How do you know that?

"tens of thousands of captured non-Mexicans continue to be released into the United States because there is no place to hold them, according to experts and immigration officials. Mexico will not accept them.

The vast majority simply slip away inside the country after being issued "Notices to Appear" for a deportation hearing -- documents known to Border Patrol agents as "Notices to Disappear." The success of border crossers who stay in the United States through this "catch-and-release" process has encouraged others who hope to enter the country the same way.

In a dozen speeches since October, President Bush has vowed to replace catch-and-release with the "catch-and-return" of 160,000 "other than Mexican" (OTM) immigrants arrested each year."

The 9-11 guys flew here, though a couple did go through the Canadian checkpoints, if memory serves.

Upper class Leftists are able to afford to pay the lawyers and bribes to get past INS, and have a need to excape the wreck of the countries they've destroyed. We saw that in WWII. Nothing's changed.

Ah, so if the bad guys break in through the front door, put a better lock on the door and nevermind the windows.

It's not about entries but about who the bad guys are.

Rick: It's a little odd to be screaming about how we need to fence in the yard when the front door is off its hinges.

You are ruling out, a priori, that terrorist(s) will take advatage of that unprotected border in order to enter the country, possibly with a superweapon. It's an interesting position. Your astonishingly cavalier attitude toward the whole breakdown of law, the mockery made of legal immigration and the applicants that try to follow the law, the crime and cultural and resource crises faced by certain states (not yours) by the invasion of Mexican illegals, and the question of whether granting penalty-fre citizenship to this 15 million will result in a new 20 or 30 million is also very interesting.

Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson are right; it's not an immigration issue. It's a sovereignty issue.

It's a moral issue. Legal immigration is indeed a mockery of our ideals.

JE, did you miss the memo? We are the only ones who have sovereignty now. No country in the world has a hope of stopping us.

With all due respect to Messrs. Steyn and Hanson, it's not even remotely a sovereignty issue. The US has always had porous borders and, for that matter, so has every other country until late in the 19th century.

We're not ruling out that terrorists might come over the Mexican border, but pointing out that they never have and that there is no reason for them to do so. This is an easy country to get into. The Mexican border is a particularly bad way to get in the country dragging a shipping container behind them.

The problem with legal immigration is that we let in an astonishingly small number of people, particularly if we ignore the family preference given for the families of US citizens. Then we're talking about a couple of hundred thousand legal immigrants per year into a nation of 300 million. It's a law made to be broken and not meant to be taken seriously.

As for the states who are "burdened" by additional human beings, that's nonsensical. It is nuts to worry about the economic burden on the state when the border states take on those burdens voluntarily and instruct their police officers to ignore immigration status. I have no idea why I should care about the burden faced by California more than Californians do. We do, by the way, have Spanish speaking immigrants in the Northeast. They are American citizens and have a constitutionally guaranteed freedom to travel.

David:

"It's a little odd to be screaming about how we need to fence in the yard when the front door is off its hinges."

I'm not a big fan of the "You can't do everything, so you shouldn't do anything." type of argument whether it applies to immigration, war in Iraq, whatever.

I support immigration. We can't have too many smart and hardworking people here. I thought we should have offered visas to all those Soviet scientists after the Soviet Union fell. But to be unconcerned about who is coming into this country when there are so many who have pledged their lives to do us harm, is irresponsible in my view.

David:

Actually, it is, they just mean nationalism when they speak of sovereignty. The problem for them is there is no such thing as nationalism for Americans--we're a universalist country.

Of course we're a nationalist country; we're just not a blood and soil country.

Rick: I certainly agree that it's a mistake to let the best be the enemy of the good. The obvious solution is to prioritize and take care of the biggest problems first. Whatever our doom is, it will not be coming over the Mexican border.

I do think that it's a mistake to say that we're only going to take the best and brightest. First, we're not great at judging which people are the best and brightest. Second, why take more of the people that already cause us the most problems? Third, all we can guarantee is one generation of best and brightest, where immigration is a long-term game. Fourth, the only source of wealth is people and just about any person will do; remember, garbagemen make more than the per capita income, and earn it.

Exactly.

David:

Agreed, hence the "hardworking" qualifier. Best to be both, along with ambitious, but I will also take hardworking alone as well.

Was trying to demonstrate with an example that one can be both pro-immigration and pro-security without being a racist/nativist.

OJ:

What the heck is up with the "Intimate Dating" ad at the upper left?!?

"Whatever our doom is, it will not be coming over the Mexican border."

In every disaster movie, there's always one person who says that the disaster just isn't going to happen, won't happen, couldn't happen, nuh-uh, no way. Is that person ever the hero?

John:

In those movies the doom is always the most obvious thing. It's the same for us. An influx of ambitious Christians isn't it.

Name the movie:

Its unbelievable, just unbelievable, you know how many times I've warned them about food inspection.

You'd think after all these years someone would listen to you.

Airport management, the FAA and the airlines. They're all cheats and liars. Alright, lets get outta here.