What should be done about illegal immigration?

I guess our resident morons have nothing intelligent to post. Thus, it is attack the messenger.

Your idiocy knows no bounds, Chicken Little. That sky is not falling. Only ignorance, indifference and apathy allow for water shortages in this country... and the world for that matter.

China and India already have billions of people, in smaller geographic regions, which are certainly not the United States' equal for ability to sustain life. Hence; the United States could easily accommodate billions more in population. The United States ranks 142nd out of 192 countries at 30.71 persons per Square Kilometer. If we had a billion people; we'd move up to ranking about 74th... and still be considerably less dense than France, and less than half as dense as Germany or the United Kingdom. This isn't an opinion, fool; it is an easily verified fact. Only a moron argues against easily verified facts.

Desalination has been proven viable to you repeatedly, yet somehow you still enjoy making a fool of yourself there too. Large scale desalination; which you ignorantly, laughably claim doesn't exist, already produces 12 Billion Gallons of water per day worldwide. The Tampa plant I showed you is currently producing 25 million gallons of water per day. Desalination currently costs between 2 and 3 tenths of a cent per gallon; which is roughly what Americans pay for water out of their tap on average; regardless of the source. The supply of water to desalinate is virtually unlimited, so there isn't a supply problem; there's a stupid problem.

Not only is there an unlimited supply of water for Americans; the fact is we could supply every needy person on earth's needs (Billions) for less than a 10th of what the Iraq war costs us annually. The fact that we don't, is an ugly stain on our collective soul. The fact that you choose to remain ignorant of the simple truth speaks volumes about you.

And, the above is before you even consider conservation. The average American flushes more water down the toilet than the Average person living in Africa uses. You want to talk waste? In Africa, for instance, women and girls spend 40 billion person-hours per year hauling water. At minimum wage; that's a quarter of a trillion dollars worth of labor... many times more than it would cost to supply food and water to them all... even at ridiculously high American consumption standards.

You should consider at least stopping at Wikipedia, before demonstrating your profound ignorance further.

Smiles. I think there might be a better way: Advocate has proven he can read. Now if we could just convince him to absorb facts as he does so; much of his ignorance would vanish faster than the ice sheets over Greenland in July. Nothing drastic; just a couple of facts like the FACT that the United States population growth, including immigration, is actually considerably lower than the average population growth around the world. Armed with a few key facts; I don’t think he’d find the Brown man so scary.

Immigration policies also affect water use
By: LYNNETTE M. PERKES - Commentary | Thursday, June 28, 2007 8:15 PM PDT ∞

Ninety percent of our country's population growth is due to immigration and the high birth rates of immigrants. At the current growth rate, our population will triple from today's 300 million to almost 1 billion before the end of the century. The Senate immigration bill, with its massive amnesty and its impossible enforcement provisions, would probably boost that number even higher. The issue is not the color or race of these 600 million additional people, it's their sheer numbers.

How many people can this country sustain, and at what quality of life? The first limiting factor is water. Nowhere is the clash between population growth and water more dramatic than here, in Southern California. This has been the driest year in recorded history, and the snowpack in the Sierras, from which we import most of our water, is at historic lows.

Our other water source, the Colorado River Basin is, itself, in the grip of an eight-year drought. This, climate scientists tell us, is no anomaly, it's the future. It's also the past. Tree-ring studies from living and fossil trees show that prolonged droughts, some lasting for decades, are historically normal weather for this region. Add in global warming, which is predicted to reduce average precipitation in the Rockies and the Sierras by at least a third and the flow of the Colorado River, lifeblood of seven fast-growing states, by up to one-half.

Occasional floods and hurricanes notwithstanding, water shortage is the story over most of the country. As we drain our underground water sources to support a growing population, natural vegetation that depends on groundwater is left high and dry. Across the country, vast forest fires, on a scale we have never before seen, have incinerated millions of acres of drought-stricken trees. Even tropical Florida has recently been ravaged by drought-invoked fires.

We have already exploited all our major rivers to the limit and, nationwide, we now extract about 25 percent more from underground sources than is replaced by rain and snowfall each year.

The deficit is far higher in the Ogallala aquifer, the great, natural underground reservoir that underlies our Great Plains. This water, a remnant of the last ice age, is what has enabled us to turn an arid prairie into the "amber waves of grain" that feed our country and much of the rest of the world. We extract 4 to 6 feet of water from the Ogallala each year, while nature puts back less than an inch. Already, over vast areas, wells that once watered fields of wheat and corn now come up dry no matter how deep they're driven.

Meanwhile, our nation adds 1.2 million new water consumers every year. Unless we do something real to curb immigration both legal and illegal (the current bill does neither), we face a future with one-third less surface water, with much of our groundwater exhausted, and with three times the number of people to share what's left.

Lynnette M. Perkes lives in Poway.

Seriously, now, you're not blaming water shortages (very real, by the way) on illegal immigrants, are you? Prairie land suitable for grazing is being irrigated to produce grain. Semiarid lands suitable for prairie dogs is being irrigated to produce pasture, and only government subsidies make something like that possible.

I'm no more sympathetic to illegal immigration than anyone, but let's not be silly.

It occured to me that this was your intended meaning. I just wanted to be sure nobody went off with the impression that people living within the new boundaries of the US had suddenly become illegal while living in homes they had occupied for years.

Thanks. I thought so.

Let's be historically correct here...

Illegal immigrants were created in the 1920's with the institution of the Quota Act. The Quota Act was designed to restrict immigration to mainly people who were White and Protestant (since the fear of the time is that brown skinned or Asian people would hurt American society).

Before the Quota act... you could argue there were no "illegal immigrants" simply didn't exist since there were no laws against crossing the border.

After the Quota Act there was the policy of Mexican Repatriation where over a million Americans of Mexican descent were deported.



Factually... that is exactly what happened.

Roger, you don't read very well. I blamed water shortages on over-population. I then stated that future overpopulation will be the fault of immigration, which is mostly illegal.

I read quite well. The problem is misallocation of resources. We do not have a failure to communicate. We have a disagreement.

Thanks for setting the record straight, Ebrown.

I would add that the over-population argument is as old as it is false.
Not only does the United States currently rank 142nd for population density; it ranks 134th in annual population growth as well. Well below average in both categories... despite being the country of immigrants, plagued by illegal immigration.

The bigot Advocate chose to quote above threatens population will triple by the turn of the century! Not only did she not point out our population and growth rate are both considerably below average; she failed to point out that her prediction amounts to a significantly slower growth rate than last century (when it nearly quadrupled). Big shock. Agenda holders tend to choose their facts very carefully.

Those who truly fear population growth should encourage the assimilation of the black and brown man into advanced societies and vice versa... as few things point to stemming population growth as clearly as capitalism, technological advancement, and relative prosperity.

More pointedly for the bigots: Keeping people of color down is probably the single best way to increase the population of the world. As usual; bigots will advocate any bullshit argument that advances their agenda.

First, increased density is not desirable and should not be a goal.

Second, I am not a bigot. This is your cheap shot at me for want of any intelligent retort. Moreover, an extension of this is that the untold millions of Americans who believe in the rule of law, and are for enforcement of our immigration laws, are all bigots.

I have zero problems with legal immigrants, regardless of race, creed, or color.

But I guess this is too complex for your little, pinched, mind. I guess it makes your head hurt.

Several times now you have stated this.

This is a lie. It is easy to show this is a lie by checking the published statistics. The truth is that twice as many immigrants are given legal permanent residency each year as those who come illegally. (If you include temporary immigrants into the equation, the proportion of immigrants who are legal is even more than two thirds).

One of the things that really irks me about anti-immigrant zealots is their willingness to make up "facts" and statistics-- often completely false, in order to make their case.

Whether these are bigoted lies... or just plain lies is a matter for discussion.

No one that I'm aware of suggested otherwise.

Nonsense. I explicitly demonstrated the obvious errors in your argument (some repeatedly now.) Rule of Law is not your issue, because the Laws can easily be changed and you oppose such changes just as adamantly.

If this is true; why do you present nonsensical theories to blame the brown man for ecological problems that are not of his making? Why do you make up stats to make him look worse than he is? I didn't call you a bigot, Advocate. I demonstrated that you forwarded bigoted propaganda. Why did you do that? And why haven't you retracted your endorsement of it? Why do you pretend most immigration is illegal?

That's rich. I find the idea of you presenting anything too complex for me exceedingly unlikely. Why not address your shredded point if you’re still under the misguided impression you've made one?

Push on Immigration Crimes Is Said to Shift Focus
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/12prosecute.html?ref=todayspaper

Homeland security???? DUH.

This is another part of the Bush Administration's legacy of trampling civil rights.

Thankfully this will almost certainly change in... oh about eight days.

Profound ignorance, is all we've heard for the last 8 years! Love your response!

NO! It's an example of another war we have lost.

Drug Lords 1 Law inforcement 0

Why does everything have to be a "war" with you people?

You are losing elections... not wars.

Thanks Teeny. I'm used to people ignoring any hint of a suggestion that hunger and water problems could actually be solved. Or worse; asserting ignorantly that they could not. I think most people prefer to just pretend they don't exist.