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Well Kent, you are trapped in Liberal Seattle, I am trapped in Third World Hudson County, NJ. This season I couldn't find a copy of "The Cat in the Hat" that was not in both English and Spanish. I'm horrified at what Bush has proposed, not so much at the proposal itself but at all the many, many issues it left unaddressed.

I, for one, do not think the entirety of our immigration problem consists of how to legalize dishwashers, or make sure there are enough chambermaid for hotels. But you'd never know it from reading Bush's proposal. If that was the whole problem, it would be well addressed by his proposal, it isn't and that's why it's getting opposition from all sides.

So, yeah, let's go to the happy place and be glad there will be no substantial legislation on this this year. Let us hope that this half-baked campaign souffle will not keep W from getting re-elected. And let us devoutly hope that this serious issue will be addressed in a serious way sometime in 2005.

But if you are not living in one of the states that are "high-impacted" by immigration, legal and illegal, just be aware that in many places in the US today you would look around you and doubt you were in this country at all. If you need a place to check out, I reccommend West New York, NJ. While you are there try and find ONE SIGN in English. I DO NOT want to live in a Latin Civilization. The Hispanics can learn English as well as any other group, but if they don't have to, why will they?

Further, look at the campaigns to import whole villages of Africans to towns in New England, when the town resists this burden, they are denounced (gleefully!) as racists.

I have seen many people who feel the way I do denounced as racists on these threads. I am not a racist, and up until 9/11 I was practically an open border advocate. On that day I realized that our foolish failure to enforce our laws had permitted people bent on wholesale murder and mayhem into our country. People who want to kill all the Hispanics in West New York as well as you and me. Bush's proposal does not even address this, except to give some hollow promise that "the borders will be protected". He doesn't even discuss student immigration, which was the source of the 9/11 terrorists.

They all better go back to the drawing board. And I hope Bush and Co. are feeling the heat over our dissatisfaction with his poorly conceived plan.

But if you are not living in one of the states that are "high-impacted" by immigration, legal and illegal

Dude... you need to research and learn about coastal cities. Seattle has a huge, huge illegals situation (only with Asians, rather than Mexicans).

The only difference I see between myself and the ranters, in this regard, is: I'm not letting whacko anti-Bush paranoia -- the likes of which would not be at all out of place on the DU boards, any day, any time of day -- color my thinking or my responses.

We have (purported) "lifelong conservatives" -- sounding for all the world like so many Al Frankens, on bad acid -- shrieking thatan anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-terrorism President "isn't conservative." If that doesn't strike you as legitimately deranged... I honestly don't know what conceivably could.