Originally Posted by ratbastid

Whatever forum this lands in...

I say, feed the kids. There are WAY bigger and more expensive fish to fry in the Immigration debate.

Also, I just have to take issue with this: have you ever MET any illegal immigrants? I have. I\'ve never seen a less \"entitled to do whatever the hell they want\" group of people. They\'re damn grateful to be here, and they WANT to be complying with the law--not just for fear of deportation, but because for the most part they\'re good people.

Who we get immigrating into this country are the hard-working, noble, often brilliant and talented members of other countries\' societies. They end up in what we consider menial jobs, but you\'ve got to understand, if you see the whole situation that has them here, that they\'re very likely feeding families back home, and they\'re the one who took on moving to a foreign country to have their family have that opportunity. In my book, that\'s worth acknowledging, because it TAKES something for a person to do that, and not everybody would do that.

The whole immigration system is badly broken. The part that\'s broken at a sociological level is the way we turn these amazing, generous, hard-working human beings into human cockroaches, we have their very presence disgust us and be a problem we have to solve. It breaks my heart, quite frankly. It\'s the perfect storm of racism and classism all rolled up into one big nasty, self-righteous position.

\"So come in legally,\" you might say. Fair enough. I didn\'t say I like the way it currently works. What I don\'t like is the way we treat \"illegals\" like sub-humans when, frankly, they\'ve got a hell of a lot more gumption than most of us keyboard-jockeys.

Mango: I\'ve gone on a rant here that starts from what you said but goes beyond it. I\'m not pointing any of this specifically back at you, so please don\'t take this personally--although I am interested in shaking people\'s thinking up on this issue, so if your thinking is shook up, then great.