@rlumley - once they are "mowed down" by M-60s, do you think the corpses will actually have usable organs? And how are you going to harvest them in a timely fashion out in the heat of a border desert with no AC. Finally, how do you know the medical history of these "donors" to know they don't have AIDS or some other potentilly deadly or hyper contageous disease? That wasn't exactly thought through, now was it?

Also, "fully automatic machine guns" is a tautology. :P

I wasn't going to be pedantic about his grammar, Jack_Klein. There is so much more wrong with his stated opinion than worrying about his redundant turn of a phrase.

Yeah, but trying to reach somebody like rlumley is a pointless exercise. So I might as well amuse myself in the meantime.

Ultimate fix = Change the tax system to a consumption tax that is based on what one spends (like an increased sales tax), not what one earns and get rid of income tax. That way, illegal immigrants are paying into the system that they are benefiting from.
And make it legal for anyone to come here, with no paper records required.

Problem solved.

Except for the criminal element, Hunter49r. We need to prevent would be rapists, murderers, and terrorists from coming into our country.

@ Draugnar, Jack_Klein:

http://www.xkcd.com/301/

The blame with illegal immigration rests with corporations and businesses that hire them. Remove all penalties for immigrants sneaking in here to try and find work. Fine and prosecute anyone who hires an illegal immigrant. Problem solved.

If there wasn't a surplus of jobs Americans didn't want to do and an excess of employers willing to break the law to save a buck we wouldn't have any illegal immigration. Treating a symptom instead of the cause obviously hasn't and will never work.

Why? If terrorists want to come to our country, they will find a way. All of the 9/11 Hi-Jackers were here legally, to the best of my knowledge. Are rapists/murderers more proficient in immigrants then Americans?

Pantalone's ideal is the ideal way to go. Hit the people who make it worth while to take the risk of illegal immigrated. Some states have passed laws along that line but have got caught up in juradiction, and other legal complications.

I've always had my doubts about the moral fibre of the sort of people who will abandon their own country to make a few extra bucks somewhere else. If the illegal immigrants spent as much effort sorting out their own community's problems as they do trying to bugger off somewhere else then there'd be far less reasons to emmigrate in the first place

@Hunter That does not mean we should make it easy for them to get in. Some form of screening is needed.

@Octavious, where do your ancestors come from, and where do you live now?

Then Hunter49, your knowledge isn't the best knowledge... In the aftermath of 9/11, we learned that 5 of the 19 hijackers had violated federal immigration laws while they were in the United States. In other words, they were illegal aliens.

@Octavious I guess that means all Americans have questionable moral fiber since we all are or have descended from immigrants.

""I believe that people have the right to employ whomever they wish, and it is illegitimate for the government to say that you can't employ him because he is foreign."

They don't do this now. You can employ foreigners that are legal residents."

There are ceilings on the number of 'legal residents', so it is not true that a company can employ whomever they wish.

@ Draugnar, "First, you can ask your country to handle immigration that wya if you like: people are clamboring to get into it like they are the US. Second, not only would that open of immigration policies cause us to have to scrap Social Security, but welfare and both our current and the new healthcare systems as well. Oh, and a mandated minimum wage is all that stands between some unfortunate souls and homelessness, starvation, and death."

How many people are really wanting to get into the US? You do realise that the illegal immigrant population in the US is about 3 percent of the US population, right? Also, what harm would come from a large inflow of migrants, exactly?

A minimum wage is all that stands between people and work Draugnar. Making a minimum wage of $5 per hour doesn't make a $4 per hour job any less a $4 job. What it does do is make that job no longer legal to do.

I don't support Social security, welfare or government intervention in healthcare either, so I'm not worried by any of those matters, myself.

And rapists/murders/other violent criminals aren't to be found at a higher percentage necessarily, but allowing them in without checks allows them to elude the authorities in the country from which they are fleeing, making this country a defacto safe haven if they don't commit a crime, or a new playground for them to start their violent activities anew.

@Ghost - so you are saying that there is no inherent minimal worth to a man's labor. Glad to know that. That's very much the view of the south in, say, the late 18th and early 19th century. You remember that time period? When men were bought and sold as slaves and their only wages were some food and shelter? And they were occassionally beaten without recourse and their women raped, also without recourse? But then, they still had work and food. Is that what you are saying? If you don't set a minimum standard, big business will pay as little as they can for menial labor and more people will be starving than ever before. We, as a society, must say "enough" and set a reasonable wage that everyone should make per hour/week/month/whatever so they can survive to at least a level of reasonable sustenance without having to resort to criminal behavior to make up the difference.

lol, @ Draugnar being ignorant

"@Hunter That does not mean we should make it easy for them to get in. Some form of screening is needed."

Sure. I'm not saying get rid of the border. I would set it up much like it is now, so that it would be very hard to get a vehicle into the U.S. without it being checked for stuff. And still have the border patrol or whatever, but make it legal for whoever wants to come in to do so. Have a computer to cross check the persons face against wanted criminals maybe, but other then that what can you do to check if they are 'bad people'?

And I agree with most of what TGM said.

You said paperless. The problem is not every third world country is electronically enabled. There needs to be some paperwork (aka passport) required to get into the country. Now, what did I say that was so ignorant?

Hunter49r stop watching 24 and come back to the real world with the rest of us. Calling Draugnar ignorant (when you're like what, 16 or 17?) on this subject is ridiculous considering everything in his last two posts has been absolutely spot on.

@ Draugnar- You compared the lack of minimum wage to slavery.

@ hisbiskiss- wrong on all 3 counts. ;)

@ Draugnar

No, there is no inherent minimal worth, in the sense that the minimum is 0- no work at all.

However, that doesn't imply that people don't have the right to self-ownership. The horror of the slave trade is not that slaves weren't in air-conditioned accommodation during the summer, it is that they were reduced to a mere commodity rather than actually being human.

Indeed big business will pay as little as they can. So will small business and so will you the consumer. You will find that through time the as little as they can will rise, and the price of the goods being bought with that little will fall.

"In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and free trade"

@ Warsprite and Stukus. I completely fail to see your point. Someone living in the nation they were born in is simply not an immigrant, illegal or otherwise. Being descended from an immigrant is not an issue of any relevance whatsoever.

(As Stukus was wondering, my fathers line & family name have existed in the part of the world I live in today in one form or another for well over 2000 years. I do have plenty of blood from other parts of the world, including a bit of native american and spanish, and I dare say some of those were unwelcome or illegal immigrants. That my ancesters may have committed a crime does not make that crime right nor me guilty of it.)

I'm going to go ahead and guess that you actually have no way to know that 2000 years bit, unless your ancestors are from Tasmania or Easter Island. People migrate constantly. I think the point Warsprite and I were making is that you're questioning the moral fiber of millions and millions of people, throughout human history, and the ancestors of everyone who doesn't live in Sub-Saharan Africa. I can't speak for Warspite, but I found your generalization stupid.

@Stukas. Let us be clear on what an illegal immigrant is. It is not someone fleeing war or persecution, as such people are asylum seekers and are welcomed by civalised nations. It is not a well qualified person of useful skills, as such people are actively encouraged to emmigrate by western nations. An illegal immigrant as a person of little skill or material worth who desires to better his lot, not by improving his homeland, but by forcing himself on the mercy of people who do not want or need him, often to their detriment.

Explain to me how such actions show moral fibre.

"by forcing himself on the mercy of people who do not want or need him"

Obviously cheap labor is needed in the U.S. or they wouldn't find jobs here

I've worked around immigrants many times. The stereotype that they are lazy and looking for a handout is frankly put.... bullshit.

In my experience, an immigrant will work as hard if not harder than anybody born in the country.

And since you're from Britian, Octavious, I don't think you understand the reason the United States exists. We're a nation of castoffs, rejects, dispossessed, with only the idea that we can leave all that crap behind us and build a new life.

All you need to do to become an American (or Norteamericano for our friends in America in the broader sense) is to decide you want to be part of this grand experiment we call the United States.