The Republican Governor just signed that vile law. There goes any hope of the GOP ever getting the ever-growing Latino vote.

Well, you should be happy then, Wilson. Your Democrat party will have an even greater opportunity to decimate the Latino community as they have attempted (and to a great degree succeeded) in the black community.

If you have your way, a generation from now the Latino community will largely be dependent on the government to sustain life, virtually guaranteeing their vote. You will attempt to rob them of their dignity and their drive to succeed. You will attempt to control their population by putting abortion clinics in their communities. You will devalue life for them and the importance of an intact, two-parent family. In fact, you will continue to push for welfare legislation that actually discourages the father from being in the home. The crime rate in their community will dramatically increase. A disproportionate percentage of their population will drop out of school and/or go to prison. Their illegitimacy rate will skyrocket. Their American dream will be shattered.

You Dems do great work. That's quite a resume.

The ability to regulate immigration is a federal power – no question. You become a naturalized citizen of the United States – not of Indiana or Arizona. You are allowed legal entry into the United States – not just one particular state. Once you are awarded citizenship in one state, all states have to recognize it. Nothing in the Arizona law contradicts this.

However just because something is a federal crime doesn't mean it cannot also be a state/local crime. The state/local authorities are not trying to supercede the federal authority – they are working along side of it. After all, if a person is in this country illegally – but default they are in the state illegally as well. I don't agree that the determination of whether someone is here legally is a federal power – it is a matter of fact. Someone is either here legally or not – there is no decision to be made.

Who knows if this law will be deemed Constitutional. As absolutely ridiculous as the court sometimes is – it's anyone's guess. To be honest it wouldn't surprise me that actually enforcing a law would be unconstitutional.

And yes – it will be hispanics that are targetted by this. This isn't racism – it's because that is who the great majority of illegal aliens are. Everyone wants to play the race card on that – but it's a simple matter of geography combined with economics. We don't have a lot of illegal immigrants from the Netherlands because we don't share a border. There isn't a good way to sneak into the US from the Netherlands. We don't have a huge number of illegal immigrants from our northern neighbor because Canadians don't have the economic incentive to come here illegally. That is the same reason why you don't have a lot of Americans sneaking into Mexico or Canada – in general there just isn't any incentive.

I am tired of being told states shouldn't do anything about illegal immigration – that is the federal government's job. Great – let the federal government do their job and the states will quit trying to do it. In the meantime, let the people that are willing to act do so. Oh – and “dealing with the illegal immigrants” already here needs to be enforcing the laws already on the books – not another amnesty.

The previous was a response to Wilson's post, of course.

Its obvious that he doesn't have a high opinion of you.

I don't know that the broad-brush works here, Wilson. It might have just the opposite effect.

Rico is partially right. Americans are fed up with the federal government's lack of attention to this problem.

I don't know the complete answer, but stopping the leak, as Rico suggests, might be a start. Lozano is a perfect case to cite for the over-arching problem surrounding this stupid law, Abdul. It will, very likely, be struck down. After millions in legal fees and lots of wasted court time.

Mexicans are here because our economy, for some strange reason, demands cheaper, undocumented workers. Police that thoroughly–I mean completely–and you snuff out much of the reason for illegal border crossings. Ample laws exist today for that to occur.

THe continued influx of illegals was predominantly a border state issue. Now it's spread to many other states, too. One of Pres. Bush's only smart moves was to try to mitigate this problem, but the hard-right in his own party failed him.

Apparently all criminal law is unconstitutional because, with sufficient cause, anyone can be hauled off to jail and not have committed a crime. “We all know” that the criminal law can be abused.
Of course, you will not stay in jail if you are not found guilty, but that is apparently irrelevant.

I agree with you that those people who are currently in this country illegally should go to the back of the line when applying for legal entry or citizenship. But I need to point out that the end of that line is in their home country – not the US. To do anything else is a slap in the face of those people who want to come to the US and are following our rules – they aren't here.

Think of it this way – you get want to see a popular movie. Instead of standing in line and paying for a ticket, you sneak in. When you get caught, you get sent to the end of the line for tickets – you don't get to stay in the theatre watching the movie while those people who followed the rules are still outside waiting patiently in line.

Does that mean I want to load Latino families into busses and ship them south – as you put it? Well, if those families are here illegally, yes I do. How can it work any other way? You either catch someone who is here illegally or that person comes forward voluntarily. At the same time you have someone in some other country that wants to come to the US but is following our rules – so that person is waiting patiently for our extremely slow bureacracy to work. Now you say you want to put the person here illegally at “the back of the line”. How can you put the person who is here illegaly behind the person waiting patiently, if the person who is here illegally is allowed to stay in the US. At that point, the illegal has already obtained what the person following the rules wants.

I will also argue against your characterization of the “law-abiding, hard-working immigrant”. I will grant you the hard-working part, but not the “law-abiding”. Just being in this country illegally is a crime (hence the “illegal” part). Beyond that, an illegal immigrant in this country is either paying federal/state/local/ income taxes/payroll taxes or they are not. If they are not, then that is a violation of the law. If they paying those taxes, then since they could not possibly have a valid SSN or tax payer ID number – they have to be using a fake or stolen one which is a crime. I know that is a “heads I win, tails you lose” scenario – but that is what happens when you break the law to begin with.

Taxpayer –

I agree with you that we need to strengthen our border. The drug wars in Mexico are starting to spill over the border. While this is a tragedy, I can only hope that some good will from it and our government will finally give more than lip service to protecting our border. You are correct that there are people that want to harm the US. While to the best of my knowledge no terrorist has come in through our southern border, the vulnerability certainly exists.

A national ID is an idea whose time has come. We currenlty have a quasi-national ID in your SSN, coupled with a state ID in your drivers license. Neither of these are secure. While I do have privacy concerns, I think it would be better to have a secure form of ID that is as fraud-resistant as possible (nothing will be completely fraud-proof) than what we have now.

I have no problem with fining people that have broken the law.

I cannot agree with your fourth point. How can you say you are assimilating illegals behind those already in line if you let them stay in the country they are in line to enter? It makes no sense whatsoever. You are rewarding people for breaking our laws, and basically telling the people that want to come here legally that they are stupid for following our laws.

In reality we will not be rounding up millions of people. Though as we find people we definitely should be deporting them. What we can and should be doing is making it as uncomfortable as possible for anyone here illegally. Cut off all benefits for people here illegally and require proof of citizenship/legal immigrant status before providing any benefits. Implement severe fines (with the loss of licenses to operate for repeat offenders) for anyone that hires illegal immigrants. This would have to be coupled with an employment verification system that would make it easy for those people here legally to prove that.

Get rid of benefits and jobs for illegal immigrants and they will go back home by themselves. Many experts are reporting the drop in illegal immigration during the recession.

Once we have protected our borders and stopped the flow of illegal immigration, we also need to look at our legal immigration system. There are a lot of people in a lot of countries that would like to come here. We need to look at the needs of our country and how they match up with the wants of our would-be-citizens. Right now our legal immigration system is heavily skewed towards those with high-demand skills – making it very difficult in some cases for low-skill workers to come here legally. I an not excusing anyone that has broken our laws by coming here illegally, but I do have to wonder how many would have chosen to come legally had there been an easier way to do so. We need to look closely at how we want to invite to become part of our American family, though the first and foremost criteria has to be what is best for this country.

We also have to face the fact that stopping illegal immigration would have side effects. I don't believe there is any such thing as a job an American will not do, but I do believe there are wages they will not do them for. So if industries that are currently abusing illegal labor is forced to hire legal workers, you can expect prices to rise. Some agriculture and construction come to mind. Personally I think the rise in prices will be more than offset by lowered costs of providing services to illegal immigrants.

“Thirdly, we all know who is going to be stopped by this law.”

Yep, the massive majority of people violating our laws will be stopped.

Of course, Abdul cannot abide this. In his world, of 100,000 illegal aliens stopped, 99,999 could be latino, and 1 could be from Sweden. Yet, he would claim racism, and how 'unfair' the law is.

As I understand, the government south of our border is corrupt. Well, why don't the Citizens take up arms and change their government.

It worked for us, once upon a time.

They won't change the government in their country, because we make it so easy for them (illegals) in our country.

Taxpayer –

Thank you for you rational discussion of this topic. It seems to many times any discussion of this topic degenerates very quickly into accusations of racism or socialism.

I agree with parts of your post. There are a lot of things that should happen in an ideal world that doesn't in reality. However I still have trouble with idea of doing a “temporary immigration fix”. Beyond the very important concept that it is not fair or just, I don't think it would work. This was the method that was tried in the 1980s that was supposed to fix all the issues – yet here we are today. I have seen nothing that indicates to me that granting an amnesty again would produce a different result. And to use an old cliche – fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I'm also not sure that I agree that the goal of all (or even most) illegal immigrants is citizenship. Many come here to work to send money home with the idea of getting enough money to be able to live comfortably back in their home country. I don't think withholding citizenship but allowing an illegal immigrant to stay and work would be much of a punishment to many of them. As for the fines – make them too small and they are worthless. Make them too large and people won't pay them and will simply stay here illegally. Really, the biggest difference between a citizen an someone legally allowed in the country is the ability to vote. Think of how many natural born citizens don't bother to vote.

The only method I see to actually solving the problem we have with illegal immigrants is to get rid of the incentives that draw people here coupled with a strong border defense. Actually if Mexico's government was less corrupt we should also at least consider aid to help them bolster their economy – which would dramatically reduce the incentives that draw people here.