Why is it that the left intentionally obfuscates the difference between illegal and legal immigration to the USA? The problem's not legal immigrants who come to this country and contribute, and there is a long waiting list of legal immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Europe who'd love to emigrate to America, but illegal immigrants primarily from Latin America and overwhelmingly from Mexico, who jump our border by the tens of millions without passports and work permits, who pay no income taxes, drain our social services, and who are bringing a poverty stricken latininization to the USA that's the result of corrupt Latin American governance, wanton reproduction, and a criminal distribution of Latin American wealth? Illegal immigrants who come to the USA to primarily cut the lawns, tend the gardens, and wash the dishes and dirty laundry of the American left at sub-standard American wages, that are sent directly to Mexico untaxed are not contributing to the American economy and culture, but are contributing to it's demise. Try to enter the UK, a fellow english speaking country without a passport and work permit and tell British immigration authorities that you are an American in their country illegally to work and reside and they'll deport you or jail you in their usually well behaved manner, leaving you with a criminal record, and these our our "best friends" in the global village. Try to enter Mexico illegally as an American and call their immigration authorities racist assholes while waving the American flag in their faces and see how far that gets you. Why the obvious double standard? Americans who don't see the cynical exploitation of our porous border by the Mexican kleptocracy primarily, for their Mexican political gain, are gringo stooges; and if we don't defend our turf from this invasion we deserve to be colonized illegally and become just another Latin American nation by the end of this century. The Spanish conquistadors, European also by all account for the racial demagouges on the left, and who sired lots of illegitimate children with their native Americans, will have proven once and for all to have been the most effective colonizers of the Americas. English speakers who take pride in their culture and thus must obviously be racist, though illegal immigrant hispanic pride is something to crow about, will have to emigrate to the UK, Canada, South Africa, India, Hong Kong, or Australia, where they can speak their language and practice their culture and science without being harassed by Spaniards. As if our TV's not bad enough as it is, can one imagine even more Mexican soap operas? Would the British let Spain invade and latinize the UK like Mexico's invading the US at present? No way, the British know who they are and would defend their turf, as they have cajones. We are a people too afraid these days to stand up for what's ours, and the Mexicans know it. Mexicans like Spaniards by the way are a nationality, not a race of people, even if some like to brag about their "race" like blonde and blue-eyed Nazis did.

He makes sure we see every single report that can be construed as favoring free market fundamentalism, without fail. it's like having a clipping service.

Really. Cancel your subs to Forbes, and to Times Select if it's just for Friedman and Tierney and Brooks, etc. One-stop shopping if corporatist prostitute news is your particular fetish.

...starting companies and employing people to begin with.

I know...this is really, REALLY hard to comprehend (chiefly because homo-sapiens is not wired, at the level of the DNA, to comprehend it), but it is WAY past time to start thinking about how in hell we are all going to live on this planet with LESS. Not more. LESS.

Because there are now over 6 billion of us...although the 1 billion or so in the developed world are the biggest problem, consumption-wise.

Capitalist norms lead only in one direction: disaster. Capitalism chews up everything around it. But in particular it chews up resources. Once those resources run out, and there isn't anything to substitute, we have disaster.

So when I read about immigrants starting companies and employing people who consume, consume consume, all I can think about is what I see from my perch in downtown Los Angeles: the city gobbling up everything as far as the eye can see. This is going on all over the world, faster and faster (just as the arctic ice is melting faster and faster, and for the same reason: the byproducts of our mindless, endless consumption are destroying our spaceship at an increasingly geometric rate).

Any time after the sudden entrance of the industrial age would have been a good time to start thinking about how to deal with these problems...instead, we fought two grotesquely destructive world wars..and any number of smaller wars...all had the effect of delaying the inevitable. But now we're looking at it right in the face: we don't have the resources to sustain our growth. Our ecology is in dire trouble. Not will be. Is.

and what do we do? We celebrate immigrants who form companies that employ workers who consume...and it'll all take us right over the cliff that much sooner.

I'm just sayin'....

fuck. We're not the sentient species. We're the idiot species.

We need, we MUST start thinking differently, or what's left of us will be staggering around a post-apocalyptic wasteland thinking "what the hell happened, anyway?"

This is addressed to the Tancredoist writing above.

It's the cheap-labor conservatives and apostles of freedom for the wealthy.

All the left is doing, frankly, is insisting on decent treatment even for people here illegally - and that's for the sake of American society - that we not simply act like barbarians - not from any ulterior motive of importing more illegal aliens, nor really, for their sake. We're also trying for a compromise that won't have us hunting people coast to coast, but will stand in the future.

You (Tancredoists in general) need to point your finger in another direction - without capitalists deliberately hiring illegals no Mexicans (or anyone else) would flood in. Our borders have not become more porous. "Our" businesses have become multinationals, bigger economically than many nations, and in no way loyal to the US. The factor that's changed is, frankly, the Andrew Leonard mentality - kiss ass to the nobility and pull the wool over the eyes of the serfs. And one of their chief weapons is pretending cheap labor conservatism is anti-racism (just as they pretend worldwide corporate governance and market fundamentalism are anti-racism). And Andrew Leonard is no $@##@$@ left. That displays a real depth of ignorance that's shocking.

And you Tancredoists are helping the process, and helping to confuse the issue. I hear your ilk on TV all the time talking about immigration waves, and not carefully parsing that they want to cut back on illegals. I also see a focus on the border exclusive of the spurious H1Bs and the much bigger problem of outsourcing. Hence, the racism charge sticks to you more than to us. Deal with it. It's your own fault.

Here's the deal - when a country becomes prosperous and stable, its women have fewer children, eventually it's not replenishing itself, and to grow even moderately economically it needs *some* immigration (which is preferable to outsourcing, as long as it's simply preventing you from shrinking demographically). What you say about standing in line is true - the people applying for legal immigration are enough - and no person on the left is saying that illegals should be able to jump the queue - just trying to avoid scapegoating the workers and letting the employers skate, as you seem to advocate.