I'm a big ol meanie who thinks you shouldn't HAVE a family if you cannot provide for one.

Then again, didn't the Mexicans stop coming here when the jobs dried up?

The man should never be in any position where his job is to execute the laws.

Fuck Jeb Bush. That's what I have to say about him.

If I rob a bank to feed my kids, is that an act of love too? jackass.

It riles me up that my highly-skilled husband who was married to an American (me) still didn't have a greencard after living 14 years in the US, but that folks are talking about amnesty for line jumpers.

Actually, it's all for the best, now that we're back in his country a greencard would be a liability and we wouldn't have been able to get a mortgage. But that's beside the point.

The man should never be in any position where his job is to execute the laws.

Should every 13-year old girl who takes nude pictures of herself be charged with producing child pornography, put on the sex-offender registry for life, and be forced to live under a bridge somewhere? Should the feds continue to execute no knock raids in order to beat and kidnap people who possess a plant in states where possession of the plant is not even illegal?

I, for one, would like to see more "prosecutorial discretion" applied to people who make less than seven figures a year (and donate significant portions of that to a particular political party, no doubt).

Where do I start. First of all, this will be the fourth amnesty in the past half century. And every time it's happened before, we were promised that that time would absolutely positively be the last time ever, pinky swear. This time nobody is willing to fall for that.

Second problem: Every effort that's been made to really get anyone's arms around the problem has been hijacked to serve as a cover for amnesty. We have:

"Comprehensive immigration reform" = amnesty
"Compassionate conservatism" = amnesty
"Total border security solution " = amnesty

Washington has no trust with the people on this issue. Everyone knows that any bill that is passed, by either party, will be a total open-borders bill. Any politician who claims that his or her bill will secure the borders and constrain future amnesties is, by definition, lying. There is no credibility. It's plain to everyone that if a comprehensive bill were to be passed, the Obama administration would simply pick out the parts it likes and ignore the rest. Plus, nothing in Washington is real unless it comes with money attached, and border-security bills never do.

Third problem: This is what I call the "Locust Left" problem. Voting records and polls show that the Hispanic immigrants will vote, by an overwhelming majority, for the same socialist policies that they left Mexico to get away from. We see similar behavior among the American Left: they vote for policies that make where they live uninhabitable, they move to a more hospitable area, and then they start voting for the same policies that they moved to get away from. They are like locusts: they move in, strip an area of its resources, and then move on, leaving devestation behind. I'm sorry, but we're not talking about Irish immigrants fleeing a potato famine, or Chinese coolies trying to make a better life for themselves. We're talking about people who, by and large, come here for the social services, and vote for more of same.

And the fourth problem ties into that: we already have an extreme unemployment situation. As PJ points out, a lot of the illegals who came here for work have left. What we have left behind are the welfare recipients, the green-card sham marriages, and the anchor babies. We don't need to be importing any more workers; we don't have enough jobs for the people already here. Until some radical changes are made to improve our economy, we simply can't afford any more immigrants, legal or otherwise.

(And while we're on that subject: does anyone besides me find anything suspicious about how some big companies are demanding that millions more workers be imported? When there are already a hundred applicants for every job? When the minimum wage is about to go up past $10/hour? Here's what I think the game might be: an amnesty bill that has a sneaky little provision attached allowing the newly-legalized to be paid below the legal minimum wage. What a neat little trick! In one fell swoop, crony big business gets what amounts to a huge subsidy, millions of new socialist-favoring voters guarantee the Left a permanant majority, and the hated American white-guy working class gets priced out of the market.)

If I rob a bank to feed my kids, is that an act of love too? jackass.

Yes, stealing and hurting other people is just like walking across a line on a map without proper papers from a bureaucrat. Clearly we should all be outraged!

HOW DARE SOMEONE ELSE LIVE ON THE SAME CONTINENT AS ME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! THERE ARE ARBITRARY HOOPS TO JUMP THROUGH, DAMNIT!

I find it hilarious that this sentiment is most often expressed by people who otherwise would say they believe in "small government".

I'm two.faced on this issue. On one hand, immigrants should respect our laws and those who do should be better off than those who don't.

In the other hand, we've set up a system that encourages illegal immigration.

Imagine a restaurant where people who check in at the door wait for a table and pay, but we tell those who sneak in the back that they can eat first and eat for free. Would anyone be surprised that there would be a problem of people sneaking in?

Normally, I would be for cracking down on lawbreaking, but not as long as we incentivize it.

I like to put Congress in a huge cell w/Pizza Hut, McD's, and KFC food and tell 'em they are not free to leave EVER unless they come up w/a plan that's fair to both sides.

They CAN NOT be released unless they KNOW WHAT IS IN THE PLAN and can explain it.

After 90 days they are shot and we start over. (I'd shoot 'em up front just to show I'm serious but I'm trying to be sensitive here.)

We all break laws. Particularly the specious ones. The catch is who decides which ones are specious?

I'm with Chris Rhodes on this one - and Jeb Bush also. There should be punishment, of course. I work with foreign-born people who jump through freakin' ridiculous hoops to stay legal. Did you know they have to travel to another country (usually Canada or Mexico), simply to cross the border and cross back to get their visa stamped? It's incredibly [ stupid | wasteful | pointless | ...]. And, of course line-jumpers make everyone mad, particularly those who have had to navigate the silliness of some of those requirements in order to live and work here.

But there is obviously a demand for workers - unskilled and low-skilled labor, in particular, because the high-skilled laborers generally are willing and able to navigate in legally. Cousin Dave touched on it as an impossibility. I'm maybe slightly more optimistic. There needs to be a way to allow people to cross our borders, with sane background checks, work here, and then GO HOME again afterwards. All legally, without offering them a free pass to U.S. citizenship. The ones who line-jumped should be banned from citizenship for life (not jailed. but punished.)

We don't need more labor, but we need to make the labor that we already have documented and safe.

What if you were poor, starving and couldn't find any work. What if you were uneducated and didn't fully understand the world or the laws around you. What if your kids were crying. What if there was a magical place where people had jobs, food and shelter. You know you're not supposed to go there, but it's just across the river. Your goal is not to take anything away from others. Your goal is simply to feed your own family. You are desperate and tired. There is no other answer within your grasp.

Would you jump the fence? Would you seek that magical place?

I would.

And I like Cousin Dave's term "Locust Left". Ask anybody in states that abut California how they feel about Cali immigrants, and they'll talk your ear off. He got it in one succinct phrase.

"Your goal is not to take anything away from others. "

It all comes from the Scrooge McDuck Money Bin, right?

Naturally. If you are:

- poor
- starving
- can't find work
- uneducated
- don't fully understand the world or the laws around you

... it only stands to reason that you will have kids, and that this seemed like a wise decision that totally made sense to you at the time.

No, it doesn't make sense to anyone else, either - certainly not those whose property you wish to trespass upon.

"It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." -- Milton Friedman

Look to Milton: Open borders and the welfare state

The transfer state redistributes funds from those with high-skill and high-income levels to those with lower skill levels. Low-skill immigrants become natural recipients in this process. On average, low-skill immigrant families receive $30,160 per year in government benefits and services while paying $10,573 in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of $19,587 that has to be paid by higher-income taxpayers.

=======================================

I find it hilarious that this sentiment is most often expressed by people who otherwise would say they believe in "small government". -- Chris Rhodes at April 7, 2014 6:57 AM

You see part of the enumerated powers in U.S. Constitution is that:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

So that is part of the job of the government no matter how small it is.

And blaming the U.S. for a successful economy while your own countries economy sucks -- it not our fault. Change your own government and economy. It's not our fault.

Yeah, this. I work in the adult education field, and one of our areas of specialization is acquiring English as a Second Language. I get LOTS of exposure to this issue.

And I think that JEB Bush is just stating the same thing that I see. I certainly don't blame any individual illegal alien who comes here to try to build a better life for his family.

But that doesn't mean he's not breaking the law. And what's good, and even admirable for an individual doesn't make good public policy.

Just as we find it easy to forgive stealing a single loaf of bread to feed a starving family in "Les Miserables," you can't make theft of bread legal and still maintain a functioning society.

I have no particular animus toward any individual illegal alien. He's trying to better his life and that of his family, and that's laudable. Our immigration process makes it almost impossible for him to do it legally, and I think we can improve it.

But that doesn't mean that ignoring illegal aliens is good public policy. They broke the law to get here. That, by definition, makes them criminals. And ANY "reform" of immigration that does not involve the phrase "arrested and deported" is an amnesty for criminals.

Interesting perspective from Australia. Boat people are a huge political issue here. Reams of text get spent on even trying to define the terms of the debate - are they "unauthorised arrivals", "asylum seekers", or "illegal immigrants"?

But for everyone that says to me "we're being mean, why not give them a chance", I have one counter question - ok, you tell me how many is too many. 10,000? 50,000? A million? (Bear in mind, population of around 25 million). I've never once got an answer. No one wants to set a limit. Just natter about "oh, the humanity".

So my answer is, until you can work out that, we should keep taking a reasonable humanitarian refugee intake from camps, and anyone who can afford to fly into Indonesia then get transport to Australia can go fuck themselves.

>>Yes, stealing and ...

The second they take 1 penny of assistance or use 1 penny of the local resources they are thieves.

>>What if there was a magical place where

Tahiti is a magical place... No, No, NO! That's just brainwashing. No such thing as a magical place on this earth. The U.S. certainly is not even a contender.

"No, it doesn't make sense to anyone else, either - certainly not those whose property you wish to trespass upon."

The entire continent of the United States is not mine or your property. If they want to rent a room from a guy, that's not "trespassing".

"So that is part of the job of the government no matter how small it is."

Which portion of those items are you referencing? Are illegal immigrants an "invasion" now? Are we going to declare war on them?

The second they take 1 penny of assistance or use 1 penny of the local resources they are thieves.

Many US citizens take assistance or local resources without paying into the system, and many illegal immigrants pay taxes/social security that they'll never be able to collect because of their illegal status.

The true theft here is when the government takes money out of your wallet by force to begin with, not when they decide to distribute it back out again.

Rhodes, not sure what sexting has to do with the persistent unwillingness of the administrative and political class (manifest since 1977 if not earlier) to conscientiously enforce immigration laws. Complete non-sequitur. (For starters, complaints re prosecutorial discretion are not ripe when the government has a long history of refusing to deploy agents to search for those overstaying visas - one former agent said there were ca. 1990 a grand total of seven such agents in New York City - and a long history of catch-and-release games with border jumpers and an extant moratorium on deportations).

==

There is a fellow who uses the handle 'zman' who states in concise terms what is up here:

Everyone else is basically satisfied to live their lives surrounded by people who speak their language, share their history and enjoy their customs. Again, there are no examples of people holding festivals in their towns and villages to underscore all the things they hate about themselves.

The self-loathing amongst out elites is unique in human history. Whether it is the result of some sort of pathogen or mass religious hysteria, it sets them apart from the main in a way that even the 18th century French aristocracy could not imagine. We are ruled not just by people who are different from us. They detest us.

Or, as the disreputable Mr. Derbyshire put it, Jeb Bush is a Tutsi speaking to his fellow Tutsis. The rest of us are Hutus.

ltw, I believe it is conventional that refugees are housed proximate to their countries of origin, the notion being that their status is temporary and repatriation is assumed. There are no refugee generators proximate to Australia. The most proximate locus would be the Karen and Shan zones in Burma, which are more than 3,000 miles away. The only refugees who should be appearing in Australia should be a scatter of politicians, journalists, and academics who would be subject to imprisonment were they to get off the boat back home - people the government wants by name for public activities. Australia's policy should be to contribute to funds which house and feed refugees next door to refugee generating countries. The closest camps should be in Thailand.

During our low immigration regime (prior to 1840 and from 1924 to 1965) immigration streams typically amounted to 0.125% of the extant population per annum, or around 26,000 per year in your case at this time. You should insist on English proficiency and debar the immigration of anything but families or elder married couples if the source country is a locus of trouble like Pakistan.

"The entire continent of the United States is not mine or your property." Chris Rhodes

Really? I take it you don't own anything, then? And everything you have ever had, could just as easily have been taken away because all law and ownership is in nature, relative, because after all, we all die anyway... right?

Wars of defense and wars of conquest have all been fought over "a line on a map..." this is the way humans are, and have been since we stopped wandering.

Because WHY?

If you till and plant things, and wait all summer to see crops, you can't actually afford to have someone else show up and eat your food.

Scale this up to country size, and this is why there are boarders.

D'ya know if you sneak into Mexico illegally you get 3 years in jail and then deported? Although you can prolly bribe your way out of that.

JUST BECAUSE you think that it should all be free lover and shared everything, doesn't mean everyone else does, which is why there are laws.

There is a simple problem, with a simple solution. You have to have a boarder that is not porous, and force people to actually come in legally. That way, the groups who DO come in illegally, can be sent back, and there won;t be a critical mass of them.

It's instructive to look at the Canadian border fr this. It's twice as long as the one with Mexico, and yet? Not much of a problem with Canadians coming here illegally.

Why is that?

There is no reason for them to come, except on holiday... because they have done the necessary things to keep their country a nice place to live.

This is the problem with the southern boarder.

How will Mexico become a nicer place to live, if all the people who have the gumption to MAKE IT SO, leave to come to the US?

If you look at the elites in both countries, it is far better for them to have these illegal crossings, to make their power work. In Mexico, you have no revolutions. In the US there is cheap, no questions asked labor, and all the politicians can act like they are doing something while they do nothing.

So. If you spent the money in the 80's to make the boarder hard to cross, then it would be done today. But instead, they had an amnesty... and SURPRISE, many more people came.

So now actually making a boarder is MUCH harder, and 100x more expensive... and every year you wait gets worse.

And I'm sure at some point some famil in Texas New Mexico or Arizona is going to be massacred by the drug cartels moving in... and there will be some hand wringing and then...

Nothing will be done, again.

And Mexico will never get better, because all it's hardworking people who have the cajones to get stuff done, keep leaving... instead of taking care of their own house.

"There needs to be a way to allow people to cross our borders, with sane background checks, work here, and then GO HOME again afterwards. All legally, without offering them a free pass to U.S. citizenship. "

Has ANY country managed this? Once they're in, gästarbeiteren tend to stay.

Wait I just answered my own question. Kuwait does this. Kuwait has strict regulations for where foreigners can live, and they have to leave before the age of retirement because they can't get retirement benefits there. Is Kuwait a reasonable model, though?

There needs to be a way to allow people to cross our borders, with sane background checks, work here, and then GO HOME again afterwards. All legally, without offering them a free pass to U.S. citizenship.

--

Yeah, let's import a servant class.

Maybe I've just been doing different reading, but I'm not sure what "the self-loathing amongst our elites" refers to. To clarify, when I think of "our elites" I think of the people in government and those who work for the Too Big to Prosecute banks and Wall Street firms. I don't see a lot of self-loathing there. If anything, they seem QUITE pleased with themselves.

Agreed, they do.

@Cousin Dave. People can be educated and made a productive part of society. Locusts cannot. Peace.

@Pirate Jo. You said... "certainly not those whose property you wish to trespass upon."

I'm not saying people should be breaking the law necessarily. I was merely trying to point out the extremely different perspectives on the issue by showcasing the other side's view. You sound angry and I'm not sure if that's directed at me or the topic in general, but if you really want to strip it down the core -- I value life over property, and I believe people who prey on the weak, are the weakest of all. Just saying.

And Mexico will never get better, because all it's hardworking people who have the cajones to get stuff done, keep leaving... instead of taking care of their own house.

With all the natural resources they have there, their economy should be booming. Then again, the same is essentially true for the US too, but with all the people against just about any use of natural resources, it's not happening here either.

I value life over property... (Tim)

But at some point they become the same (gotta feed 'em, you know), so the question still remains: how many? And spare me any libertarian blather about how resources are limitless. "The womb can stay fertile longer than you can stay solvent."

Oh I see, "act of love" is supposed to make it sound better, make us all gooey inside. Meh.

My grandmother came here from Shanghai in 1930 and it was an act of sheer desperation, after her dalliances had blown the marriage apart in China. Back then there was no welfare state to speak of. Welfare was Aunt Vera and Uncle George.

flbeachmom -- this sounds similar to what you where suggesting

http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-2a-agricultural-workers/h-2a-temporary-agricultural-workers

Of course the first the price to be paid should be loss of any gains that comes from the criminal act.

People can be educated and made a productive part of society. Locusts cannot. Peace. -- Tim at April 7, 2014 11:03 AM

Look at Detroit. Look at what's happening in Colorado. Then tell me how people can be educated.

Look at Detroit. Look at what's happening in Colorado. Then tell me how people can be educated.

Detroit is a slum, for the most part, the Detroit municipality comprehending about 16% of the whole metropolis. You have several types in slums:

1. Ordinary working people who live there for a variety of reasons (housing costs, proximity to friends and relations). These are generally low-level tertiary sector workers.

2. Low-level tertiary sector workers with bad manners. Ordinary people move away from them, leaving them in the company of people more tolerant of their antics (or, more precisely their children's antics). Plenty of places in the city where 10 year old youths are not out making noise at 10 o'clock at night, do not harass other people's pets, do not drop the f-bomb on elderly women, do not climb on your trellises, and do not steal your Christmas wreath.

3. Criminal populations and long-term dependents (whose children render schools deeply unpleasant for staff and other students alike).

==

The problem with Detroit is that it has a terrible political class that an addled and de-mobilized population assents to, there being no counter-mobilization among the residual bourgeois population therein (as there was in Washington). They also have a denuded tax base. So, there are not the resources, administrative talent, or political will to maintain public order. What you need in Detroit is vigorous crime control and a willingness on the part of public officials to segregate incorrigible youths in day jails where they will be confined and allowed modest quanta of exercise and special education.

You need a metropolitan police force amply staffed in greater Detroit, a restructuring of how primary and secondary schooling is delivered (public agency only for incorrigibles), and amended means of public finance and audit and control.

Should every 13-year old girl who takes nude pictures of herself be charged with producing child pornography, put on the sex-offender registry for life, and be forced to live under a bridge somewhere?

Yes, only when women are punished by such draconian laws do they change

"The true theft here is when the government takes money out of your wallet by force to begin with, not when they decide to distribute it back out again."

And here we have a fine illustration of one of the problems: this person has no clue whatsoever about cause and effect.

"The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn't come legally ... and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work, to be able to provide for their family, yes, they broke the law, but it's not a felony."

"It's an act of love, it's an act of commitment to your family." -Jeb Bush

I had no idea that there was a thinker in the Bush family!

The Mexicans/Guatemalans I've met weren't risking their lives sneaking north so they could get on welfare, hang out, smoke weed all day. They could hang out back home with out all the fuss, and the weed is cheaper too. They come here to work their butts off doing s&^! that we don't want to do.

This is a crime because this week we say it's a crime, but it's hard to get real mad at a guy who's just looking for work...

The Former Banker:
Of course the first ...price to be paid should be loss of any gains that comes from the criminal act.

If I understand this correctly, you are suggesting that when we catch an illegal we should confiscate anything that they have? If it were me, I would send home almost all my earnings every week (not that far from what many do now actually) and I would never, ever, have any contact of any kind with authorities of any kind, at least not under my own name...

They come here to work their butts off doing s&^! that we don't want to do.

1)The low bid isn't always the best bid.
2)Their kids and relatives that follow don't work their butts off.
3)Society is more than just work. If you import Mexicans/Guatemalans, you get Mexican/Guatemalan arts and leisure.
4)Most low wage jobs are subsidized in numerous ways, the point being to subsidize our lower socio-economic citizens. Now it has morphed into us subsidizing the world, largely because immigration boosters don't have to foot the bill.

This is a crime because this week we say it's a crime, but it's hard to get real mad at a guy who's just looking for work...

Can we at least begin to filter out the criminals and scammers?

The Mexicans/Guatemalans I've met weren't risking their lives sneaking north so they could get on welfare, hang out, smoke weed all day. They could hang out back home with out all the fuss, and the weed is cheaper too. They come here to work their butts off doing s&^! that we don't want to do. -- kenmce at April 7, 2014 3:41 PM

So you've met a great bunch of hard working illegals. I've also talked to an interior painter that has done the job for years. He said that more than once he followed up both professional U.S. wall hangers and the Mexican crews when be contracted with developers. There were many times his job was extended because the Mexican crews would leave so many humps and bumps that it would take an extra day to do cleanup.

But even leaving aside that many are coming looking for honest work, do you realize how porous the border is?

Because of the crackdown on Sudafed™ and the other stuff where do you think most meth is made? Usually somewhere south of the border.

How many coca plants grow north of the border? But somehow cocaine is still getting into the U.S.

And then there are the tons of marijuana that are imported. It ain't just California Gold you're smoking.

So while I'm against the war on drugs -- that is part of the reality of the drugs that most people don't think about.

So what will stop an Islamic terrorist from getting a 250 pound 100MT nuke across the border?

What about sending a bunch of people across the border infected with polio?

What about sending a bunch of just plain old Islamist terrorists armed to the teeth to go to the Mall of America?

So blithely saying that sealing the border for those who want to work is ignoring the the rest of reality.

They come here to work their butts off doing s&^! that we don't want to do.

My mother spent her last months in a nursing home with a good institutional culture in the Genesee Valley. Not many Chicano immigrants in our part of the country. The nurses aides, orderlies, dietary staff, and property clerks do less than agreeable work and do it more than satisfactorily. Someone's doing that work. With some exceptions, they tend to come from an ethnic group made of people whose families entered between 1619 and 1808. Any hospital and nursing home in the city has an ample supply of people who fit that description.

So, what else did you have in mind under the category 's&it' we don't want to do?

I lived for more than 15 years in a small town in Upstate New York. Scores of building custodians worked for my employer, nearly all local non-ethnic palefaces.

We had an extensive construction project on site which lasted more than two years in toto. The workforce looked rather like the youths who take vo-tech at local high schools and train at SUNY Delhi (i.e. non-ethnic palefaces).

Who works for the sanitation department in that town, or, while we are at it, in nearby cities?

Now you might complain I am neglecting farm labor. The agricultural sector comprehends about 2% of the workforce. Even if illegal aliens were doing all the wage labor therein, it would not amount to more than about 15% of the total supposed population of illegal aliens. Of course, there is no ultimate bar to having natives pick fruit. You have to adjust your wage scales, adjust your crop mix, and modify your production methods and store of capital equipment.

The Mexicans/Guatemalans I've met weren't risking their lives sneaking north so they could get on welfare, hang out, smoke weed all day.

Read Heather MacDonald on this subject. The 2d generation of Mexican and Central American immigrants can carry social pathologies you did not see in the 1st generation. (I think that's fairly unusual re immigration streams).

The process of immigration may screen most problem people out and certain immigrants from Central America are living in a different matrix than they are back home and may react to that in a salutary way. Cannot help but notice there be wretched public order problems in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Maybe it's all institutional deficits and when you have capable police, courts, and prisons, you do not have these troubles. Still, the smart money does not bet on immigration streams from countries whose homicide rate exceeds that of the United States by a factor of 11.

Haven't you heard the line, "doing the jobs Americans just won't do"?

Haven't you realized that this is simply a lie?

These below minimum wage jobs are against the law. They do not conform with any laws or regulations, and they're simply not advertised.

Somehow, the employers are never punished.
This has produced a situation where it is clear that an individual's greed for public office, expressed through a need to be voted in at any cost, is costing us the country.

But don't miss that you are being lied to.

"These below minimum wage jobs are against the law. They do not conform with any laws or regulations, and they're simply not advertised."

Yep, that's the other part of the problem that nobody wants to talk about: Even if the Mexicans are hard workers (which a lot of them aren't, from what I've observed), the issue is that American workers don't have the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. The illegals can work below minimum wage because they get paid under the table and don't pay taxes. Also because the legal minimum wage is really just too high.

Here's an example of something else that happens. There's chicken processing plants all over north Alabama. Until a couple of years ago they mostly employed Mexicans. What happened to one near here was that a Mexican gain gained control of the plant. Only Mexicans could get hired there because the plant management didn't dare cross the gang. Productivity was poor, there were quality problems, there was a lot of pilfering, and there were a lot of illegal activities going on around the plant -- drug dealing and car theft.

A couple of years ago, a combination of ICE enforcement and the bad economy encouraged all of the illegals to leave. The plant didn't think they would be able to hire anyone else -- they'd fallen for the myth about "jobs that Americans won't do". They got hundreds of applications and staffed back up. The plant managment now admits that hiring legally works out better even though the labor costs more, because quality and productivity have improved and the peripheral activities have mostly disappeared.

I live in Central Texas and I'm married to a Hispanic. A Hispanic whose family has ranched Falfurius since it WAS Mexico. They don't like illegals. They don't WANT to live in Mexico (evidently Mexicans don't either...)and that is where we're headed if this doesn't stop. Everything here in bilingual. You can not get a job with a government agency without speaking Spanish (the ability to speak English coherently is sadly less important). It's not super easy to get ANY job dealing with the public if you don't speak it. Signs are bilingual. Forms are bilingual. And if you drive through the east side anywhere around here, you see lots of small cages with roosters in them, and LOTS of pits that may or may not be chained. And they have bought in to the "baby daddy" ghetto culture so they don't even have strong families any more. There isn't a Mexican nightclub around that hasn't had a shooting.

So sure, it's easy to look at one man wanting to send money home and be sympathetic. But it's false, it actually harms far more than the one hardworker you profess to want to help.

When I was in Jr High and taking English riding lessons (we were well to do) the students doing the lessons mucked out the stalls and took care of the horses before and after the lesson-it was expected. These were not poor kids, any of them. You know who does it now? Illegals, while entitled brats grow up expecting to do no hard work and just have things handed to them. There ARE no jobs Americans won't do. They just won't do them for less than minimum wage.