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i agree. we don't need new laws. we just need politicans that have the balls to ensure they get enforced.

Get rid of all immigration laws and allow for free movement of labour and capital through trade.

Since that won't happen anytime soon, just enforce what we have and don't waste tax money on controlling the border with walls and surveillance. The "problem" isn't at the border. It's the people already here who overstay visas or work off the books (or with fraudulent/counterfeited documentation). Place the onus on employers to verify people and regulate themselves according to local demands for accountability. If you do that you don't have to bother wandering around in the desert looking for people.

Sure, anyone can come to the US as a citizen, with only two requirements, you already have a job lined up (or live with a family member who does) and YOU BOTHER TO LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH!

Learning English is already a non-trivial requirement for most naturalization paths to citizenship.

"Citizenship" however is a bit different subject than "immigration" in the broader sense. Not everybody who comes here wants to or will become a citizen. Nor should that be a requirement imposed that workers or students rights to be here be tied to a citizenship path only.

I think it should be made easier to come here. America, despite her many faults, still represents one of the most free, capitalistic societies in the world (not that that's saying much, or that it is much that way anymore). People want to come here. So we need to get more immigration officials out there, both processing new arrivals and getting those who aren't supposed to be here (on overstayed visas, green cards, etc.) out of the country.

Suit yourself. I don't see any reason to do so. Or, more importantly, to spend my tax dollars to do anything like focusing on border controls and deportations. Bigger waste of money than these mythological immigrants mooching off our social services ever are.

As I believe that national security is one of the areas that a country's government actually should be involved, an open border with so many people secretly crossing is a huge problem. And if the government is going to require that I pay for others anyways, then it has an obligation to limit those benefiting from public dollars to those who contribute to them. Your "no borders, no nations" approach is completely implausible.

I didn't say "no borders no nations". I said open trade and the free movement of labour (as a commodity being traded). I'm not that worried about national security being caused by open borders policies of the sort America traditionally had. Rather than other things, like say, aggressive foreign policy in the affairs of other nations without provocation or internal and popular endorsement. Most of that particular problem is the backlash against immigrants leading to restrictive laws and prejudiced legal codes, or if not these, then belligerent and proactive legal forces seeking to expel by force such "intruders". See: Sheriff Joe in Arizona and the various legal violations he has resorted to using against AMERICANS, not the immigrants.

You're changing arguments midstream. I would have stuck to the "they're wasting my tax dollars" one. It suits your Randian sentiments far better than pretending to be xenophobic like the rest of these folks here. Even if it actually suggests the problem is poverty, not immigration (which is a symptom, or the result, of poverty). You might be able to persuade me that we're wasting money on social services (actually you don't have to. I know we are). I'm just not so sure that the waste is caused by immigration so much as bad policies generally which effect poor people of any nationality or ethnicity. Getting rid of the "parasites" would entail not so much expelling a bunch of Mexican landscapers living 6-8 to an apartment as a bunch of lazy WASPs, for example.

woah woah. Insisting that someone know English is not indicative of racial bias. (If I went to live in France I' bother to learn French) We can disagree as to the effectiveness of foreign policy reform vs immigration enforcement toward benefiting national security if you want, but my argument is not based in xenophobia.

Insisting that a citizen learn English is not unreasonable. I said as much, or at least I am resigned to the fact that it removes some practical objections to allow someone to live, work, study, and vote here in an environment mostly governed by English speaking people.

What I was concerned about is the gap between that requirement for citizenship and "normal" immigrants, whatever percentage of the population those are, whose primary purpose in any national economy is to work in order to send remittances back to their families in a pattern repeated all over the developed world (including France with all the north Africans). I don't worry at all about the kids coming here to go to college. Or families whose children are sent to our schools. I'm not sure what that implies, it seems at best an ignorance of the patterns of immigration. At worst, it reads like xenophobia.

Insisting that anyone who lives here for any reason learn English might be an unreasonable request of xenophobia or at least suspiciously looks like it. It is likely that if they're staying for long enough to work only, it is unnecessary. All that is required is that they be able to communicate with others, usually their boss and an ethnic enclave of similar people to meet their basic needs. It's not exactly the most efficient way to go about it, in part because local businesses often accommodate to capture that new market, but it works.

Going to college would be another matter, though there we're dealing with net benefits far in excess of any costs that such immigrants have associated with them in the form of better, more competitive colleges for everybody else. Plus its not like there are many scholarships for non-resident aliens, so we're primarily dealing with well-to-do immigrants from other countries who probably already speak English. That one is a non-starter. As is people sending their children to schools here. If they're moving here with a family, it suggests they're likely on a path to citizenship anyway and will (have to) learn some English, with their descendants learning more. At least that's the historical method. The concern there of spending tax dollars on people who somehow don't provide for themselves is, as I said, still the same whether you're talking about poor white trash in West Virginia or SE Ohio or a clan of Mexicans fresh over the border working in low skill jobs either way. It is poverty that is on topic there, not ethnicity or national origin. Suggesting that somehow the limitations are or should be different simply because someone was born here is very much like xenophobia. I personally don't think you think that to be the case, given previous complaints about the welfare state and the use of government, but it could be construed that way by someone not familiar with your commentary more generally. That is why I said "pretending". I apologize if it was taken as offense.

In any case, I would not worry so much about enforcing language with legal requirements. The desire to bridge cultural divides and improve one's (or one's offspring) economic opportunities are quite good at doing the same thing over time with less force. My parents next door neighbor is third generation Mexican. You wouldn't know it unless he told you. That seems to be typical.

If you accept as a premise (as I do) that an open border with Mexico and open immigration policy as a result (whether legal or virtually permissive) is a security liability, then the necessity of border controls of some type become apparent. it seems that while we both take a generally libertarian view to things, I see government management of border security to be one instance where the state is justified. This is a common point of contention between Objectivists and Libertarians.

I do not see this as a poverty issue either. I have no right to expel any member of society from it due simply to their not living by my standards or work ethic. And indeed many who inherit wealth are much more deserving of disdain than many who are poor (my opinion of course.)

I instead see 'citizenship' as something that for practical purposes must exist, and upheld. I am not saying that all people who work in a country must apply for citizenship. I am saying that all people who work in a country must either be citizens or known to be visiting said country. And so I see actions like building a large scale physical wall along the southern border as more efficient than our current approach to southern border security.

Most of the actual "security" liability with the Mexican border (as opposed to the Canadian) is related to drug trafficking, so far as I can tell. It's not at all very difficult to get into the country via international air travel or shipping if one were a terrorist, for example, relative to transporting yourself across the border in a car or truck. Considering your average Islamic extremist with means enough to get back and forth to America lives in Europe or Central Asia, again, this isn't really Mexico's problem or one that we would solve by putting a wall. If Mexicans (or whoever) were using force to cross the borders, as sometimes happens with drug shipments, then yes, that's a justified reason to want to militarize a border in the hopes of preventing violent action against American citizens and officials. I doubt Mexico proper would be all that interested in invading. Remakes of Red Dawn to the contrary.

But it's probably smarter and cheaper to legalise drug trafficking than to continue to pour money down the interdiction rat hole. It's also less of a headache for Mexico itself (they've had something like 20k people dead in the last few years over drugs and Ciudad Juarez is the murder capital of the world now). Also the experience of Berlin and China, as examples, on the actual effectiveness of a physical wall of keeping people out (or in) should be instructive here. Hadrian was able to hold off the Scots, but at tremendous expense (and it was cheaper, as it would be here, to simply put up a wall rather than attempt to pacify Scotland through conquest).

I think there's a line from Patton that comes into play here: "Fixed fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity".

Well if they intend to stay here and I'm forced to pay for their children's education through taxes AND they have no intention of becoming citizens, then I say we send them back and build a wall.

So legalizing drugs is supposed to stop illegal immigration? I don't think so. If you want to discuss the possible benefits for legalizing drugs then we can have that discussion (I think there's a page dedicated to it on this site in fact) but security risks from foreign nationals will not go away if we legalize drugs, and THAT is my biggest justification for border controls.

As to the plausibility of a wall approach, it would require more than simply a fence and cameras as well, but the cost of such a project is far less than most of the other things we throw away money on for the sake of security. Also, this could be the real useful kind of stimulus, where the government pays people to build something that they actually want built, and then all the taxpayers benefit from it.

I didn't say legalising drugs would stop illegal immigration. What it does is deal with some of the symptoms that people who complain about illegal immigration want stopped. The major cause of illegal immigration is the same cause as legal immigration: jobs and higher standards of living are available here than opposed to where other people live in Asia, Mexico, the Caribbean, and so on. If you want to stop that cause, go right ahead and crash our economy, because that's the only way that's stopping anything. The major cause of the problems people have with illegal immigration though is things like illegal drug trafficking and related violence, or human trafficking (because of the illegal nature of border crossings). I don't see how fortifying a border resolves either of these two problems. It probably escalates them, or merely shifts them to less fortified methods, if anything.

Actual national security risks, as opposed to drug interdiction and criminal violence related to smuggling narcotics, may be a plausible reason for wanting some sort of border control, but I think they are highly overblown. We have plenty of domestic sources of security risks or violent activity to be concerned with and the overwhelming majority of immigrants represent no threats whatsoever. You're talking about a wall to deal with maybe 100-500 people a year as worth scrutinizing, plus the usual few thousand petty criminals? Good luck with that. It is easier to simply improve our intelligence networks by trimming them and focusing their efforts on a smaller net of people who attract and deserve our suspicion than on a flood of millions coming here over a decade.

I'd like to see what if any benefits there are for citizens as far as "security", or somehow diminishing crime rates (which is a highly specious claim to attach to immigrant populations. Despite its prevalence and repeated historical use, it is still inaccurate) or even "stimulus" in hard numbers before this would make any sense to me whatsoever to build a fortress America on our borders. To say nothing of the economic loss rate of immigrant potential contributions who are discouraged by a more hostile environment or a decreased rate of admission (legal or otherwise).

Of course we need immigration reform. We need this more than we need to fund wars or bailout banks. Lets say just for fun we deported the 11 to 15 million illegal immigrants that the govornment estimates are living in this country, which is what some people say needs to be done. besides the initial cost estimating in the billions of dollars it would take to remove then (thats if the gov is right about howmany there are and IF they can stay on budget which we all know is rarly the case) what next?

Lets be generous and say only half those illegal immigrants have american children or wives. We have no legal right to remove thier children, they are american. what do you think the foster care costs would be to raise those kids on average the depending on the state you live in it can cost around 135000 us dollars just to pay out foster care providers in a 18 year span. Lets face it thats a lot of money and hispanic people tend to have a higher average of children then blacks and whites. If those 11 to 15 million people only average one child a piece do the math thats gonna cost us around 1.4-1.6 trillion dollars to raise thier kids. WOW I can tell you that I don't know many hispanic families who only have one or two children. so you do the math and think about that one tiny issues you never hear the hard core deport them all fans talk about Ill give you a new number that would shock you.

. ____If we set forth the path to a greencard. Lets say only 10 million people applied for it because some wont qualify and some will say its to expensive, the initial application fees right now are 495 and 285 dollars multiply that 10 million times 495 and again 10 million by 285 how much money is that? 7.8 billion dollars thats a lot of money we could use elsewere.