[paulklenk]

Is this really the battle Bush should be fighting right now? Couldn't we have found better people to make examples of when it comes to illegal immigration?

Each day, I get a ride home from one of eight or ten guys who hang out near my subway stop. They are all Latino, and are from all over Central and South America. They are the most decent, honest hardworking people I have ever met. They have more dignity than just about any group of people I know. I doubt most of them are citizens, but they deserve to be.

We need to find a realistic way to help more of these hardworking people become tax-paying citizens.

This message goes out to Ely, Jorge, Phillipe, Alex, Ismael, Arturo, and Cali. May all decent, God-fearing Americans do our best to find you a place -- a legal place -- in our country. You deserve it.

[HarleyD]

My mistake. I thought that the Hollywood elite were going to have to start cleaning their mansions.

[ClearCase_guy]

One wonders if the president remembers the words of the man whom he once cited as his role model: “That which you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

So, to enforce laws against illegal immigration is to act in an un-Christian manner? Who knew?

[paulklenk]

I know there are a lot of Freepers who are very angry about illegal immigrants. But we need to find a real solution, and not forget the human factor. Protecting our country should be paramount, but there has got to be a simple way to identify, document and legalize a lot of people who are currently here illegally, and also to revamp our immigration system and policies to make it easier for decent people to come here and work.

Visit a city like NYC sometime, and you will begin to understand what an opportunity Republicans have to recruit life-long loyal members who came here has immigrants.

[JustAnAmerican]

"We need to find a realistic way to help more of these hardworking people become tax-paying citizens."

It's called "Legal" immigration. But I suppose these "Hardworking" people don't believe in following our laws huh?

[netmilsmom]

Not a problem for your friends. Tell them to go home, get the right papers and do it legally. My grandparents came here, hard working and LEGAL. Your friends could do the same.

Remember, it's not just the hardworking people coming into our country. It's the ones on the dole, the murders and rapists (ask anyone in a border state) and the terrorists that want to murder my children. Sorry, in this state of the world, I have little sympathy for your pals.

[Rick.Donaldson]

HEY! You forgot the BARF ALERT. LOL. What crap. ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE ILLEGAL. If they want jobs, let them follow the freakin' rules and immigate LEGALLY. If they can't tough, let them go back to whereever they came from and live there.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

Kind of like fighting the WOD by busting geriatric cancer patients that puff a few joints, eh?

[y2k_free_radical]

What a bleeding heart liberal-breaking the law is o.k. to him-bet he does coke

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

I believe that there is a need for an honest debate about the pros and cons of massive immigration- especially this illegal immigration. But emotional rubbish like this column isn't it.

[what's up]

What tripe. No Republican is against immigration and it is entireley disingenuous for Morris to say so.

$2 billion in CA alone is spent on educating illegal immigrants.

The US is becoming known as a nation with no rule of law, exemplified so clearly in the last few years by a sex-addicted President who tried to circumvent it himself.

[bert]

It's about jobe...... for grandmothers who now toil away taking care of their daughters bastards and collecting the WIC checks.

[Moleman]

You will find a bit of double standard here at FR.
Many of the folks who are against illegal immigration are the same ones that were outraged that we sent that Cuban kid home to his father.
For what it's worth I too am against illegal immigration and am moving toward restricted legal immigration from certain "peaceful religion" regions of the world.

[VeritatisSplendor]

For those in high dudgeon who are reading this column and would intone piously about the rule of law, let me ask if you are sure the toilet you used at the gas station was cleaned by a legal immigrant or a U.S. citizen. How about your garden and lawn? And your housecleaners? And the guy who waits on you at the lunch counter or cleans the dishes after you have eaten? Are those all here legally? I invite you to vindicate your self-righteous views on immigration by mowing your own lawn, cleaning your own toilets and cooking your own food — or do so for $5.25 an hour.

I don't use gas station rest rooms - they're never cleaned anyway. I clean my own house, I mow my own lawn. I take care of my own children too.Walmart buys third-world labor and wants to hire it here too.

It cost me $12,000 for a new roof and would have cost a lot more with native labor - but I don't see any more native construction crews. There ought to be. If eight Americans working two twelve hour days got an extra ten bucks an hour, I could afford it. And maybe there wouldn't be so d... many McMansions springing up all over NJ.

Mrs VS

[kidd]

I invite you to vindicate your self-righteous views on immigration by mowing your own lawn, cleaning your own toilets and cooking your own food — or do so for $5.25 an hour.

So what "Toe-sucker" Dick Morris is suggesting is that we need a labor class that can be paid substandard wages. $5.25/hr for an illegal immigrant? Hardly, Dick. Try $1.50-$2.50 an hour.

This is, in effect, slavery.

Bush no doubt has no family memories of immigrants who sent money home, but those of us of more recent vintage recall clearly the stories of our fathers and grandfathers.

Morris is confused. The ancestors that he is referring to came here LEGALLY. And they came here LEGALLY because they wanted to become US citizens. They came here because they wanted to become PART of this culture. And there are millions of future US citizens who are willing to follow the law, and wait their turn and meet the requirements, to become US citizens LEGALLY and become part of our culture. So do we want a set of new US citizens who choose to follow the law or do we want to cave in to those who view the law as a simple nuisance? Do we want a set of new US citizens who want to become part of America, or do we want to develop and encourage a separate culture?

[skeeter]

They are all Latino, and are from all over Central and South America. They are the most decent, honest hardworking people I have ever met. They have more dignity than just about any group of people I know.

And you call others racist.

[ozzymandus]

My Grandparents came here legally, through Ellis Island. Heaven forbid millionaires and corporations should have to hire American citizens to do their work for them.

[jpl]

Do you feel this way about people who try to cut in front of you on line in the store?

[mabelkitty]

Have your taxes increased to accommodate illegals? Has your school system tried to shake you down for more cash to teach illegals English?

Try again. Deport now.

[Map Kernow]

If there's any issue that's going to hammer Bush and the GOP in 2004, it's not Iraq or the economy, but our porous borders and uncontrolled illegal immigration. No one out in the middle class is fooled by all the corporate and pundit buzz-word invocations about "nation of immigrants," "doing jobs Americans won't do," "decent people just trying to put food on the table," etc.

Instead, they see a vast scofflaw conspiracy between a failed nation-state and its unwanted unemployed poor, greedy US employers who want to undercut the US labor market wages, benefits *AND* withholding, and a brain-dead Republican punditocracy that's talked itself into thinking that all these illegals will "eventually" vote Republican. And they also see that they, the taxpaying American middle class citizenry, is "paying the freight" for this "wink-and-nod" "compassionate conservative" gutting of our immigration law, in the form of increased health, education and welfare expenditures for illegals, increased congestion and crime, erosion of their voting and citizenship rights, and yes---GODDAMMIT!!!---increased risk of terrorist infiltration. And they're starting to wonder why the F*** they have to obey all these laws, like the tax code that takes so much of their hard earned money and gives it to illegals, if illegal immigrants don't.

[lady lawyer]

All my immigrant ancestors came here legally. At the time they came, there were no government handout programs, so they never became a drain on the rest of society.

In the mid-20th century, Americans were convinced to create minimal social programs for the poor among them. Since that time, the social programs have become more elaborate and expensive. But at least, when those social programs were created, anyone immigrating to the United States had to prove that they wouldn't be relying on the taxpayers. They had to show they had the means to support themselves.

Now, we have these expensive programs in place at all levels of government, and more poor people flooding in illegally by the millions to milk the programs. There is no foreseeable limit to it.

This is a much different situation that the situation of immigrants in the past. We have a right to be furious about it.

All things considered, I think that millions and millions of people who are fundamentally scofflaws, and who bring with them a third world culture and little desire or ability to assimilate, can only hurt this country.