[kenboy]

So? How many businesses would shut down if the mafia were eliminated? How many businesses would shut down if the illegal drug trade were shut down?

Um, a few dozen waste-hauling and construction firms? Some gangs? A bunch of drug rehab centers?

Seriously, though: you're talking about some magical way to remove some unknown number of millions of workers from the economy. It would cause restaurants to close their doors. It would raise the prices of goods and services in pretty much every sector. If a given restaurant that employs (let's say) 15 legal and 5 illegal workers has to shut its doors, we've now put 20 people out of work. You've also cost business to the companies that supply the restaurant with food, to its accountant, to its menu printers -- I'm not disagreeing that illegal immigration is a serious problem, but it seems to me like there's a lot of grand pronouncements being made that don't take the time to reflect on the fact that there would be huge ripple effects if we suddenly deported 12 million people.

[Spiff]

Seriously, though: you're talking about some magical way to remove some unknown number of millions of workers from the economy. It would cause restaurants to close their doors. It would raise the prices of goods and services in pretty much every sector. If a given restaurant that employs (let's say) 15 legal and 5 illegal workers has to shut its doors, we've now put 20 people out of work. You've also cost business to the companies that supply the restaurant with food, to its accountant, to its menu printers -- I'm not disagreeing that illegal immigration is a serious problem, but it seems to me like there's a lot of grand pronouncements being made that don't take the time to reflect on the fact that there would be huge ripple effects if we suddenly deported 12 million people.

No one said it would be easy. Ridding a body of a metastasized cancer makes the patient very ill for a while. In fact, it can nearly kill them. But the cancer must be removed or the patient dies.

[JeffAtlanta]

I'm not disagreeing that illegal immigration is a serious problem, but it seems to me like there's a lot of grand pronouncements being made that don't take the time to reflect on the fact that there would be huge ripple effects if we suddenly deported 12 million people.

Yet you totally ignore the ripple effect that the costs of illegals have on the rest of the nation. Illegals use social services, require counties to build more schools, destroy the medical infrastructure and drain welfare coffers.

Why should the rest of the country have to subsidize a restaurant that employs illegals?