There is another cost to illegal immigration which never gets much attention, but which is near and dear to me:

I have a number of foreign friends trying their best to immigrate to America. It's very very difficult. Nobody seems particularly concerned that these decent hard-working would-be immigrants are having their place here stolen by somebody who was willing to break the law.

I'm the child of immigrants. I'm very pro-immigration. Putting an end to illegal immigration would make immigration to America a fairer process. Ending illegal immigration is, in my case, a very pro-immigrant position.

Good for Arnold.

Its very demoralizing for those who struggle with obeying the law, jumping through all the hoops to become a citizen, and then seeing some dipstick sneak over the border and have a job and an apartment in less than a week.
From their perspective, they're suckers for obeying the law.
The thing that really frosts me is that in Mosocw on the Hudson, the cops and other city employees by law have to ignore someone's citizenship status. That's right true believers, NYC and I think LA and a few other lib centers have laws on the books that require city officials to disobey federal law.
Personally if I were in Congress I'd draft legislation that would deny federal funds to those entities that flouted the law in that manner.

There is one very simple way to end illegal immigration: Jail every person who employs an illegal immigrant for a mimimun of one year.

But that won't happen because the gutless right wing is in the pocket of those interests who feed on illegal immigrant labor. When was the last time you saw someone who employed illegal immgrant labor doing the perp walk? You won't see it, because the dirty little secret is that the monied interests who run the GOP have an interest in employing illegals.
But the pathetic losers who make up the rank and file of the GOP will continue to follow them. What tools.

As for drama, I'm sorry, but your boy Santorum will forever be the queen. His "man on dog" sex hystrionics are simply unbeatable.

mklutra,

Um...interesting comments, I guess. But what is your take on the actual issue of illegal immigration? Or are you just using it to bash the GOP?

People actually vary quite considerably about immigration on the right from the opinionjournal.com stance of open borders to the more hardlined views of Michelle Malkin. I'm probably somewhere in the middle. It's not all about being in the pockets of someone or another.

Everthing's about money with you leftists.

no, the "blame big business" is only one aspect of it, and it would not stop the people that jump the border just to have kids here that get citizenship status

Actually someone in CA did propose that the people who hired companies using illegals would be held liable for any medical costs the illegal incurred while doing work for the customer.
The idea was that consumers would demand businesses have legit workers to avoid incurring costs etc.

There's also the inflate the Democrat vote total aspect of illegal immigration. Notice that no proposals other than blanket amnesty come from the left.

Arnold wants to be President. I've been kind of leery of him during his career. I'm pretty sure he is about as good as we can hope for in California, but I have not thought his domestic agenda would ever have enough appeal to GOP voters to make him a credible national candidate.

That said, if he were to become the first prominent candidate to advocate stopping illegal immigration, I would have to change my opinion. If he ran a slightly right of center campaign with border security as his trademark (or at least prominent) issue, I think he would steamroll his way through the amendment process and the election, all the way to the White House.

Look, I'm sympathetic to legal immigrants who feel screwed because they have to jump through a bunch of hoops and illegals live here without the legal... hoopla.

But isn't Step #1 to reduce the number and difficulty of the hoops?

Make it relatively easy and practical for economically destitute foreigners to enter the USA legally, and tolerance for those who enter illegally will drop like a stone. It's tough to say, "I'm sorry, Pedro, but you and your family will have to wait in utter poverty for two-to-five years while we process your paperwork." It's a lot easier (morally) if the waiting time is a few weeks.

There are two obvious disadvantages to this proposal.

1. Without a lot of background checks and such, it will be very easy for terrorists to come in legally.

Well, it's not that hard for terrorists to come in legally even with the bureaucracy: you can get a short-term visa pretty easily (often at the airport), and it's not like we do a great job of deporting people who simply overstayed their welcome. So this proposal doesn't significantly weaken our homeland security, IMHO.

2. We'll be flooded with immigrants.

Leaving aside the question of how many immigrants will come and stay permanently, the current system seems to do a poor job of deterring people anyway. Is there some vast pool of people who want to come to America but are unwilling to go through the legal application process and unwilling to sneak across the border?

I think step one is deciding who we want to let in and for what reasons.
Policies should flow from that goal.
I think one of the problems is that as a nation we're not sure who we want to let in and why.

Iblis, you make a damn good point.

Here's my suggested list

PEOPLE WE WANT TO KEEP OUT:

1. Terrorists
2. Criminals
3. The French
4. Criminal French terrorist sympathizers (may be co-terminous with Group 3)
5. Whoever invented karaoke

PEOPLE WE WANT TO LET IN:

1. Pretty much everybody else

This might seem a little simplistic, but let me explain. The evidence I've seen tends to indicate that immigrants benefit the economy (how can they take our jobs, since the more people we have buying stuff, the more jobs there are?), except for obviously undesirable people like criminals. As for assimilation, I suspect that the 290 million Americans who are already here will be able to absorb however many immigrants who come, rather than the other way around.

Obviously, since a lot of immigrants will use roads, schools, etc., we'll need to crack down on employers paying immigrants under the table. But again, that's a lot easier to build support for if you're not talking about shipping someone back to a pretty miserable country.

As Lincoln said: all of you vote aye, I vote nay, The nays have it.

Pooter

MKlutra - because the dirty little secret is that the monied interests who run the GOP have an interest in employing illegals.

That is true, at the present time. Bush is a whore to his corporate crony pals and they want that cheap labor to depress wages, boost profits and pass the social costs - free education, health care, jail beds - onto the working class scum Bush has never cared for that much.

But if you look back, it was the Democrats, particularly a group of activist Jews like Immanuel Cellar - that caused America to lose control of its borders, adopt chain migration that has emptied out whole villages from Vietnam to Yemen. They saw that the less white America became, the more Democratic it would be. It worked well for a while. Immigrants hit the big cities and made certain states swing from solid Republican to Democrat or leaning Democrat, or Swing. California, NJ, Connecticut, NM, Washington, Illinois, Colorado.

But the Dems forgot, like Bush in the process of stuffing the wallets of his rich pals, that most people oppose Open Borders.

For the Jews that set this in motion with the lawsuits and the backroom work that created the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, payback is happening.

They are watching millions of Muslims with strong antipathy to Israel pouring in under the laws they sponsored. Soon Muslims will outnumber Jews in the USA and they are very politically active and consider it their duty to neutralize Jews influence over ME policy. And, finding out that Hispanic and East European immigrants harbor negative sentiments about Jews.

In response to immigrants blunting Zionist influence, to keep US policy tilted towards Israel and keep it's billions in annual foreign aid going, Jews are trying to cultivate and grow the number of Christian Zionists. (Those milennium dispensationalists that support Israel as essential to the conditions necassary for the destruction of the world and the Coming Rapture. ) But many of those Christians, who see America is becoming a better place for them, don't exactly look forward to Armageddeon like they used to..And growing numbers of Jews are recognizing that Open Borders is good for business but bad for Israel.

is it just me, or does everyone else hear the nazi anthem (you know the one with the video of hitler in front of the german people screaming) EVERY FUCKING TIME CEDARFORD SPEAKS? Man, its like someone is screaming ZEEE JOOOOOOSS!! in my fucking ear every time I read his bullshit!

And I thought I hated Jews.

(that last remark was a joke. Please, if you are the jew who owns my bank, I am trying to get a home loan, so dont be offended)

Son of America

I'm with Pompous; but I'd add people from Quebec to his list of unacceptables. I've never been there, but I know a few obnoxious lib Canadians, and they actually wanna speak French, so they're out - unless they are good at hockey, although I guess that's over.

Oh well; I just wanted to say that the Dems are not only bitchy, but wholly tin-eared. Their only chance is that while they're eating bon bons the GOP Senators - holy cow what do they stand for? - implode right in front of us.

Bill Frist is a weenie while Harry Reid doesn't have one.

good points sj kevin
this open borders policy is discriminatory towards everyone who is law abiding and not mexican.
many worthy people wait for 7 years for a visa, only to find that the wait has been extended to 10 yrs.

The Minutemen have plans for protests outside the businesses who chronically hire illegals.
they also may venture into hiring retired experts and creating a data base for the tracking and removal of criminal aliens and terrorists.

could be fun.

Oookaaay, Cedarford, nice rant about the evil Jews. Really think I've got to get going, Ace. Nice to see the inmates are so...enthusiastic...today. (Mikey smiles brightly, grabs his stun gun and backs towards the door).