perfidy

Sadly, we don't have any trolls here worthy of the name, otherwise, we'd be able to wallow in the standard non-arguments of racism, xenophobia, and the like.

The key bit in your piece, B, is this - "And then I hope that you turn around, and make your way back to this country legally."

I'm right there with you, brutha - Come on back, y'all - just do so legally, and, as GL says, all that we ask is, when you do come back legally, put up with all the same non-optional bullshit us other citizens do.

It won't likely happen that way, but a honky can dream, right?

My short post above was written while you were catching your breath to write the "Americans are Evil" screed, so, sorry - I didn't initially get a chance to respond to the other part.

You've taken an interest approach to the matter - the fact that the illegals were ripped off by coyotes (Mexican coyotes, mind you) and are debt-ridden to them is supposed to somehow by my problem, as a non-party to that transaction? Don't think so.

I also don't see the correlation between this alleged "99% of the cheap shit" I have around me and Mexicans. The vast majority of America's cheap shit (food and manufacture) is created where there's comparative advantage to do so - in other countries, and as such has no effect on illegal immigration.

I'm a huge fan of relatively direct pricing of goods and services. If the only way to get orange juice in the absence of illegal immigrants is to pay more for it (a dubious assertion, but I'll grant it), then so be it. The costs of illegal immigration, in un-earned welfare (absent participation in the tax base) and the societal disruption of corrosive lifestyles (as the illegals are blackmailed or otherwise hassled by either the coyotes who brought them here or the shit-eating employers who treat them like slaves-without-recourse) are the unknown offset to that cheap OJ.

If solving illegal immigration increases wages for valid immigrants and others here in the US, raising the cost of OJ, fine. Other costs will go down, and the most insidious of those costs aren't measured in dollars, they're measured in quality of life for the immigrants.

Nobody here has expressed any ill will toward immigrants or immigration itself, Mexican or otherwise. The fact that illegals' lives can suck like a Hoover would also change in the event of reform.

There's nothing dishonorable about wanting immigration to be done right.

Ross,
No one here said anything about birthrights. That's over with the Free Republic set, I'd guess.

I will never understand folks who equate the level of ambient suck to the extent that the person living through that suck deserves to be here. That seems what you were going for, but that moral portion is irrelevant. I think the core of that position is something like, life is terrible for them so it's ok for them to break laws to live here. The law applies to everyone, however shitty their circumstances.

What's relevant to my screed is whether immigrants are here legally or not, whether they came from Mexico, China, or Norrland. Because if they're not here legally, then they need to leave and wait their turn like my wife did.

I don't think there's anything wrong with regulating immigration in a sensible manner, and if that means starting from scratch to build a whole new code then so be it. What I can't allow is a blanket amnesty or any other similar mechanism for current illegals, such that the people who did things by the book are dupes.

I'll be really unsympathetic the next time any of you get a speeding ticket. Police state, all the way!

Or you can look at it this way. They come here, hoping for better, in debt to criminals...taking the shittiest jobs in existence and getting paid next to nothing to do them. Society at large winks and nods at the employers while they're picking up shit off the street, or scrubbing food off plates, or sweating in Florida sunlight picking oranges off trees. Those oranges are crushed into orange juice and poured into the glasses of people who bitch and whine and moan about how crappy their lives are because some guy got paid $1.50 a hour to put orange juice in their glass. The bitching and moaning grows and gets hateful, and the broad rhetorical brushes are pulled out around the breakfast table, where the civilized boundaries and laws aren't necessary (it's breakfast in tough-land). Round'em up! Head'em out!

Ninety-nine percent of the cheap shit you have all around you right now is there because someone else is living a much shittier life than you are. Everything around you is built on the backs of the poorest here and elsewhere -- their debts, their pain, and their _hope_.

Except you'd rather kick them when they're down. You don't want the $1.50/hour fruit picking job. But you want to make damn sure they don't have it.

Drink your Tang. Because that's what you'd really rather have. Yeah, you were here first. I get it. You've got your birthright.

You have chosen a fine, honorable cause.

If by "police state", you mean a state where the police enforce the actual laws that are on the actual books, I'm not concerned about the outcome.

At a minimum, I know I won't be wrongly deported in such a situation. And it won't be because I'm pasty-white. It'll be because I'm demonstrably not an illegal alien and, unlike the aforementioned illegals, have a right to be here.

My attitude toward this issue is well known in these parts, rooted in several years of bureaucratic knucklefucking and great expense to do things by the book.

But in short, if the law needs to change to allow for more labor to come in, then that's what needs to happen. And by extension, those new legal immigrants can go through the same bullshit my wife and I had to, for as many years, and for at least as much $$. And after, they can file tax returns, be at just as much risk of being audited, and have to register with Selective Service, and go to jury duty, and all that other good citizen stuff.

But it won't happen that way. There will be legions of organizations to ensure that they are allowed to come in for free, and set them up with jobs, apartments, cars, or matching funds for nascent checking accounts, etc. Anyone want to place a friendly wager on who has more disposable income, me or any given illegal?

And all the people who did right by the letter of the law will be complete suckers. But as long as those suckers are not members of a group that liberals feel sorry for, who the fuck are they anyway, right?

Maybe Heinlein had it right after all.