On immigration reform: progressives should shift the debate to WHY people are coming illegally

Think about it: what would make you leave the place you were born and move somewhere you didn't speak the language?

Is it possible that our trade policy and support of kleptocrats who toady to our banana plantation, sweat shop, and oil company owners instead of looking after the welfare of their own people has anything to do with it?

I don't really care how many people we let in or kick out (though the latter seems a bit cruel if someone has been a productive ''citizen'' here for years), but I already see the arc of the debate: deport or amnesty. The problem with amnesty is it does nothing to address what attracts illegal immigrants here. Once the old illegal immigrants are legal, they won't be as attractive as employees to their old bosses who hired them precisely because they wanted workers they could pay below minimum wage and who wouldn't complain about working conditions.

So the previously illegal will move up the food chain, creating a vacuum that will be filled by new illegals.

If life was more tolerable in Mexico and Central, they might be less likely to come.

but then our business ''leaders'' would have to pay more to get one of the fewer workers here and we cannot violate their sacred, sacred right to maximize profits.

If the same howling mobs who are splenetic over "illegals" took a fraction of that energy to change the foreign (and corporate) policies that drive them out, things could be a lot different...

but your asking for effort and some time thinking from repugs?:wow: They don't want to, that's why their are repugs.

The Dems have done their fair share of creating and implementing these foreign policies too... (Clinton/NAFTA being the most obvious in recent history)

about but not dissect: illegal immigration and affirmative action.

And I gave them conservative sources as well as scholarly ones.

They didn't want to touch it. It was almost like they were afraid their prejudices would be violated.

on our southern border than to confront the real issues.

Our trade policy is supposed to benefit us. If it doesn't, it should be changed. It is hugely hubristic to think that we are empowered to change the societies from which illegal workers emigrate.

This country's policies should be developed to improve the lives of its citizens. To the extent that illegal workers harm those citizens, we should do what we can to encourage reform in other countries, but at the end of the day, the only thing we have control of is from the border in.

Not exactly so. The first major explosion of immigrants from Central America was in the 80s, as people fled the republican-backed genocidal wars in Guatamala, Honduras and El Salvador, and the Contra war against the leftist regime in Nicaragua. Huge numbers came to the US not because of the availability of high paying jobs, but because of the prospect of not being dragged into the street and shot by government - or anti-government - forces.

The next big wave came with the passing of NAFTA, which undermined local economies, undercutting their agricultural base, forcing hundreds of thousands of farmers off their land into the cities and then across the border.

Those were, and are, direct results of US policies on THEIR countries. Changing those policies would do far more to stop illegal immigration than tightening our borders would.

If we can (as we did) change their countries for the worse, who is to say we can't change them for the better? Treat them as equal partners rather than as a source of cheap labor.

remember it's to our benefit to help others-besides being the right thing to do.

Diligently promoting the interests of the citizens the government serves is also the right thing to do.

Sometimes, they're compatible, sometimes not.

The richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, LOVES our defacto open borders policy. Absent that policy, he'd have a much bigger social problem that he'd have to help solve. As it is, he can ignore that problem.

Our open borders policy in the interest of cheap labor doesn't do US citizens any good, and is a profit center for the mexican government.

by making another problem worse. A little work will often provide cures for both.

since it costs farmers jobs. Fixing it would be a win-win for working and middle class families in both countries.

Literally speaking though, you are right.

We only have mild influence over what our government does domestically and less over our foreign policy, which is bipartisan and therefore ignores us.

If you mean our government can't influence other countries, you are wrong: we can influence them by withdrawing our love and support for kleptocrats that we often put into power.

Our inattention to South America because of the Iraq War has allowed governments that do a better job of looking out for their own people to take power in most of those countries.

This is not rocket surgery - it's simple, and it doesn't require the US interfering in Central and South American governments (where we have a very bad track record).

Fine the employer of any illegal alien an amount sufficient to fund deportation of the illegal alien to his/her native country, PLUS an additional fine that would go into a fund to pay for deportation of any illegal alien *not* currently employed in the US.

This discourages illegal hiring as well as illegal immigration. Simply.

The coup government under a new name is still killing, torturing, raping.

We may see the day we're all trying to cross the border the other direction.