Juan Q. Immigrant -- the new Willie Horton! The Immigrant Invasion -- the new Same-Sex-Marriage!

Face it: the GOP always needs a boogieman especially when they can't run on their record.

But these are some VERY effective counter-arguments, Brendan. Thanks.

a-fucking-men, brendan. i'm with you, 100%.

Also, the more fortified the border is, the more likely migrant farm workers are to stay here permanently, rather than follow the migratory patterns they've been following for several centuries.

Makes me pine for the days I lived in AZ and could get three balloons of blow for $25. VIVA MEXICO!

I'll take border enforcement, thank you.

And black tar! $25 used to get both of us high. Only saw the white once and I'm not sure if it was the real China White. The weed was AWFUL though, dreadful choking stuff.

Certain of the military industrial complex would like to diversify and make even larger profits off of endless wars with no goals. They contribute to Republican candidates and thus we have an election issue. It's racist and hopefully voters realize that and it costs the Republicans at the booth.

With the Diebolt machines and no printed records, we'll probably never know for sure though.

@7--It's Diebold (not Diebolt) Election Systems... or at least it WAS: they've renamed themselves to "Premier Election Solutions Inc"

Oh, and War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, you know the rest...

I know you get this a lot, but you guys really need to be better about giving credit on photos. I'm assuming you didn't take the lovely pictures used to illustrate this (otherwise excellent) piece? Who did? Where did they come from? Do they know you're posting them here? Etc.

Otherwise, yes yes YES! And thank you.

Yeah let's promote breaking laws... no wait only laws we don't agree with... especially those involving national security.

yeah!

fucking morons. All of you.

What we need is a higher bigger stronger set of fences. Put 3 of them up and have the middle one electrified. Additionally we should eminent domain a 1 mile wide DMZ zone that would become the property of the Dept of Defense. We should landmine and razor wire the DMZ zone.

ILLEGAL immigration would stop INSTANTLY, when they realized we weren't screwing around.

I could care less about those who are already here illegally protesting in the streets. They are here ILLEGALLY. if they want in they play by the rules like all other immigrants and APPLY!

I believe we should treat those brazenly crossing the borders as invaders. That is WHAT THEY ARE! Shoot them on sight. We would only need to shoot a few to make a point.

The United States has to develop a fucking backbone. This has nothing to do with politics. THIS IS OUR SOVEREIGN COUNTRY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. Not some little sandbox, where you ultra liberals insist on letting everyone come play because they do some kind of fucking cheap job to give us cheaper XYZ product.

I'm tired of living in a country full of pathetic dipshits like many of you who whine that the Border Patrol is a bunch of meanies! Fuck that!

They do a job that you'd never do, and are frustrated by red tape, politics, and laws that favor illegal invaders rights over those of a federal employee and US CITIZEN who is doing the job.

Let's make their job easy and just have a shoot on sight law if caught trying to scale a fence or cross the river.

Period!

No, Kiss, your war would only destroy the economies of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It wouldn't stop illegal immigration. But, you know, if it helps you finally get that erection you've been working on for the last ten years, I guess it's worth it.

@10: What an asshole.

@10 - wow. i would recommend some pilates.

@brendan - where's that top picture from? somewhere in texas?

Additionally we should eminent domain a 1 mile wide DMZ zone that would become the property of the Dept of Defense. We should landmine and razor wire the DMZ zone.

You'll be pleased to hear that DHS is hard at work on this in Texas, and better yet, only the non-powerful property owners have to give up their land for it.

...and holy crap that LA Times story about Pedro Guzman is depressing.

@8, no worries. I can't believe Diebolt/d re-named themselves. Getting too much exposure about your founder's claim that he would rig elections for the Republicans? Just change your name. Sad state of affairs if they did it thinking it would be enough to confuse half the 'journalists' out there.

@10, meh. Is that your attempt at humor?

@10--i dare you to ask a Navajo or Pueblo or Nez Perce tribal member about invaders and about how one should treat them.

i dare you to stop eating any fruit or vegetable or any food product you can't verify wasn't picked by the hand of a non-United States citizen, including food in restaurants, or refuse to eat any food served by a non-US citizen. guess you'll have to card everyone.

i dare you to refuse to stay in any structure that cannot guarantee it was not assembled with the labor of any non-US citizen. guess you'll have to card everyone.

i dare you to stop purchasing any merchandise you can't verify was assembled by a United States citizen (which, I guess, would mean no more TVs or computers).

let's see you grow that backbone you yourself long for and practice what you preach. when you emerge from your cave of ignorance, maybe we can talk then.

@10 You really think ILLEGAL immigration would stop INSTANTLY, when they realized we weren't screwing around?

I don tink so mi amigo...

Hopefully will you will go join the Minute Men and accidentally shoot yourself in the head.

You're a brainless idiot so you would not be missed!

Not to support criminalizing people for where they live or anything, but the stat about immigrants causing less crime is only have true. Yes, immigrants are much less likely to cause crime, especially if they're here without papers (will pretend that this is not illegal for the moment), but their children, often raised in 'high-risk' (for crime) areas and much more cynical about the American dream, are much more likely to commit crimes than the general population. This, of course, says less about immigration policy and more about the consequences of limited opportunities for the poor, working class, and minorities. However, it is the flip side of the law-abiding immigrant statistics.

I'm not going to even direct this @10 because I can tell he/she doesn't give a shit.

BUT this is basically just the same national security rhetoric being used to scare us into unjust wars (ex Iraq). The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are 1. not a threat to national security 2. here to work and nothing more 3. do not commit crimes and do not receive social services for fear of deportation if nothing else and 4. could never afford to legally immigrate (check out the costs vs. the minimum wage in Mexico which is less than $4US per day)

Immigrants are being scapegoated by a country terrified of "foreign" invaders, economic recession and cultural "invasion" and this is just the newest category of people to be labeled the cause.

Lets face it #10, if anyone deserves to be fried by an electrical fence and shot at, it's you.

Cherrypicking news items to support your argument.

Thats some fine journalism.

... not to mention that most immigrants should qualify as economic refugees anyway due at least in part to atrocious neo-liberal foreign policy and trade agreements like NAFTA that result in job displacement for the working poor and gross environmental and labor violations... but that's a completely different topic of discussion.

Pop quiz--someone name a Mexican "terrorist" who has threatened National Security or damaged the United States?

No, name 10 of them, among the millions of legal AND non-legal migrants.

Where is this terrifying wave of threat to American Freedom?

The 9-11 SAUDI terrorists came in to the country from the North. Why arent those overmotivated MinuteMen standing guard in Northern Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, etc...?

@10 - i love the "what part of 'illegal' don't you understand crowd." you're right. we should never promote breaking laws. for instance, those people who thought black people should get to eat at the lunch counter? they should have just shut up. that martin luther king guy - he was an idiot. same with all those nasty gay people who had sex with each other before Lawrence v. Texas.

Keep the cheap drugs flowing.

*sigh* I really, REALLY hate how quickly conversations on this topic devolve into mindless racism and xenophobia.

And all my family that's here is here legally, and I wish the border was patrolled better than it is, and I wish that the immigration process was streamlined and reformed, and I wish that the flow of migrant workers was better regulated...

...but what I wish the most is that all these crazy conservatives would stop acting like every Mexican who enters this country is a fucking terrorist (see @10).

@23 - Alberto Gonzalez :)

Beware Los Taliban!

(that is other than deposed Attn General Alberto Gonzales--he was a criminal and a threat to our security)

How much do you want to bet that Alberto Gonzales was really from Spain? :P

Then there are those Minutemen characters who are clearly just itching for the chance to shoot a brown person.

Much like #10.

Speaking of #10, how exactly are illegal immigrants affecting our sovereignty? Do you even know what sovereignty is? Liberals wanting to letting illegals in doesn't even threaten our sovereignty. That's called *exercising* our sovereignty.

Also, your irony detector must be in need of repair (or maybe you never had one) for you to write something like this:

"They do a job that you'd never do"

and not be referring to the illegals. Simply hilarious.

I´m living in Mexico right now, and I have no statistical proof to back this up (though I think it would be an excellent study for some organization supporting immigrants´ rights to pursue) but my encounters with folks here overwhelmingly support the notion that most (Mexican, at least) immigrants DON´T WANT TO MOVE TO THE U.S.

They DO want to WORK in the U.S., though, which is why they come: wages in Mexico are unbelievably low, most people, not the poorest of the poor by any means, make around ten dollars a day. And it is cheap to live here, but it´s not THAT cheap. There is a very common saying in Mexico that goes ¨The U.S. is for working; Mexico is for living.¨ Seems like half the adults you run into here spent six months or six years someplace in the States, and when they had made enough money to help themselves and their family buy a house or start a business, they came back.

I find it very likely that those who for cultural reasons or racism or whatever don´t want Mexicans moving to the U.S. would support easing up on the people who come to the U.S. to work if they knew that being able to come and go without fear helped ensure that most ¨immigrants¨ would eventually return to their home country.

Good point #19, but I wonder: does it matter if the parents are here legally or illegally, or is it purely that they are immigrants? In which case, sounds nice, but it's an argument against immigration itself rather than illegal immigration.

@33, From what I remember of the study, legal status had a small impact on the stats for immigrants (illegals being less likely to commit crimes aside from residing in the US illegally) but the results were largely similar for their children, regardless of parent's immigration status. But again, I would find this less an argument against legalization than an argument about the deterious effects of poverty, discrimination and low social mobility. And hip hop. And reggeaton.