I agree with those like Barone (and probably yourself) that the immigration system in this country has been failing miserably across the board in indoctrinating a sense of American history, culture and values with our immigrants, not to mention the language. We need to be proud to be Americans again, and proud to instill that not only in our children but in our immigrants. The military does a fine job of this by linking it with teamwork/brotherhood, fair play/sense of justice and honor, and near limitless opportunity. I think a reform in funding college (i.e. some form of national service for 2-3 years entails you full tuition, otherwise, you pay up) would help infuse this in the younger and middle-aged immigrants.

Obviously, I like how the new immigration plan offers an emphasis on skills over families. Families can come in time when people with skills apply themselves and succeed in America.

But I also see a key deal missing is the enforcement on employers who have been getting a free ride for years on this.

Yes the system should be streamlined, I’m dealing with it now for my fiance and for 2 sailors of mine (1 whose nephew lost his parents in flooding in Bangladesh 16 months ago and she’s still fighting the system to allow this 7 year old scared kid to immigrate to America).

Agreed about offshoring, which is why Lou Dobbs is so damn enraging to me because he’s whipping up this populist hatred that IS OUT THERE and makes fear, and some, hate, Mexicans and other foreigners. In the town in the Piedmont area of NC I graduated from high school in 6 years ago, there is now a near 1/4 Mexican population and the racial tension is unbelievable. A classmate (self-declared good ol boy) who is now a police officer says he spends far too much time taking calls about groups of local youths beating up Mexican kids, robbing them, or locals calling the cops on Mexican families who “disturb the peace” by having a gathering/fiesta on Sunday afternoons… heaven forbid. Tensions between blacks and Mexicans are getting worse every year, especially in larger cities in the South and West. It ain’t good, and people like Dobbs, Tancredo and others are whipping up the discontent and fear, which combined with perceived lost economic opportunity, leads to hate, and potentially violence.

Now I live in the Miami/Tampa area before the Navy and after this year, and I see the hybrid system with the damn near requirement to be bilingual to succeed and I totally disagree with it in principle. But in reality,its bound to happen because of the massive legitimate business and trade from Latin America and the Carribean and the only thing we can do is try to make sure the immigrants learn English too by fully funding all the acclimation and integration programs that are out there by law in the first place. Its ditto for Cali and the rest of the west.

Lastly, all this media and politician fueled immigration hysteria that clouds discussion over the very real problems we have with immigration is damaging, and is leading to the kind of attitudes that have Americans in various polls demanding criminal prosecution of “illegal” immigrants and even some of these people wanting them all deported.

A bad situation all around. I demand firm and real immigration reform just like you, but I also don’t like the company (Buchannan, Dobbs, Tancredo, etc.) I have to keep in doing so who are hijacking our interests and our future for the sake of their pathetic agendas.

Thank you much for commenting, I always appreciate it.

Look, not all aspects of immigration(mass and more than a third of it illegal) is good. CA is a good place to look. What’s the deal with race card playing for cheap pharmaceuticals amoungst the Vietnamese community? Why can they do it for 20 years and CONTINUE to do it today? What’s up with monolingualism, in reverse? Family has lived in the same house in Santa Ana since 1967 and now there’s no call centers or billing offices where you can find someone who speaks English—which results in my elderly and retired Mom dealing with billing situations where she can’t get anyone who speaks her language. Want to deal with Medicare or Medical in the 92706 area code? Best take a crash course in gutter Spanish. oh, but of course, this makes me a racist prick, right?

No! 92706 was 65% Hispanic ten years ago and we didn’t have these problems. Has nothing to do with Hispanic immigrants. Has everything to do with the attitude and how we do it. 10 years ago most of that 65% were legal and proud to be American—regardless of origins. Now? You’ve got to be kidding me. The place is more broken along ethnic fault lines more than ever. Vietnamese go over here. Hispanics here. People do everything they can to not leave their little ethnic enclave. This is good?

I don’t want a return to the racist policies of yesteryear(Irish need not apply) to FORCE integration, but there’s no forces pushing mutual and self-actualized integration. Nothing to combat the backdoor disconnectedness that’s coming with the massive immigration. In part that’s helped, in the case of Mom’s bills, by the rules of immigration(not enough in the yearly allotment to fit the number coming nor the number needed by labor). But also an inability to deal with flaws in ‘Salad Bowl’ multi-culturalism—the pharmacy issue in Little Saigon. Not saying its always bad, but, damn, if you can’t point to problems and ask for corrective measures without being called a stone cold racist? Well, you’ve built the system to fail then, yeah?

Highlighting the problems, and wanting real solutions in the short term—not just dismissing we nay sayers as Barnett’s been doing on the issue of immigration of late—, doesn’t make anyone a hater. The near term, mid term, and long term matter. You can’t just toss the short term because it’s inconvenient!

Are there haters? Of course there are. But part of the problem is the ‘on the cheap’ method of InfoOps we run nowadays. Quickest and easiest way to win is to go negative, hard. So we call the opposing side fascists, racists, etc. Which is your point, but then you shoot yourself in the foot with the ‘fear Mexicans’ thing. Ay Curummba.

What I’d like to see? Change in the immigration system(bigger numbers allowed in, but not everyone. Not just saying everyone can come who wants to come. Enforcement of the border to slow, you can’t really end since the border is too big, the amount of illegal immigration. Streamlining the system. I can’t remember everywhere I’ve worked or lived over the last ten years. That’s kinda pharked up.). The end of the ‘Offshoring’ scare. Can’t really raise the standard of living in the ‘Old Country’ on rendition money. You need a real economy for that. That means letting Coke, Reebok, and such move there. We come down a little bit in the short term but we all go up in the long term. But the first gets one labled a racist by some and hater of the poor by yet more.

Basically, stop saying people hate Mexicans. It isn’t about hating Mexicans. It’s about hating the bad effects of mass immigration and wanting them redressed. Period.

Toss Pat Buchanon under the bus, run him over a hundred times(can I be at the wheel for one? Please? Please?), but don’t call someone simply opposing an idiotic immigration policy a hater. There’s problems. Barnett is so wedded to the long view he pooh-poohs it. You don’t have to go that route. Like me you’re young and hungry enough to know better.
ry(love the new digs by the way)