What should be done about illegal immigration?

Foxfyre wrote:

I just don't want citizenship to be automatic just because birth happens to occur in the USA.

Pages back I said a couple of times that you want a change from ius soli.

Ebrown, I wonder how many times you have posted the word "compassion" so far. It grows old after a while.

Just saying! But I'm with you in a way!


Well... probably its the thread going round and round.

My Grandfathers Were Illegal Immigrants

The immigrant experience is central to the American Jewish story, so as Jews we often sympathize with the challenges today’s immigrants face in coming to a new country. Although they would never admit it in public, many Jews feel superior to today’s immigrants.

We tell ourselves that our relatives came to escape anti-Semitism and for religious freedom, not just for economic opportunity. We assume that Jews were not undocumented or illegal immigrants and that they waited patiently for their visas; we weren’t smuggled in and our families “deserve” to be here.

Actually, not all American Jews have such legally pristine roots. In my own family, two of my three immigrant grandparents had questionable status.

My grandfather Jerry Gelman was born in Bialystock in 1906 and came here on his mother’s Russian passport when he was six months old. He had no documents showing when or where he was born or when he immigrated; he was essentially an undocumented immigrant. This tough businessman never applied for a US passport or clarified his legal status for fear of being exposed as illegal and deported.

In the 1920’s, no one asked Jerry to prove his citizenship to attend the University of Pittsburgh at in-state tuition rates. Being a graduate of Fifth Avenue High School was proof enough. With his pharmacy degree from Pitt, he earned enough to purchase the drugstore that enabled him to support his wife, son and elderly parents throughout the Depression. In the 1940’s, he left retail to become a corporate executive, overseeing legions of salesmen. He retired as the vice president of a large corporation.

Jerry Gelman’s college education was the key to turning his life into the all-American success story. It propelled him out of poverty and into the middle class.

[continued at link below]

Measure Alters Border Fence Plan

By Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post

Washington - No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexican border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it may never be built, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts.

GOP leaders have singled out the fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session.

Many lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections. But shortly before recessing last week, Congress gave the administration leeway to distribute the money to a combination of projects - not just the physical barrier on the southern border.

The funds may also be spent on roads, technology and "tactical infrastructure" to support the Homeland Security Department's preferred option of a "virtual fence."

What's more, in a late-night concession to win over wavering Republicans, GOP congressional leaders pledged in writing that American Indian tribes, politicians and local leaders would get a say in "the exact placement" of any structure, and that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff would have the flexibility to use alternatives "when fencing is ineffective or impractical."
The loopholes leave the Bush administration with authority to decide where, when and how long a fence will be built, except for small stretches east of San Diego and in western Arizona.

"It's one thing to authorize. It's another thing to actually appropriate the money and do it," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

President Bush signed the $34.8 billion homeland security budget bill Wednesday without referring to the 700-mile barrier. Instead, he highlighted the $1.2 billion that Congress provided for an unspecified blend of fencing, vehicle barriers and technology such as ground-based radar, cameras and sensors.



''That's what the people of this country want,'' the president said. ``They want to know that we're modernizing the border so we can better secure the border.''

Bush and Chertoff have said repeatedly that enforcement alone will not work and that they want limited dollars spent elsewhere, such as on a temporary-worker program to ease pressure on the border.

At an estimated $3 million to $10 million per mile, the double-layered barrier will cost considerably more than $1.2 billion.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate subcommittee that funds the Department of Homeland Security, said that before the legislation was approved, the department had planned to build 320 miles of fencing, secure 500 miles of hard-to-traverse areas by blocking roads and monitor electronically the rest of the 2,000-mile-long southern frontier.

''I think there'll be fencing where the department feels that it makes sense,'' Gregg said, estimating that ''at least 300 to 400 miles'' will be built.

Congress withheld $950 million of the $1.2 billion, pending a breakdown by Chertoff of how he plans to spend the money.

It is due in early December, after the midterm elections.

Asked whether Homeland Security would build 700 miles of fence, department spokesman Russ Knocke would not say.

Instead, he noted that department leaders announced last month that they will spend $67 million to test a remote-sensing ''virtual fence'' concept on a 28-mile, high-traffic stretch of border south of Tucson over eight months, and then adjust their plans.

''We plan to build a little and test a little. . . . Stay tuned,'' Knocke said. ``We're optimistic that Congress is going to provide the department with flexibility.''

Washington Post reporter Peter Baker contributed to this report.

There are scientific polls of American citizens both focused on Hispanics and on the general population. They say among other things that a significant number (I think it was a bit over 70%) of Hispanic American citizens think that the current anti-immigration movement is motivated by racism.

A majority of Americans support a path to citizenship for people who are here. It is true that a majority also support measures to make it more difficult for future immigrants to come illegallly.

The other result (that Foxfyre continues to ignore by posting false claims to the contrary) is that by a 2 to 1 margin, legal immigrants favor a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants (as well as feel the anti-"illegal"-immigration movement is largely based on racism.

There are scientific polls (meaning people are randomly selected with controls)

Since the real polls contradict much of the ideology of Foxfyre and friends, they have to jump at any admittedly unscientific conjecture.

Only in America would people who are here illegally and should be deported have the right to sue Americans.

Immigrant advocates say the U.S. government is being hypocritical by touting family reunification as a guiding principle for immigration policy and then making that process interminable for many families.

A legal permanent resident who applies to bring a spouse from China today would wait an estimated seven years. A U.S. citizen must wait 11 years to bring a sibling from India.

Overall, the U.S. government received about 70,000 petitions for family-based visas in June alone. Based on 2005 allotments of visas, at that rate the government would exhaust its annual supply in less than five months.

The U.S. government also doles out a relatively small number of visas by lottery to applicants who do not have family or employers as sponsors. But the lottery applies only to citizens of countries with relatively low levels of immigration, leaving out much of Asia and Latin America.

"People are willing to put up with a lot to have their family close," said Tuyet Le, executive director of the Chicago-based Asian American Institute. "I think we've been able to move this issue pretty far because people see how basic to fairness it is to reform the system."

Le said she supports a bill, which passed the Senate, that would have started to clear the current visa backlogs. The bill died this summer after lawmakers failed to merge it with a competing House proposal.