[douginthearmy]

Title is disengenuous. Immigration reform is needed. People ought not be living in the shadows, mainly because they ought not be able to. Our enforcement of current immigration laws would not stop people from wanting to come to America.

Our Fish and Game laws are 1000 times more draconian than our immigration laws. If I poach a deer, not only do I lose my gun, I lose my truck. Risk/reward factor is very high. If I hire illegal immigrants I may get fined but probably not. We need to shut down businesses that knowingly hire illegals. Counterfeiting SSN should be as hard as counterfeiting a $20 bill.

If the restaurant/farming/construction industries were not allowed this cheap labor subsidy, the vast bulk of illegal immigration would disappear. A few here and there is not going to break the country, but entire portions of the country are now inhabitted by people who will never speak our language nonetheless make attempts to assimilate. That is certainly not GOOD for our country.

[Big_Monkey]

"Counterfeiting SSN should be as hard as counterfeiting a $20 bill.

The technology is here today to make SS cards nearly impossible to counterfeit, at least for all practical purposes. We don't have them for a number of reasons, some of which can be blamed on conservatives, libertarians and liberals.

I would take your statement a step further and say that SS cards should be much, much harder to duplicate than a $20 bill. If you copy a twenty, you're only out twenty bucks. But, a counterfeit or stolen SS card creates thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of dollars in damages.

To your larger point, you're absolutely correct. People sneak in because they know they can get jobs in almost every US industry. If that were put to a stop, there wouldn't be any immigration problems, you wouldn't need a multi-billion dollar fence and you probably wouldn't even need a border patrol.

[Sequoyah101]

Source unknown but a cohort told me yesterday that “they” think there are 8,000,000 false Social Security Numbers being used in TEXAS ALONE! That one is hard to believe but if it is 50% right, 25% right or even 10% right it is staggering to me.

I hear ZERO is using one of the numbers from Texas.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Good post.

[section9]

Rice was correct, of course. Immigration reform was needed. The Republican Leadership at the time did not figure out, however, that the public did not trust Washington to secure the borders. Nor will it for the foreseeable future, given the rise of Mexican narco warfare in the Northern Mexican States.

Republicans can refuse to deal with this problem and cede more and more Hispanic voters to the Democrats, or they can forthrightly declare that they are in favor of legal immigration to the U.S. and stringent border security.

The Business Roundtable Crowd shortchanged the whole border question, which only showed everyone how out of touch they and the Washington party were with the Country. However, it should be noted that strident Wetback baiters like Tom Tancredo did poorly in the Republican primary.

Best,

Chris