This is one line of argument about illegal immigrants that I just don't understand, i.e. "they're here, so we better learn to live with them, we can't deport them." That's the logical equivalent of: "Laws or no laws, theft happens, no sense in punishing the perpetrators."
On another thread, somebody was asking why small children who are brought over illegally by their parents should be "punished" by deportation if they didn't make the decision. Equivalently, you might say that you can't confiscate a thief's property because, after all, the loss of wealth hurts his children, who weren't responsible for the crime. And doesn't incarcerating the thief also harm his innocent children? Perhaps we shouldn't incarcerate people who happen to be parents while we're at it, since deporting them is beyond the pale.
Laws will never stop crime completely. That's not a reason not to have them or enforce them, including immigration laws.
You are expressing an awful lot of concern over the genital activity of barrio teenagers and their resistance to either birth control or abortion.
Because unlike non-reproductive sexual activity, this DOES have consequences on my well-being. Unwed teenage girls in the ghetto and barrio can't support them by themselves, so the rest of us have to pay for them. And when the kids grow up to be thugs and deadbeats, we pay for them in other ways.
You fret a lot about Americans not having enough children because of abortion and birth control (incidentally, abortion is comparatively rare among middle class Americans, who plan ahead to prevent pregnancy, it's really epidemic among the poor, especially blacks. So if you want to prevent abortions, you should be more supportive of pre-pregnancy birth control mesures), and seem to think that the only solution is to "replace" the "missing" Americans with Mexicans. I would say that it's the quality of children that's important, not the quantity. We are not suffering from underpopulation. What we do have is an increasingly high-tech, information based society, that runs the risk of being implemented by increasingly low-tech minds.
People in affluent societies have fewer children for obvious reasons - if your one or two kids will survive to adulthood almost surely, you don't need 10 more as an insurance policy. Nor do you need to produce a small army of farm hands in our type of economy. That allows parents to invest more resources in fewer, higher quality children than their counterparts in the third world or their forbears. I fail to see why you or anyone else sees this demographic shift as a problem (other than the temporary matter of social security, which is a political problem due to the fact that SS was run as Ponzi scheme rather than a Federal trust fund, not a demographic problem).
Moreover, the point I was make it is that I always found ironic how somebody so concerned with sexual morality seems to have no problem with a culture where pregnant unwed teenagers are the norm.
As you will no doubt learn if you manage to avoid the dreaded ZOT!, ribbing newbies for being newbies is a good-natured form of fraternity hazing around here. Lighten up, Francis! The longer you post here and participate in the give and take, the better you will understand JimRob's community and the better you are able to gauge whether you want to be part of it. That is a remark about procedure. You will find numerous people here who agree with you and numerous people who disagree with you and some who agree in part and disagree in part.
You are not a special moral authority here nor am I. The disagreements here are often quite robust and sometimes messy. The longer you manage to stay, the better you will understand. This is always JimRob's living room and he makes the rules. We call that private property rights and we are mere guests here.
I agree entirely, and appreciate your goodwill in spite of our disagreements.
The logistical problems of deporting 11-35 million "illegals" are beyond the capacity of this nation to accomplish. Incarcerating them is certainly not a possibility. Too many people like me, called to jury duty, would vote not guilty. Think how easy it is to convict a Republican politician before a District of Columbia jury and how hard it is to convict Democrat politicians before such a jury. That has a variety of constitutional implications including the ban ion double jeopardy. Trials are not free. Keeping track of those charged is not free. Except as to the most dangerous individuals, it is not practical to incarcerate them pre-trial nor can we afford to.
You are right that it is technically as possible to deport a child who has been brought here as it is to deport the adult who brings he child. As a practical matter, prosecutors will be more comfortable going after he unmarried bandito without kids. Prosecutors still have to deal with our mountain of conventional crimes among those born here: homicides, rape, burglary, robbery, etc. They are not going to allow our native born criminals to run wild so that they can concentrate full time on Juan, Pablo and Maria.
If the AFDC payments to girls in barrios are a bad idea, then such payments to ghetto girls are as well and so are such payments to any girls. Equal protection means that the payments will be made to all who qualify or to none. The 14th Amendment says that national origin will not be a qualification.
The "quality of children????" Lothrop Stoddard, is that you?
As a Catholic, I will do whatever I can NOT to pay for abortions, for abortifacient methods of birth control, sterilizations, sex change operations and other modern horrors that violate the Natural Law. I would far prefer to pay for welfare checks than for the murder of innocent babies. You may have noticed that the American Catholic bishops agree. I would also prefer not to pay for welfare and would prefer a wide variety of conservative alternatives, including workfare, medical savings accounts, actual education in urban public schools, or vouchers or many private educational alternatives, for starters. On that, the bishops do not entirely agree, unfortunately. Abolish welfare and your problem goes away. Isn't THAT the conservative answer?
I would certainly prefer a state of morality in which teen-aged unmarried pregnancy is very rare. First things first, however. First, absolutely abolish abortion as an elective procedure. Second, if birth control of any sort were not available, you might be surprised at how rare teen pregnancy might become. Double that if abortion were not available.
Overpopulation??? Maybe Manhattan is overpopulated but not the USA. Do you have any clue as to just how big this country is?
My wife wants to take over the computer. We can discuss Social Security on another occasion.
God bless you and yours.