Your point about what happens to the people on their return to the native land is a good one. We’d obviously have to give foreign aid to these countries if we didn’t want to see famine, revolution, etc., and we couldn’t head off a revolution for certain.

I am a supporter of both amnesty and a secure wall. However, I think it is important for both sides to tone down the inflammatory rhetoric. The right-wingers need to admit that the aliens are good people, not criminals. The left-wingers need to admit that those opposed to massive immigration aren’t all Nazis or unreconstructed racists.

As much as I dislike the MSM, I think it is unfair and a shame for this fellow to be disciplined over things written in private e-mails. OTOH, I find it amusing to think that someone in the MSM is getting to see what it is like to be on the wrong side of a leak.

On their op-ed page the L.A. Times gave the standard response to the immigration issue. They said who will pick our fruit(true), who will mow our lawns(a fact but teenagers did it for years I don’t think the world will collapse) and who will build our homes. The Times was being honest but I was still shocked. When did Home construction become a job that “Americans won’t do.” Construction used to be a plumb job for Americans who didn’t go to college. Many nice middle class families were built on being a construction worker. In Southern California it is no longer true. And it is because of the current system.
If I was starving in Mexico or anywhere else I would do the same thing that every illegal does. I don’t blame them. We need immigration but we must have a legal, sane method to become an American Citizen and having millions of people living here in a legal limbo of you can come on in, but you are not part of the country legally is insane. It is destructive for the country and the aliens. And those who argue open borders have no idea what you are asking for.

Let’s argue the issue. I won’t call you “traitor”, un-American, and all of the other ugly, discussion stopping terms that some idiots throw out to stiffle debate. Boxcars and ethnic cleansing and bigot are in the same category.This is a huge problem and if we stop the knee jerk label tossing we might actually be able to get to a logical solution. If bigot, alien invasion, ethnic cleansing, losing our American identity,ect, ect, become the leading arguments then all we will get is Crossfire B.S.

But our political system is too screwed up for such a rational outcome. Neither the Aztlan activists and their allies in the cheap labor lobby, and the “no amnesty, bus them back to the border” bigots on the other side, seem willing to accept what THEY ARE OPPOSED TO in order to get WHAT THEY WANT. Thanks to such idiocy — along with a President who is half-decent on this issue but has already spent all of his political capitol in Baghdad and on the effort to privatize the New Deal — it is much more likely that we will get a watered down bill that does little or nothing.

You simply refuse to take the logic of some of these ìserious proposalsî to their logical conclusion. Also, the McCain-Kennedy proposal does not give the illegals a free ride. They are fined $2,000 for breaking the law. Why isnít this good enough for some people? No, a number of Americans are merely pretending that their primary concern is the letter of the law. The reality is that they are bigots.

I am firmly for securing our borders. We must stop the flow of illegals into the United States. Our national security depends on it. Still, there are an estimated 10-12 million illegals already here. That reality cannot be ignored.

Illuminating. One sign of near-average intelligence is the ability to discern differences. So, under this “logic,” because many of us fail to strictly adhere to highway speed limits, other crimes like illegal immigration and maybe even murder are too excused? Why not?

Not that it will help you understand, but one’s breaking the speed limit does not undermine the law’s validity or the need to enforce it, let alone the validity of all other laws and the need to enforce them. I’m reasonably sure most of us (although you might) seek to appeal to the injustice of speed laws or the capricious enforcement of those laws as an affirmative defense against breaking those laws in traffic court.

Regardless, most of us understand the nation has laws against illegal immigration and the employment of illegal immigrants; these laws have been poorly enforced for decades; the consequences of this are broad and serious; some people, on both sides, are very angry about this and it is being played out in the political arena. I know this point is beyond your ability to comprehend, but not one serious proposal has any remote passing to any “ethnic cleansing” or Nazi-like train loading effort to deport illegals. I understand you desperately wish it so, if only to confirm your biases, but it just isn’t true.

The typical trip on a Greyhound bus deals with only a relatively small number of people. We have an estimated 10-12 million illegals within the United States! Those are far more daunting numbers. How do you propose moving such an incredibly large number of people? Moreover, I am more concerned with the end of their journey. Their native countries would be mostly unable to handle millions of incoming people. This would inevitably result in the deaths of the weakest. No, I am the realist one. You are simply unable to imagine the impossible logistical task of evicting millions of human beings out of the country.

Just last year, a 96 year-old friend of the family survived an 8 hour plane trip from Los Angeles to Managua, Nicaragua. She wasn’t being deported, but she made the very same journey that the illegals would make.

Have you ever been to the Greyhound bus station or the Amtrak terminal? Plenty of infants and elderly people use both modes of transportation, and seldom die in transit…

I mean honestly, you are going way overboard here. Are some of the GOP critics of immigration motivated by prejudice and bigotry? Sure. But they are not mass murderers. You are getting more than a little hysterical about this.

How often do you strictly adhere to the speed limits posted on the highway? Furthermore, the Kennedy-McCain proposal does not give a free ride to illegal immigrants. They still have to pay $2,000 and other penalties. Isn’t this good enough for you?

You obviously are not paying attention. Some far right wing Republicans are advocating placing old people and small children on vehicles to remove them from the country! There is admittedly no direct attempt to put them to death—as I have pointed out a number of times. How many, though, will survive the journey?