I appreciate you starting the thread as I have been feeling this conundrum as of late. I am conflicted because I have a friend who is an illegal immigrant and I have known him for 10 years. He risked his life to cross a desert with no food or water to get here. He had nothing when he arrived and he did whatever job he could find to establish himself. He has a talent for fixing things like cars and machinery. Sometimes he works 16 hours a day, or he works 24 hour + shifts doing snow removal and he fixes cars on the side. He worked for a small business that became pretty successful and sold to a somewhat larger small business and now he works for that company and makes $18 an hour. He has purchased some equipment and tools and incorporated his own business. He found out that he is actually eligible for a special kind of visa which he is currently trying to gain legal status this way. He has never committed a crime other than a speeding ticket. He obtained a drivers license legally before they started to ask for proof of legal residency which he still has. He rents a house that he keeps in good condition, he doesn't drink or do drugs, and he is an overall good person. He has an accent but has improved his English quite a bit over the years. I may take some flack for this and it is understood, but I would take him over a welfare cheating bum any day. Of course there are a lot of bad illegals, but how do you encourage the good to come and the bad to stay away? You can build a Berlin Wall all along our southern border but people will still get through if they have enough incentive. Some want welfare, but some really want to work and start businesses and be productive members of our society and culture. The question is, how do you separate the two? My great grandfather also came here as an illegal, but he didn't come to receive welfare, he came to work the land. Perhaps if our welfare system were not so pervasive, we would not attract the wrong kinds of people or at least fewer of them?

I think changes to our culture are the root cause. Welfare is a big part of this, but other things happened as well.

Before the civil war it was culturally acceptable to fly your family crest at the top of the flag pole, then your state flag, then the US flag below that. Sometime after the civil war that changed and culturally it was the US flag that went at the top of the flag pole.

I find that analogy of where it was acceptable to fly a flag to tie very closely with the cultural changes that would eventually make many things that would have otherwise been seen as cultural unacceptable, even unconstitutional, just fine later on. a few are:

* Welfare. It became OK to steal from one person so long as you gave it to someone in need and you were the government.
* Social security from something the supreme court said was unconstitutional in the 30ies to something that was constitution in the 60ies, just 30 years later.
* the US culture accepted the idea that diversity was good no matter what. Diversity is good so long as their is a core common thread. Remove the common thread such as the same language and diversity can take you down a bad road.
* The common thread that the individual was responsible, intelligent and capable was once strong in our culture. Now its weakened or gone.
* The concept that a person could be a great as their skills and desires would take them to was unchallenged until 1890 when Sherman law said a man could be to good, to accomplished and if he gets that way the government has the right to knock him back down. Man could achieve great things, but if they are to great the government needs to stop the monopoly he may develop.

The government did not change all of these things in our culture. We the people did it, and the government is simply enforcing the changes we either asked for, or allowed.

I would offer that the problem with immigration is not an illegal immigration problem or an immigration problem, but a culture problem. Until we the people change that, no matter what the laws are, no matter what walls are built, no mater what controls are put in place the symptom of the cultural problem will persist.

To fix this problem we must fix our culture.

The problem isn't immigration its ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, that group of people who totally disregard our laws, our private property to sate their own needs. Those people are nationals from another land who have right being here and have violated everything they hoped to attain by coming here whether they acted lawfully once here or not.

The fault of this situation rests firmly on the US Federal Government who has created a shadowy underclass to appease business? To create a voting block? Very much like the DNC has create a violent and lawless class in the black community, the illegal hispanic community, who has no desire to assimilate and become citizens, is very much beholden to the DNC -their slave masters with economic, not physical chains.

While being an American who hails from legal immigrant parents I still have no sympathy for anyone in this country illegally AND LOATHE anyone in the Fedgov who offers anything other deportation to these millions of these reprobates.

I have plenty of first hand experience with illegals.

Lets have an adult conversation on this subject. There are a lot of good people working here without papers but there are a lot of criminals without papers too. How about starting by deporting the known criminals? At the same time, issue temporary work permits to good, hardworking and skilled people after a thorough background check and proof that they are not receiving money from the government. People without papers who do not have gainful employment and are receiving government assistance then they need to be next on the list for deportation. Illegal voting and welfare fraud should be grounds for deportation. Start with the worst on deportations. Start with the best when issuing work permits.

To argue that "illegal immigration" is the problem (vs. immigration) is just a legal agreement - it completely submits itself to the fallacy of authority in the scope of the original post.

Immigration is a problem in welfare states - illegal or otherwise.
The fix is to eliminate subsidy (education/health/jobs/income/food etc.) claims all people have on others (taxpayers).

Barring the likelihood of that - restrict the claims
for as many people as possible - all immigrants ("illegal" or otherwise) would be a category of ineligible welfare state beneficiaries.

It is sad that because of our welfare state, we heavily restrict immigration to the US to many hard working, honest people that are stuck in otherwise hostile, horrible environments.

What if the employers of illegals were held to be their sponsors and were found to be responsible for all financial liabilities incurred by hospitals, schools and government entities for services to those employees and their dependents?

The enforcement would be by civil suit and I imagine an attorney or two could be found who would press cases on contingency.

Wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime and would be the mother of all deterrents!

My husband is foreign, so please bear in mind my prejudices (That's my disclaimer) :)

So many Americans want to blame foreigners for "taking" all the jobs. But my personal experience are that a large portion of foreigners are willing to work at jobs Americans don't want, for less pay than Americans will accept. A foreign person takes a job and is thankful for it. Yes, they might have to work two or three jobs to achieve the "American Dream" but they are willing to do the work. Americans won't take the job, want the company to pay more and give free health care, have the government support them while they wait for a higher paying job to come around, and wonder why they can't get ahead.

I understand there's a big difference between a foreigner and an illegal immigrant, and obviously this is an opinion with generalizations, but I believe we could learn a lot as a society from the work ethic (and gratefulness) of the foreign culture.

American Freebies, altruism and willful ignorance.

Illegal aliens skip the checks for:
• Contagious Deadly Diseases.
• Membership in Groups Seeking the Overthrow of the U.S.A.
• Drug Addictions.
• Illegal Contraband (Drugs, Weapons, Dangerous Animals & Plants).
• Felony Warrants & Records.
• Membership in Criminal Organizations.
and much more.

Why in the world would we encourage that?
That was a problem back in your great grandfather's time which is why we passed the illegal alien laws we have.

IMHO, sir, the real problem is politicians using the
immigrant group as pawns in their grand plan to
permanently take power in the u.s. -- through plain-
old bribery and subjugation of the dependent class
which they are enlarging through this scheme.

this hurts the people coming into this country,
to effectively prevent them from achieving "the
american dream" by that subjugation-by-welfare. -- j

The problem isn't immigration. Restrictions on immigration are very recent. When my grandfather entered the country with my father, then a young boy, there were no immigration restrictions. Immigration restrictions. The first restriction came in 1875, restricting the immigration of convicts and prostitutes. In 1882 came limitations on immigration of Chinese. Also excluded were persons convicted of political offenses, lunatics, idiots, and persons likely to become public charges. The law placed a head tax on each immigrant. In 1885, admission of contract laborers was banned. Provisions were adopted in 1888 --the first since 1798--to provide for expulsion of aliens. In 1903, Immigration law was consolidated. Polygamists and political radicals were added to the exclusion list. In 1907, a bill added people with physical or mental defects or tuberculosis and children unaccompanied by parents to the exclusion list. Japanese immigration became restricted. That was the year my father and grandfather entered the US as immigrants. In 1917, a bill added to the exclusion list illiterates, persons of psychopathic inferiority, men as well as women entering for immoral purposes, alcoholics, stowaways, and vagrants. In 1921 a temporary quota law by nationality was passed. This was the firs quantitative immigration restriction. A permanent quota law was passed in 1924. This bill also established the Border Patrol. Border patrolling and control, principally to limit incursion of Mexican bandit bands, had before then been performed by the Texas unit that later became the Texas National Guard. My father, who was US horse cavalry at the end of WW II, was transferred to this Texas unit and rode border patrol in 1919 and 1920, before his discharge from the Army.

The problem is not and never has been immigration as such. Controlled immigration has always been good for the country. The problem is how to limit the entrance of "undesirables" -- criminals, those with mental or physical illnesses, and others who would likely have to be supported by taxpayer dollars; and how to limit immigration so that the US labor markets do not become overwhelmed by immigrants. The problem is illegal immigration, and what to do about those who enter illegally.

Thanks everyone for the discussion.

I think it boils down to this. At some point we went from individualism to collectivism with strong twist of altruism in the country. If we were still individualist in our culture immigration would not generally be an issue.

Yes there would be the occasional person who wants to do harm to us, but for the most part those coming here would be doing so to build a better life for themselves, not in the hope to have someone else give them a better life.

Figure out a way to export the collectivists from our country, really the collectivist culture and import some good old pre civil war American individualism and immigration would not be an issue. Neither would most the issues we face today.

By enlarge they all have the same root cause. Collectivist mentality and culture. .

IMHO the real problem is looking the other way. We can't agree on a set of rules so we have an unofficial policy of ignoring the problem and having an underclass of 15 million people living and working here. No one has the political will to stop the people who are hiring and doing business with them. Politicians benefiting from the hardcore lowlifes who somehow feel less pathetic talking about using "lethal force force" against people coming into the country don't want to lose that vote. So we look the other way, which creates a bigger problem than any direct solution would.

I still think we should invade Mexico City, take down the government, and take the country over. That will make our southern border really small and lot further south. Then the SEALS and Special Forces can go in and clean up the drug cartels and we'll have a nice warm place to vacation without the hassle of leaving the country. Everybody's happy, there won't be any reason to come north anymore, we'll all be Americans (or maybe Mexicans). And we can now move south unrestricted, where a lot of our movie stars seem to live. We can make it into 7 States as I have said before, so Obama can get it right. I'm sure he'd tell us he knew that when he talked about them before.