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Is it possible that maybe it isn't influence? Maybe he thinks this approach is the best way to solve the problem.

Conservatives can disagree on issues. It's not just immigration. William F. Buckley favors giving in when it comes to the war on drugs, and Bill Bennett doesn't. Does that make either of them less conservative than the other?

Rush Limbaugh recently backed Howard Stern in his disputes with the FCC - often saying he was worried about the precedent being set. So did Sean Hannity. Yet Michael Medved was in favor of the crackdown and called the fears overblown. Who is the less conservative of the two sides on that issue?

Dick Armey and Steve Forbes back a flat tax. John Linder is pushing a NRST. Which of those two camps is the "less conservative" camp? Can anyone really tell?

I will admit we have problems vis-a-vis the border with the Mexico. I find the status quo to be unacceptable. But part of fixing the problem is admitting we might have passed bad laws, and they should be fixed. The President is proposing a fix, and it includes what I think has been falsely labeled an amnesty. I think it is, for all intents and purposes, a very reasonable "class-action plea bargain" that is an important PART of the solution. We do need to enforce the law, but the laws should not be conflicting with the concepts of right and wrong that the majority of the American people seem to have.

To be blunt, I do think that the racism line was crossed on a number of immigration threads, and I an FULLY in support of the bannings and the restrictions on posting content from certain sources. I've read a few of them and think that those sites definitely did not have a problem with racism - or giving out and out racists a forum. When i tried to bring that up, I was accused of race-baiting. When I asked one poster, later banned, about some comments by Sam Francis that resulted in his termination at the Washington Times, I not only didn't get a straight answer, I was accused of playing a "gotcha game" for asking what was a simple question.

What else was I supposed to conclude at that point? That it was all a misunderstanding? I wasn't about to. Instead, I have concluded that there might be something to the concerns I had, and so I judged their positions accordingly, and I probably will retain that judgement for a long time. I wish it had not come to that, but in my opinion, there was not much choice.

I will also state that when someone is calling a spade a spade, they are stating a fact. That goes for saying someone is a racist. Calling a racist a racist is not a personal attack - it is merely stating a fact (at least as a person making that statement see it). False accusations of that nature do exist, but in a number of cases, at least those which have drawn complaints here, there is, IMHO, reason for people to think there might be racism. Not all racists wear KKK robes or look like skinheads. Not all racists are white (see Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton), either.

When you have a large number of conservatives, these disagreements will come up. One conservative might have a different point of view than another. That should NEVER be reason to personally attack or question whether or not someone is a conservative (well, outside the usual trolls like MurryMom).

Nearly all of the time, they are not being influenced by anything than a desire to enact a workable solution to problems facing this country - I might not have been able to tell the difference in every case of that, but I believe that I have tried to do so. I just ask for the same courtesy from others.

Is it possible that maybe it isn't influence? Maybe he thinks this approach is the best way to solve the problem.

Conservatives can disagree on issues.

The problem is not so much disagreeing with others as it is how some people react when disagreed with. Those of us who either support the President or at the very least don't agree with people like Malkin and Tancredo are branded as the "Free Republic Open Borders Lobby" even though none of us have ever said anything close to supporting open borders.

As Jim Robinson said, few if anyone here support real "open borders". Everyone seems to agree we need better and more effective border control. The problem lies with a few people who have become beyond obsessed with the issue. I'm sure most are here as disruptors from places like Stormfront, LP, or other such organizations but not all. Some people just seem to be angry all the time and let their anger come out in everything they post. Also, some are just Bush haters who have never supported the President and most likely haven't voted Republican since the 1996 primary.

When someone points out that a border fence/wall would cost billions and would be impractical, they are pounced on and accused of wanting to "flood the U.S. with illegals. When someone points out the massive cost it would take to round up "every single illegal" in the U.S., they are accused of being for "open borders". If the Malkin/Tancredo/Buchanan crowd would actually look, they'd see that what Tancredo has suggested is not that different that what the President has suggested. No where has the President said he is proposing amnesty which would mean every illegal alien would be perfectly legal. (Last President to do that was Ronald Reagan.) The President knows doing so would only encourage more illegal aliens to cross the border. If people are allowed to come here legally and work (meaning they'd be registered, paying taxes, etc.) then the numbers of illegals cross the border would drop but it will never totally go away. There will always be people who would prefer to break the law rather than to work with the system.

"Calling a racist a racist is not a personal attack - it is merely stating a fact "

People who post racist comments are not necessarily racists. Most on FR who repeat racist statements simply don't appreciate that what they are saying is racist.

It has been repeated so many times that Hispanic immigrants are "diluting our culture", "abusing our welfare system", "destroying our neighborhoods", "having lots of babies", "drug dealers", "criminals", "lowering our education standards", "drive without insurance", "don't assimilate fast enough", etc...that some people simply don't realize how racist those statements are.

Try substituting the word "Blacks" for "Hispanics" and it becomes obvious how racist the statements are. I doubt that very many of the anti-immigrant crowd would post statements saying Blacks are lowering our education standards, having lots of babies, drug dealers, destroying our neighborhoods, etc...

They probably aren't racists, they just haven't stopped to think about what they are saying.