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Jim:

Some years ago my CPA brother who is somewhat conservative said, “If anyone thinks mexicans are lazy, they ought to go out and pick lettuce, or beans, or whatever for a couple of hours in 95 degree heat.” I want everybody who is here to shoulder whatever load they can…oh, hell, I guess that makes me a communist.

Were the Irish who landed here during the potato famine here illegally? No, but many people from foreign countries are here illegally. Is it too much to ask for people to obey the laws of our country? Does the foreign worker program need to be overhauled? Probably, but someone just can’t decide to break a law because they don’t agree with it.

How biased do you think a discussion about a poll taken by The Tennessean and commented on by a Vanderbilt professor could be? Don’t answer that….I’m just some conservative, knuckle dragging, racist bigot.

Several comments, Don. I doubt your knuckles actually drag or that you are a total racist. You’re right, though, we’ve got Hispanics and southeast Asians of multiple nationalities over here, somewhere in the neighborhood of ten or twelve million of them by all accounts. (Mind you, I don’t know how they count people who don’t want to be found, but we’ll let the number stand.)

But breaking laws is somewhat of an American tradition. I do it several times each week day going to and from work (although never while I’m in Lakewood) by exceeding the speed limit. I did it back in the 70s while opposing the Vietnam war (at least until I was drafted - the punishments got hugely more severe after I was in the service).

The entire civil rights movement was, by and large, usually a violation of laws of one sort or another. Part of the success was, in fact, due to people seeing the police dogs and fire hoses used in response to those illegal acts.

Despite all of that, we have the very real fact that there are huge numbers of our neighbors who are here now. And most of them are working (and saving a whole lot more than we do - they send millions home to family members), and paying tax for groceries, clothes, vehicles, fuel, etc. I’d also like to get some income tax out if them as well. There’s a deficit to pay down.

Sure it would be the right thing to do to send them back across the border and let them come in legally. But they can’t and we cant, either. They can’t because their home countries (let’s just use Mexico for an example) won’t let them leave unless they own property (I’ve been told it’s a 10 acres of property but I don’t know for certain. Consider it hearsay.) - that ties them down and guarantees that they will return some day. I know people who own 10 acres but I don’t any more. It’s too much to maintain. I couldn’t come here.

And I doubt we can send them back either simply because of the logistics involved in finding, detaining, making sure they’re illegal, feeding, transporting back, etc., twelve million people. That’s like saying, OK, let’s move everybody in the Tri-state area (Long Island, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, NE New Jersey and Western Connecticut) to Cleveland and actually thinking it’s possible. Even if we only did a few thousand at a time, it would take years and every Hispanic- or oriental-looking person that got rounded up (we’re ignoring the possibility of Eastern Europeans being here illegally, which is wrong, too, BTW) who actually were citizens would probably sue. The cost would be in the trillions I suspect.

How would we tell who’s got papers and who doesn’t? I was born in Nashville. I could carry around my birth certificate to prove I am a native and so could you & Democommie. But not everyone has a birth certificate and no one is required to carry around any piece of paper provng they’re a citizen. I get my voter registration card out only to go vote and I don’t really need it for that. I get my birth certificate out almost never. Last time I got a driver’s license renewed, I sat there with more possible illegals than I’d ever seen in one place.

Some people only have a note in the family bible to prove where they were born or when. I know that seems backward and ignorant, but it is the case. We’d have to send them somewhere too since they have no real proof.

Native Americans aren’t required to have one either. Won’t that be the final indignity. We stole their land and now we’ll kick them out of it completely.

It’s economics that drives the immigration issue.

Sending “them” all back “home” would be hugely expensive and logistically difficult. It would also completely fuck up the restaurant and hospitality business. Every fast food place, expensive restaurant and hostelry is a potential harborer of undocumented migrants. Not to mention all of the lawn care, construction, manufacturers and meat packers who count on cheap help that can’t complain about poor treatment. It’s a very difficult issue to solve and mass “repatriation” is not the solution.

Did the mid-19th-century-potato-famine Irish immigrate legally? To say they immigrated “legally” is to imply that there was an immigration law they had to follow, and that by not following it, they would become “illegal.” There was no such law, except maybe buying a ticket on a boat to get here. Didn’t anyone see Titanic? Leonardo DiCaprio’s 1912 character won a ticket in a poker game - that was it in those days, unless you were Chinese (their immigration restrictions came shortly after the Civil War). For the Irish to come here, you didn’t have to first visit a U.S. consulate, pass any tests and hope for a visa. You just came! It wasn’t until the 1920’s (less than 100 years ago!) that immigration from Ireland was in any material sense regulated by law. If you want to laud the system by which the Irish escaped the potato famine and came to the U.S., you are praising open borders.

John Lamb:

It’s troublemakers like you that muddy up the pure waters of neo-conservative, draw bridge mentality, anti-immigrant policies by dumping toxic facts into them. Shame on you!