Hmmmmm. Why not?
I can see the next logical step: what is realistic? 5 million? 1 million?
What is to prevent another 10 million wave for developing over the next ten years and the same argument recycled?
When 10 million or 1 million illegal muslim "students" and their 10,000 new "mosques" are among us, what's to prevent the exact same argument for being used to ignore all the implications?
I heard Medved use this "argument" yesterday and I blanched. It is non sensical and a circular argument brought to respectability. I'm not buying it. The whole town is under 4 feet of water. Getting rid of it is not "realistic". Let's just raise the town 5 feet...
Hmmmmm. Why not?
Because huge numbers of businesses would go under rather immediately. Because there are not enough personnel to check the docs on 10 million people (actually more, since there are several million LEGAL immigrants whose docs would require verification). Because there is no enforcement program to prevent this from happening again. Because even under a "get tough" warning of 6 months, there is no incentive to leave rather than hoping one doesn;'t get caught.
IMHO, this is the best solution to a big problem.
But I'm still waiting to see the enforcement mechanisms, the fixup of the horrorshow called INS, the penalties and timelines for noncompliance, etc.
If those are not rigorous, well-funded, and serious, then this is just one more immigration scam. And GWB has lost my vote.
A good point, I will try to answer that. To me, an American is someone who first and foremost believes in the American idea/ideals, wants to make a home here, and is therefore willing to assume all the responsibilities of citizenship. It is not where they come from, as long as they *belong*. After all, where did Americans come from originally?
Your muslim students obviously fail to meet a lot of these criteria.
I don't see that a completely closed society is the best possible one. I have serious doubts about whether it would even be viable at all.
At the same time, I don't want to be overrun by people with different ideals. I couldn't care less about their skin color or where they come from, but they have to believe in some of the basic things we all believe in (as in "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." etc). Most people who live here come to believe in those things just by experiencing them, because they are good things. That's why Los Angeles is not Tijuana. Those mexican immigrants we're talking about tend to be as American as you or me once they've been here for a while. That's what we want to encourage.
A well-defined immigration process (and not a fast one) at the end of which you have full citizenship is the way to do it, but it is *absolutely critical* that you don't get too many people tooo fast, or segregation. Illegal immigrants can come in as fast as they want, and they are naturaly segregated, which is why they don't tend to become as American as fast, which is a bad thing. It also causes resentment against the whole ethnic group, also a bad thing.