Immigration Reform (or why can't we just be good friends)

I wish that our President understood why we have the checks and balances system that he is so fond of going around.

There should be open and honest debate about the immigration issue, everything about the immigration issue, instead of one person dictating policy based on his own personal opinion.

We might as well live in Stalinist Soviet Union, for pity's sakes.

Actually, I'd have to disagree about seeing worse before, at least in this area of crisis. I don't believe the nation got the same flood of illegals without screening or anything but the most cursory processing in the '86 amnesty. It sure was not the same scale or chaotic and wide open mess this had been mismanaged into.

While nations around the world are hardening their borders and/or drawing the lines brighter on a map than ever before, we have folks who would just take an eraser to ours, if only for a "gotta help them out" period.

I agree that something needs to be done, with sense and compassion, about the criminal aliens who have been here for long periods to have established lives, and especially the people who were brought over (before the latest "send all your kids to us!" garbage) as children. However, rather than even pay lip service to security being the OTHER necessary part of that, it's now become something of a big joke for real world operation. Border patrol agents are literally supervising/babysitting children all but invited to come and cross the border against our laws, before they can be handily redistributed across the 50 states for resettlement at our expense.

Compassion without forward looking security on our chaotic border is simply seeing how similar we can become to Old Rome before they imploded from self inflicted stupidity.

Reagan tends to be a bad example as he got had with the amnesty in his second term. He believed the concept of security to come after, and we got the amnesty but..err...uhh..yeah, about that fence or something? It's still spotty with the latest idea being to just have drones patrol and send agents out as reactionary units to drone sightings of sign. Yeah, that's using the 'ol noodle.....if the profits of the cartels are the goal, anyway.

Obama has done quite a bit with immigration through executive discretion. Given statements from agents themselves, policies handed down through DHS to the CBP and individuals have just about broken morale of the force all together. The one law enforcement agency we ought to be HAPPY to see work well, since it faces outward and not in at us. (ICE and the Border Patrol are overlapping but still distinct in their roles). Most recently....Obama has encouraged children to come on up and play the citizenship game. Border Patrol is baby sitting when they haven't been housed in U.S. Military bases pressed into emergency service for the cause. 

You can't make this stuff up for being anything but the norm right now.

Biden recently took this so far out of the speculative of their intentions, it ought to cross more than simple lines of judgement.

US to grant refugee status to Central American child migrants

I'm sorry but the powers of separation within our Government don't allow for half the power they seem to be in the process of assuming. They can take it, unfortunately, if Congress simply does nothing, because the courts and their power lack initiative by design of our system. It isn't granted by any law or basis of legal theory at this stage though. Law itself comes short, and that is the whole role of Congress.

Where they fail? THEY WERE MEANT TO FAIL. It means the people flat don't want it, and public response is still very nasty over this issue. Obama discounts that whole side entirely.

However, the numbers of arrivals across the border and bandied about the floors of both House and Senate in recent periods they've been in session isn't pretty but it is sobering for how much the sheer numbers have grown in a very short period.

I'll agree though in non-partisan.

McCain has wanted this like a boy wants a girlfriend and Bush was no friend in even a passing way to the Border Patrol or to security along our Southern border. He put Canadians through 10 shades of misery with post-9/11 nonsense and Americans risk being stuck on the wrong side of a day trip without all the proper 'papers'...(Oh..that hits a chord of memory somewhere)....but at this point? We have literally instituted a working form of the feet wet/feet dry policy of the Florida side, across the Mexican land border. If they can physically cross the barriers, they're in. Welcome to America. 

Yes... That would be fair to say. I think we do need to do something about the people here. Any who are on the wrong side of our criminal justice system beyond, perhaps, merely being in violation of immigration law, need to be pursued like any other fugitive and deported as criminal aliens upon capture. Whether that takes 1 year or 10 years. They're in the shadows, no matter what changes, because those are your arrest warrants or active suspects in other crimes that give them that status for immigration in the first place. They should get NO mercy or appeals outside the core criminal case they have. Guilty or already convicted? Bye... 

Those here and established? Well...heck..what CAN we do? We can't deport millions of people in mass sweeps. Do we *WANT* to look like the Gestapo raiding a Polish ghetto now or what, right? It CAN be physically done. The force exists...but it can't be done by any stretch of realistic human decency. So, there lay the question....How do you define roots?

I'm fine with that whole debate happening with wide open minded looks at all options. However...the added flows HAVE to stop. Not JUST the Mexican land border but the Florida Straits and the West Coast Chinese flows as well. It isn't JUST demographically changing my country I happen to resent with some passion here ...It's the fact illegal aliens are ILLEGAL. I don't mean just enforcement. I mean, they get abused, misused and outright victimized like criminals who can't report it, too. 

What we have now is the worst of all worlds, for all sides. What we'll have by amnesty WITHOUT closing the borders to a growing flow....IS worse. 

While we all argue over who gets to "live" on the land, we are ALL charged for living on the Planet were born on?? Man, we need to get our priorities straight.

Charles1952,I personally dont think we have borders, what we have are "corporate" entities and interests, there is a difference between the well being of a person, and the well being of the wealthy's interest.