“I have no tolerance at all for illegals, but I sympathize with kids who were brought here by their parents and grew up here. There ought to be a path to citizenship for them. If they do some service—military service, or some civilian service opportunity for girls, for those guys who don’t qualify for military service on medical grounds, or for the specially talented. If they prove they’re devoted enough to this country to give of themselves in order to become citizens, then they should have the chance to apply for citizenship.”
You realize, of course, that your “plan” will ultimately result in a complete transformation of this country to an analog of Mexico! It may happen anyway. The Hispanics are reproducing in this country at a rate that is a multiple of the rest of the population. As soon as the transformation is complete, they will, as they already have here in California, become the de facto leadership and the result will be a country that looks like everything South of the Border. There are very few, if any Hispanics who have any real affinity for the US. They are just a pack of undereducated leeches who have come here in an act of basic self-preservation and most owe there allegiance to Mexico or wherever they came from.
Truer words have never been spoken
I understand what you're saying here, and part of me is in agreement with you.
But wait a minute. If they "owe their allegiance to Mexico or wherever they come from," as you put it, why are they here? I mean, if they really have any deep-routed allegiance to Mexico, or Honduras, or Guatamala, or Panama, or Nicaragua, why didn't they stay there and struggle to make a life for themselves?
If you ever decide that the United States has just gotten too screwed up to survive in, and decide to go to... I don't know... to New Zealand, for instance, can you really argue "well, even though I came here to live, my heart's really back in America" ?
I wonder if they really feel a part of any country, or culture. I don't know the answer to this.
The reason I say this is not just to be argumentative with you. And, as I say, I feel pretty much the same as you do, at an emotional level at least.
But maybe there's a way to a future for all of us, in this. After all, people have been coming to the America for hundreds of years, feeling homesick but making a life they're happy with, here. Over time, they come to have affection for America.
The problem is the welfare-payment system. The difference today is that these people are allowed to come here, and stay here, and enjoy finanical benefits taken from citizen taxpayers here, for reasons that benefit politicians. This is a bad outcome the Founders didn't anticipate.