, that feature signs calling for “no más racismo.” Immigrant advocates use the language of “human rights” to appeal to an authority higher than such trivia as citizenship laws. They attack the term “amnesty” for implicitly acknowledging the validity of borders. Indeed, grouses Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez, “There’s an implication that somehow you did something wrong and you need to be forgiven.”

Illegal aliens and their advocates speak loudly about what they think the U.S. owes them, not vice versa. “I believe they have a right . . . to work, to drive their kids to school” said California assemblywoman Sarah Reyes. An immigration agent says that people he stops “get in your face about their rights, because our failure to enforce the law emboldens them.” Taking this idea to its extreme, Joaquín Avila, a UCLA Chicano studies professor and law lecturer, argues that to deny non-citizens the vote, especially in the many California cities where they constitute the majority, is a form of apartheid.

Yet no poll has ever shown that Americans want more open borders. Quite the reverse. By a huge majority—at least 60 percent—they want to rein in immigration, and they endorse an observation that Senator Alan Simpson made 20 years ago: Americans “are fed up with efforts to make them feel that [they] do not have that fundamental right of any people—to decide who will join them and help form the future country in which they and their posterity will live.” But if the elites’ and the advocates’ idea of giving voting rights to non-citizen majorities catches on—and don’t be surprised if it does—Americans could be faced with the ultimate absurdity of people outside the social compact making rules for those inside it.

However the nation ultimately decides to rationalize its chaotic and incoherent immigration system, surely all can agree that, at a minimum, authorities should expel illegal-alien criminals swiftly. Even on the grounds of protecting non-criminal illegal immigrants, we should start by junking sanctuary policies. By stripping cops of what may be their only immediate tool to remove felons from the community, these policies leave law-abiding immigrants prey to crime.

But the non-enforcement of immigration laws in general has an even more destructive effect. In many immigrant communities, assimilation into gangs seems to be outstripping assimilation into civic culture. Toddlers are learning to flash gang signals and hate the police, reports the Los Angeles Times. In New York City, “every high school has its Mexican gang” and most 12- to 14-year-olds have already joined, claims Ernesto Vega, an illegal 18-year-old Mexican. Such pathologies only worsen when the first lesson that immigrants learn about U.S. law is that Americans don’t bother to enforce it. “Institutionalizing illegal immigration creates a mindset in people that anything goes in the U.S.” observes Patrick Ortega, the news and public-affairs director of Radio Nueva Vida in southern California. “It creates a new subculture, with a sequela of social ills.” It is broken windows writ large.

Link

This article was from 2004, and you can bet the statistics as bad as they are that I have shown, they have gotten worse as time has gone by.

It is not all hard working, doing the jobs others won’t do illegal immigrants – there is alot of illegal activity (besides the illegal trespass into our county, forged documents and identity theft that normally goes along with these actions), there is alot of criminal and gang elements that come across, as pointed out in the statistics of hte article.

We as a soveriegn nation should have the ability and the right to protect our borders and our citizens the best way we can.

And not not sound callous, but if people do not like our rules and our laws they can go elsewhere. Think of it like business, you don’t like the service, go somewhere else.

We need the ability to protect our citizens, and to filter out the criminal elements that come across illegally and threaten our way of life.

NC Cop, When these human beings that you call Illegal aliens come to the light, you will feel more secure because at that point, all the goverment agencies will have a record of every one of us and therefore it will be easier to find people and make them accountable for their deeds.

Not sure if your being sarcastic or not, but I will treat it as an honest statement for now.

I do not trust my government to run things themselves. Look at everything the government has tried to control with industry and you can see it always bogs it down. Healthcare? FCC? Workplace?

Just to summarize what’s going on here, because of the state legislature controls the number of nursing home beds available:

1. Relatives of the sick and the elderly struggle to find room for their loved ones, often being forced to try and provide care themselves which is dangerous for both them and the loved one.

2. Nursing homes cannot simply build new facilities and provide more beds to meet demand for nursing home care because the legislature does not allow it.

3. In order to find space, many loved ones are forced to find nursing home space in communities other than their own. Meaning that to visit their loved ones, they have to travel greater distances. Plus, the one placed in the nursing home is forced to deal with the stress of living in a new and often strange community.

4. Because supply of nursing home beds is limited, nursing homes can charge higher prices of their clients. Greater demand means greater cost, and if you limit supply you increase demand. Meaning that this law is literally making nursing home care more expensive for everyone. Even when nursing homes can expand beds they have to “purchase” them from other facilities. A cost that is, again, passed on to those buying nursing home care.

Link

It always either does too little (unless it is time to pass an immigration bill and suddenly we see “enforcement”) or it bogs down the good it could do with politics, too much red tape and incompetence at times.

Your arguement to try and place ‘human’ with illegal aliens is to try and put a softness on the illegality.

Database? Fine, I have no problem with that – SSN every american has and is in a database, drivers licenses, ect – why should immigrants be any different?

I also have no problem with a national ID card, both for immigrants and citizens – it would go a long way to curb voting illegalities also. You show a National ID and you get to vote. What is yet another card in my wallet?

To stop the flow of illegal inmigration, we need to make it legal. When a law does not respond to the necesities of two conflicting rights, people should find ways to ammend and improve the law. The current legislation has been surpassed by the conditions and challenges our vecinity demand. You agree on increasing the quotas for some countries. Why don’t we start openning the door to those who already live here. Of course, This process needs to be earned and if there is a penalty inmigrants need to pay, Let’s make it fair.

WHOA!! Back up the horses there haus. You seem to fail to realize that immigration is already LEGAL. We have a process in place – what these illegal aliens are doing is crossing into our borders without going through the right process and then expect to be given special treatment.

Two conflicting rights? You have the right to ask permission and go through the LEGAL way to enter this country. There is no conflict until you or anyone else decides to break those laws and do it your own way.

I know the law says i shouldnt rob a bank, but I need the money so that law is in conflict with my need – it should be changed.

Yes extreme, and rediculous, just the same as your statement was. There is no conflict with the law or with immigration if you do it right. Running across the border of another country should not automtically entitle you to tuition in that country, federal help and monies, food stamps, housing, schooling for your children…

And before you take the US to task on its want for a secure border so terrorist do not sneak across either (which has been documented happening), you should really look at places like Mexico and other soveriegn nations and see how they handle their borders. You will find that the US is more lax than many of them, including Mexico. Should we adopt Mexico’s border security as our own?

Everyone keeps saying we should be like all these other countries, lets be like Mexico and protect our borders like they do? Bet many would not like that….

Now, I don’t hold that the US should deport e3very illegal that is in the US, BUT I do think the first thing we need to do is protect our border. You stop the flow first.

If you have a hole in the bottom of your boat, do you try and make the water comfortable or you stop the leak first, then figure out what to do with the water?

It really is common sense.

- Stop he flow coming across the border first and foremost, build the wall, since that is also what the majority of americans wanted

- Then you remove federal funding from any city that tries to be a sanctuary city for illegals.

- You allow the police to check backgrounds, rid our jails of illegal alien criminal elements (our taxes going to feed house and guard these illegal alien criminals that are not even our own citizens).

- Go after the the businesses that knowingly higher illegal aliens. If the job opportunities for cheap labor no longer exists and federal monies and help are no longer there, the free handouts, medical care, schooling, ect will force a reverse flow. If these opportunities no longer exist, the illegals will go back or not be coming across by the millions.

Baklava, For my part, I do not lie. I came to this country with the firm idea of staying , because i have the conviction that a human being has the right to live wherever he or she chosses in the world.

I applaud you for your belief, BUT it is wrong. A human being does not havethe ‘right’ to live anywhere he or she chooses. There are soveriegn nations out there, they have rules and regulations, and if you choose not to obey those rules, those laws, then you pay the penalties involved.

While it is a nice thought, it is by far a naive one at that. Even Mexco has rules, laws and regulations that state what type of person can live in Mexico. I had them once before, but I can find them again for what is required to live in Mexico. Why should the US be any different?

With the US leading the charge on the war on terrorism, there would be nothing terrorists would like to do more than to strike at the heart of the ‘evil infidel satan’ – and open borders, the inability to keep track of those visiting our country, the inability to even ask for background checks on those who come across into our country …leaves a gaping hole in our security.

No, I am not a caremonger, but these are very real possibilities of our times.

Then there is also the fact that people who come into the US illegally without being screened can bring in deadly diseases from other countries. Without being screened we as citizens are put at risk. Without screening there is no way to control that, to get the person with it help needed and they are loose among our population.

Look how easy it was for this person with the rare form of TB to get back into the US. That alone should be a wakeup call.

I wonder if you are conviced that the poor people that crosses the border in search of a better life with just the resources of their bare hands represent a threat to you.

If that was only the case, but it isn’t. Among those millions that come across are also criminals, rapists, molesters, ect. Yes there are alot of hardworking illegal immigrants looking fo a better life, but don’t you think we should have the ability and the need to sort out the good from the bad? Shouldn’t they also go through the proper ways of getting in to the US?

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters nationwide favor cutting off federal funds for “sanctuary cities” that offer protection to illegal immigrants. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 29% are opposed.

….

By a 71% to 16% margin, voters also favor a proposal that would require all foreign visitors to carry a universal identification card.

….

Seventy-four percent (74%) also favor the creation and funding of a central database to track all foreign visitors in the United States.

By a 56% to 31% margin, voters want the government to continue building a fence along the Mexican border.

Link

A little more statistics and I will close this very long response……

Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:

• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

• The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime analysis. The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th Street Gang and the “non–gang members” who sell drugs in Hollywood for the gang. Those non–gang members are virtually all illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a ring organized by 18th Street bigs. The Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business.

Cops and prosecutors universally know the immigration status of these non-gang “Hollywood dealers” as the city attorney calls them, but the gang injunction is assiduously silent on the matter. And if a Hollywood officer were to arrest an illegal dealer (known on the street as a “border brother”) for his immigration status, or even notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service (since early 2003, absorbed into the new Department of Homeland Security), he would face severe discipline for violating Special Order 40, the city’s sanctuary policy.

Link

I am not saying all that come intothe US illegally are criminals, but we damn sure should have the ability to check, secure and defend against what does.

NC Cop, When these human beings that you call Illegal aliens come to the light, you will feel more secure because at that point, all the goverment agencies will have a record of every one of us and therefore it will be easier to find people and make them accountable for their deeds.

To stop the flow of illegal inmigration, we need to make it legal. When a law does not respond to the necesities of two conflicting rights, people should find ways to ammend and improve the law. The current legislation has been surpassed by the conditions and challenges our vecinity demand. You agree on increasing the quotas for some countries. Why don’t we start openning the door to those who already live here. Of course, This process needs to be earned and if there is a penalty inmigrants need to pay, Let’s make it fair.

Baklava, For my part, I do not lie. I came to this country with the firm idea of staying , because i have the conviction that a human being has the right to live wherever he or she chosses in the world. If you are looking for liars, you might want to start voting out those politicians who are deviating your attention from the real terrorist of the people. It has always been easier to blame on those who can not defend. Those who attacked The U.S. had the economical power and the logistic intelligence to do harm. I wonder if you are conviced that the poor people that crosses the border in search of a better life with just the resources of their bare hands represent a threat to you.

Sorry guys, My master chief in command is demmanding my services. I will try to be here later to continue sharing our thoughts.

How about “all of the above”?

Unfortunately, too many people who aren’t enamored of controlling the borders will buy into it…it’ll be a weird mutation of the “blame America” mindset that plays well with those folks.

Aug. 22, 2007. Elvira Arellano speaks to the Mexican Congress about her deportation from the United States. Elvira claims the U.S. broke that law first by ‘allowing’ illegal immigrants to pay taxes.

Video Here

Bold emphasis mine.

Audacity? Chuztpa? Ignorance? Stupidity?

For myself I was flabbergasted at such statements and the media attention given to her.

I am abit lost by the history lesson of number 12 Patrico. Might I ask what happened to the Aztecs??? It wasn’t the English that wiped them out

Ohhhh and speaking about missing the point Patrico. Whether it was an army of 500 or 50,000 that was neither here nor there. The point of the matter is that to often history reveals that those that do not protect themselves, disappear from the face of the earth.

Hernan Cortes with only 500 men more acomplished this incredible task.

Lastly, it was an incredible task destroying and looting a whole civilzation?? Now why would I take any further notice of anything you say, when you are obviously dual minded. What the Spanish did was incredible in Mexico, but the creation the US was horrible and bad??? Did I get that right?? – Lorica

The inmigration policies in this country are broken. they do not work for the times we are living. If we all want fair treatment in this issue, we must make the legislators work over time to find the way to solve this upseting problem.

I would like to take issue with this comment. Our immigration policies are not broken, they are ignored. To often Congress believes that they can ignore our laws, and ever 20 years or so just give out amnesty either in the form of citizenship or in some new long term visa. This is what was proposed with this new immigration bill, and thankfully it went down in flames, and our government is presently enforcing the law of the land.

By the way, borders and walls have not worked to solve human conflicts. Let’s be creative and find better ways to deal with them.

This is also an erroneous belief. Our border with Canada is the largest unprotected political territory marker in the history of man. When was the last time we went to war with Canada??? Seems that this border is working pretty well. This is truly a foolish statement. It is not about borders not working, it is about respect. Respect for cultural differences, respect for institutional differences. Why should Canadian taxes pay for my needs?? I am sorry Patrico, this is not a logical thought. Also, the Great Wall of China was instrumental in keeping out the Mongolians. Seems like it worked there too. – Lorica

This one’s getting bookmarked

“Reform” is a very nice-sounding word…but the devil is always in the details. The last “reform”, about 20 years ago, certainly made the problem worse.

I’m all in favor of legal immigration, and I agree with NC Cop that some of the quotas are too low. But I also want to allow in those legal immigrants who want to become Americans. I don’t want the ones who refuse to learn the language, demand all kinds of goverment services that the rest of us pay for, and then hold rallies taunting us that they’re going to take over.

If someone wants to come here legally and become a citizen, I’ll hold the door open for him or her and be the first to welcome them in. For those who do not want to be Americans, stay home and work to improve conditions in your own country, whether it be Norway, Nigeria, or Mexico.

Liars don’t make good neighbors either.

This country allows MORE LEGAL immigrants than ALL other countries combined.

When you knock we answer very generously.

What we are talking about is the fact that you need to follow the process and come here legally.

It is imperative for national security. We need to know who is here. It is so evident after 9/11 with Islamofascists who were here illegally on expired visas. We cannot simply grant an amnesty.

We need to hold accountable people that hire illegal immigrants.

We need to hold accountable people who are here illegally and commit crimes.

At the very least the above 2 items are non-negotiable.

As employment dries up you should then realize you can go home and then start knocking on the door.

But it seems to me that you think that all these crimes are commited by inmigrants.

No, sir, I don’t. I said the crimes that were committed by illegal aliens would not have been committed at all if we had our immigration laws enforced. By no means do I feel that ALL illegal aliens are murderers or rapists or robbers. Even more so, when our officers deal with illegal aliens who are VICTIMS or WITNESSES of crimes we go out of our way to make them feel that they can trust us and we will not go running to INS or ICE.

The same media that streches the truth to conform to an agenda that deviates the attention of the people from the issues that really matter.

Amen to that, brother! I completely agree with you on that one. However, numbers cannot lie or be twisted. Numbers are numbers. I realize it’s not a large percentage of crimes, however, it’s difficult to tell the families or victims of these crimes that it could have been prevented except for political correctness.

You will be secure if you know who Pedro or Maria are, where they live, What they do, and what they can do to help you improve your way of life.

I’m sorry, I just don’t see how this will help stop the flow of illegals into the country or help stop potential terrorists from flowing into our country through a porous border.