[navyblue]

Workers who are approved would be permitted to travel freely between the United States and their home countries, the officials said, and would also be permitted to apply for a green card granting permanent residency in the United States.

Now this is the part that enrages me. A person who wishes to emigrate to the United States is first granted legal conditional or permanent residency. They are issued green cards and considered lawful residents of the United States. After five years, they can apply for U.S. Citizenship.

This is the normal immigration process that other nationalities have to follow. The difference is that the "other" people have to wait in their home country sometimes for years before they are issued an immigration visa.

Somebody please tell me why Mexico gets this golden key to the United States. Absolutely no other nation on the face of the earth is given this right. Do any of you have friends/relatives who have been waiting years for an immigrant visa?

I will never forgive this man for what he has done to my country! Our only chance now is to hound our congress critters without mercy until they shoot this down.

[Shermy]

Somebody please tell me why Mexico gets this golden key to the United States.

Because their cheap labor is the closest, and most readily available to obtain, and allows them downwardly bargain the wages of current American citizen and resident job holders. The industries gain a short term profit reducing the labor "cost", and reward and encourage lawmakers by kicking back some of the profits as campaign contributions.

Just another way to create an American underclass. Which is profitable for some, in the short term.

[drlevy88]

At the very least, everyone ought to be required to start from scratch. Set Mexico's quota up to a million persons a year, fine, but illegal presence of Mexicans here should not give them a leg up on those who actually respected the laws of the USA enough to wait at home while working at a maquiladora or some such.

[drlevy88]

Oh, and what are the people who have been waiting in OTHER countries, sometimes for years, going to say? And what about those already here -- family, friends and former neighbors -- waiting for them? "Unfair, unfair!"

[ought-six]

"Do any of you have friends/relatives who have been waiting years for an immigrant visa?"

My mother. She came to this country legally, obeying all the rules and regulations, and what the Bush proposal basically does is say she was a chump for playing by the rules.