This whole issue is a smokescreen.

I'm sick and tired of paying to keep my share of my prisoner in jail at $500/year. I'm sick of having crap stolen by corner guys who live in run down urban areas. There is so much human capital in the US legally being wasted that it is criminal. All the business geniuses who want to line their pockets with illegal labor need to solve a real problem and figure out how to get those prisoners and corner guys out of my pocket.

I used to work for I.C.E. As an insider, I can tell you that I.C.E. just doesn't have the manpower or the facilities to do more than handle an occasional theatrical raid. Our detention facility, one of the largest, could only hold about 800 detainees without getting overcrowded. Most of the spots are taken up with people who were apprehended at the border, and there's hardly enough room for them. Every time there was some initiative to put more illegal aliens before an immigration judge, we'd get a load of detainees we couldn't handle. The next thing you knew, almost everyone who didn't have a criminal record was being released on their own recognizance with the vain hope that they would show up for their deportation hearings. I don't see how I.C.E. could handle any long term campaign to round up large numbers of aliens living illegally in the U.S. without increasing the agency's budget at least 50 fold.

I am as progressive as they come on virtually every other issue, but I am with the 'conservatives' on this one. To me, the rule of law and the protection of the American worker take precedence over the (understandable) humanitarian concern for illegals who get caught, and their children. Yeah, it sucks for them. But they knew the risks, and decided to take them anyway. For every writer or activist who focuses on the 'heartbreak' and the 'humanitarian issues' raised by immigration enforcement, I would ask you -- are you willing to take in two or three illegal immigrants into your home and support them, or maybe four or five? No? Not interested? Then give us a break. The American taxpayer is not responsible for supporting, directly or indirectly, 100 million impoverished, uneducated, desperate Central American peasants. If you think I'm elitist, then like I said, take five or so of them into your home and support them. Otherwise, spare me your hypocrisy. Life is full of hard choices, and this is one of them.

We make a big show of being "welcoming" to the "poor, huddled masses", and then throw their asses in jail when they try to come here for a better life. We make it damn near impossible to come here legally (at least for poor people in Central America) and then point our fingers and call them criminals when they do whatever they can to escape grinding poverty in their own countries. Much of which WE have created with our rapacious foreign policies, mind you.

We want to maintain our snotty, racist ideas about "those illegal scum" and yet we still want our strawberries and nicely tended lawns and cheap labor. Tell me, you who are so gung ho on kicking these people out, are YOU willing to take any of those jobs for minimum wage or less? NO?? Gee, why not? Who do you think is going to pick your fruit for $3 an hour? It sure won't be the spoiled American worker insisting on high pay, full benefits and two breaks plus lunch per day. What about the businesses themselves? Do you think they can function, provide cheap products, without all that dirt-cheap labor?

People who sneer and spit on illegal immigrants simply haven't thought the problem all the way through. A big portion of this country's economy runs on the work these people do, meekly and without complaint, year in and year out. There's an awful lot of misplaced frustration and hate going around, and it's easy to turn it on those least able to defend themselves. But there's a word for that: it's called "bullying", and it's just as ugly and sinful coming from adults as it is coming from schoolyard brats.

Those of you who are so quick to blame these folks for all the economic ills of our country would do better to put your energies into fighting those are really at fault - the rapacious corporations that fuel the vicious cycle of poverty and desperation that drives these people out of their own countries in the first place. Stop blaming those at the bottom, and start setting your sights on those at the top, from which all this misery flows.

Tell me, you who are so gung ho on kicking these people out, are YOU willing to take any of those jobs for minimum wage or less? NO?? Gee, why not?

Because those jobs shouldn't pay minimum wage, that's why. They should pay whatever it costs to get somebody to do that work on the fair, open, American labor market.

Of course it's cheaper to get what amount to slaves to perform that labor. By your twisted logic, maybe we should just fire up the plantations and enslave a good chunk of the population.

You first.

This is just a stunt. Look around to see who's building America these days.

We need some numbers. To the eye alone, it looks like whole sectors of the economy would go poof without the help of the uncarded masses. There's a price tag that Republicans will understand.

I think everyone here would agree on one thing: the employers are the ones most deserving of some legal misery.

Why did the factory owner spend NOT ONE NIGHT in jail? Why is he not spending thousands of dollars to keep his ass out of jail? Why does the government continue to do business with him? Why is it not MANDATORY that any government contract cannot be let until a contractor can prove that his/her company does not hire illegal aliens?

In Texas, Perry Homes (Mr. Perry is a huge contributor to the Republicans, and he created the "Swift Boat" strategy that brought down John Kerry) and and others hire illegal aliens via subcontractors to build homes for the middle classes and the rich. Mr. Perry nor any of his developer friends have ever been raided.

Follow the money. Did the reporter who wrote this story check the factory owner's political contributions?