Those opposed to amnesty have graciously sat on their hands for two decades waiting for the enforcement piece of the 1986 law to be put into effect. They got little for their patience. It is incumbent upon those supporting any sort of additional amnesty to wait for the enforcement piece to be tested, improved and made to work. Only after this is the case is it reasonable to talk about another amnesty. I agree with the approach following the 2007 failure: demonstrate a commitment to enforcement that works and starts driving aliens away (primarily those without community ties), and then there might be something to talk about regarding those that have burrowed more deeply after 20 years of looking the other way. We'll know the enforcement piece works when the word on the street of towns and countries sending the majority of aliens is "Don't bother, you will be caught, put in jail, and sent home. Without fail. That won't help your family. Let's try to improve our situtation here". When that is stated by the man on the street, our enforcement can be considered successful.

Given the rapid increase in unemployment and unemployment benefits, any enforcement efforts today should be a multiprong strategy of rooting out working aliens, and ensuring the workplace meets wage and OSHA laws, so that citizens can take those jobs rather than be on the dole. Yes, the jobs might be hard and dangerous, but every effort needs to be expended to ensure someone takes a job vs. unemployment. Citizens can make a claim on my income when unemployed; that is fine. But that claim has no validity when aliens are earning wages. This will require multiple agencies working together: ICE, OSHA, NLRB, etc. Maybe laid off autoworkers will unionize meat packing plants and make those jobs support middle class lifestyles again.

Treating problems in isolation got us here; more integrated thinking is required. Any sort of amnesty is a fool's errand and given the economy, its foolishness is patently obvious to the common man on the street. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I could believe market magic would work if we hadn't already built trillions of dollars of infrastructure and housing that depends on cheap individual transportation. I just visited a new housing development near Tracy, CA, and there is zero possibility this development will ever be served by anything except the personal car. And this development is so remote an electric car with a 10 mile range won't get you anywhere. People with money tied up in this and other infrastructure aren't just going to move and abandon their investments; they are going to demand the oil be produced cheap enough for personal car use. The idea of starting the transition now is that there will be FEWER people demanding cheap oil in the future. Good citizens isolate themselves from this problem and don't set themselves up to need cheap fuel. The military is simply too expensive to use to get cheap fuel.

Seriously. I may be the only person who had no role in the bubble and collapse. I was in CA during the 90-91 bubble and had no interest in buying since I was preparing to leave the country to travel for an extended period. I heard all these things that sounded crazy to me: buy now or you will be priced out forever; prices only go up; they aren't making any more land (this was in Silicon Valley). I thought it was nonsense. Sure enough, 1 year later, anyone who had bought in the past 2 years was underwater. And prices did not reach the 91 peaks in real terms until 1998 or 1999.

I bought some land in 2000 in a very coveted area and planned to build a modest home for myself there, while continuing to rent. In 2004-2005, prices went up at a ridiculous rate and everyone said the exact same things that had been said in 90-91. I counseled people to wait. I didn't chase the mirage. I designed and built a home and it is now a cash flow positive rental. My spouse and I are now looking for a home and we expect to save at least 25% or more off the price of 3 years ago (we weren't in a position to buy until then). We are in no rush to move since our rent is so cheap, so we'll just wait.

Our market hasn't sagged as much as some, but the big difference is that crappy properties (bad home, bad site, noisy street, etc) sell at HUGE discounts or don't sell at all, while the few decent homes go quickly at premiums - sometimes as much as they would have fetched 2 years ago. There are a bunch of contractor flips that were those bad properties that are not selling and will surely go to the back soon. Houses in slide zones, which did not sell at a discount 3 years ago, are virtually worthless today.

So, we look for a house and will save a bundle buying now instead of during the panic. The house I built is cash flow positive by a large amount. We owe $457/month in mortgage debt. We had no part in the bubble.