As a naturalized citizen of the United States,
one with an American Serviceman as a biological father, did not actually have
to go through the naturalization process, but chose to prepare for Citizenship testing as a means of thanks to this country for offering its opportunities to me (and at 14 years old, mind you), I know more about it than you think.

Probably just as much as your friend.

It’s not just the workers needing to get papers. It’s not like snapping a finger and getting that one hot button will shoo the illegal immigrant boogeyman out the door. The working visa / immigration process itself needs to be improved between the US and our southern countries. It’s in . People are spending almost half of what they’ll earn here as illegals just to risk their lives for transportation to get here in the first place.

You think this is about income tax or something? Who in their right minds would choose Paying to travel in cramped, overheated vehicles across the desert, or to risk death walking across it, or risk drowning, or to be shaken down / robbed / raped by bandits over a legitimate working visa program? Even after taxes, the $ immigrants could send home to their families would still
eclipse the poverty most of them are stuck in south of our Border.

But yeah, you mentioned corporations, as if I was attacking some vestige of Capitalism (both of which I never mentioned). Take a look at the flyers on the Border Towns
in Mexico. See who’s advertising work over there - at wages lower than liveable in the US / very competitive for Mexico/Central America, and where those phone numbers / addresses lead here.

It’s not some chicken or the egg kind of thing. Both parties are just as culpable.

Btw, not everyone who gets the proper documentation is to work in the US is going to hop on the BootStrap Train to Self-Made Man Town. Look at our High School and College Graduates here. Heck, even the Grad School grads. Plenty of them are either out of work or stuck in menial low paying jobs.

And you need to re-read what I wrote.

Your friend and I have more in common than you think. I was born in the Philippines, the son of a prostitute to an already married US Serviceman (which also became my origin for legal status here), a product of his Vietnam War liberty victory laps. I was shipped over here at a year and a half and bounced around foster homes until I was finally adopted by a family that slipped into near poverty from a life tragedy within the next year.

I’ve experienced just as many demeaning (yet character building) events as she. I’m very sure she and I can trade woeful stories (much more than You and I ever could) about the horrible crap we endured, and how much we’ve accomplished since for days on end.

I didn’t make a case to excuse illegals.

Just as how you misread my statement about “half their earnings” then labeled it as a stupid statement. I fully understand that the illegals send their money home, and often go back themselves.

While you were looking down your nose at those people “living like cockroaches,” did you ever once ask them what they did to get here in the first place? Because I have. Many of them.

It costs a lot of money (at least for them) to get smuggled across our border, to hook up with a Coyote on our side, and to make the contacts that will get them work. Not every illegal’s immediately getting hired in the border states, esp since there’s a proliferation of undocumented workforce here. The majority need to go north or east to find work, and getting to the right place costs money.

And all those dangers I wrote in the process – they are Real. Read NarcoBlog some day. Death is wholesale south of our border, and illegal migrants are easy, desperate targets flush w/ cash in comparison to other people down there. The cartels and bandits rob / rape / kill them with just as much as they do their rival gangs.

Fixing the system Does matter. Because beating your chest w/ a no-forgiveness attitude, blaming the criminal is a Paper Tiger. It doesn’t accomplish anything. Hell, more illegals have been deported under Obama’s watch than any President so far, and it’s not making a Dent.

Sure, compare being an illegal alien with robbing a bank to pay for your sister’s brain cancer all you want. But if your family lived in Mexico, and paying for her treatment meant sneaking across the border b/c the Mexican Government was too inefficient / corrupt to issue a working visa, you’d already be risking your lives to make it over here with your father making money to send back. And in comparison, you’d definitely appreciate it if just getting here in the first place were easier, even if it meant filling out paperwork.

Not every person who comes here illegally is a cockroach. Not every person that already lives here is a paragon of society b/c he or she is America by Accident of Birth.

And your perception that we’re the Laughing Stock – yes, we are, in so many ways you’re not even aware. And one of them goes right back to the system. Other countries have efficient working visa programs in place, and their instances of undocumented workers is Exponentially lower than ours, even before you get to their (from our perspectives) aggressive attitudes towards deportation. You know why they’re so good at kicking illegals out? Because there’s so Few of them in the first place: most immigrant workers Can get working visas in other coutnries! Our contrast in that area alone makes us a Laughing Stock as well, friend.

I also do appreciate that we can have this conversation, even on this page. Just in case you haven’t noticed, both sides of Politics and Media are aggressively programming Americans like us to view people who don’t share political attitudes as Enemies (not to mention all other points of available conflict). Which is the exact opposite of being an American in the first place.

I welcome this conversation we’ve been having, and mean all my expression of opinion with respect.