Grrrr . . . . .

Everyone really needs to read the article Treat illegal immigrants decently by Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Senior Fellow for International Economics.

From the end of the article:

Once passions aroused by the proposed reforms have cooled, Americans should be ready to see that a way must be found to treat illegals with the decency and respect that humanity requires, while respecting equally the innate American sense that laws matter. After all, America’s identity has been formed by immigration and an ever-expanding set of human rights. Perhaps a different and more realistic approach might get us what we could not achieve with uncompromising proposals.

In particular, why not build on the unappreciated fact that the illegals are not today the underclass with few rights that they were for many years? Immigration experts Guillermina Jasso and Mark Rosenzweig have shown that, under existing laws, almost 30 per cent of the new legal immigrants have had some illegal experience. With vastly increased ethnic minority populations, especially Hispanic, the illegals enjoy a higher comfort level than at the time of the IRCA. The Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa gave his response in 2006 to Mr Bush’s State of the Union speech in Spanish. There are numerous non-governmental organisations, such as the National Council of La Raza and civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, that give the illegals a substantial sense of protection.

If asking for full citizenship through the amnesty is currently impossible, we can work instead to raise this comfort level to something much closer to what citizenship brings, without asking for full citizenship. Cities such as New Haven have begun to do this. It never makes sense for the best to be the enemy of the good.

Can't you just feel your blood pressure rising?

I have never treated any illegal any differently than I do anyone else. And in the field I work in (education) I deal with them on a daily basis. However, how you treat anyone and the privileges that they are given are two very different things.

This writer, along with every illegal immigrant and their legal cohorts here in the United States are expecting privileges that even the citizens of the United States are not afforded.

While those privileges may be on the table for the citizens, just try to get any of those privileges when you need them. You will lose out over the illegal every time.

This from Sebastian Mallaby, Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, and Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics

The Low Risk From Immigrants
May 28, 2007
Washington Post

Of the many infuriating assertions in the immigration debate, perhaps this one takes top prize: that we have to keep illegal immigrants out for the sake of our security. This notion is wrong, not just because undocumented workers are statistically less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes or because they are serenely indifferent to al-Qaeda’s teachings. It is wrong because it misses the most basic rule of smart homeland security.

What is not mentioned anywhere in the article is the cost to taxpayers for the illegals and the diseases that are being brought into the United States unchecked. It also fails to mention the terrorists cell groups that are now coming in from Mexico illegally. And missing from the article that every illegal here in the United States has committed a crime just by entering the United States illegally. Thus the statistics are very skewed.

And this article will probably send you over the edge. Not enough immigrants