Illegal Immigration

First, in the interest of full disclosure, my mother's grandparents immigrated from Germany, my paternal grandmother's father was French Canadian, her mother's people came from England around the time of the Mayflower. My dad's father's family immigrated from England- I think our branch of the family tree came over in the mid-1800's.

All of the immigrants in my lineage were legal immigrants. My son-in-law isn't a citizen, but he's here legally, and works legally, and studies legally, and married my daughter for love. Two of my husband's nieces have immigrant spouses. My husband's grandma only spoke Polish. I believe in controlled immigration.

Illegal immigration is, well, illegal. This issue is such a sore point with all Americans, regardless of political affiliation. I was reading comments on a Youtube video on immigration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ

In the video Roy Beck was speaking about controlling LEGAL immigration back in the 1990s. People who watched the video on Youtube had opinions, many of them varying widely. In one coment motelife said :


people complain that the us govt can't help every poor country to raise their economic status, but the fact is that being the world's only superpower left, that sort of is what the rest of the world expects of you.



I totally agree that that helping every poor country is what the rest of the world expects us to do, but I think it's time for the rest of the world to pony up. If everyone helped each other there would be fewer people trying to immigrate because they'd like, or be able to survive in their home country. We cannot by sheer "wanna" make everything right in the world. Others have to wanna, too, beginning with the country that needs the help.


Some posters were commenting that opposition to imigration is racist-based- that if you weren't white you wouldn't have a problem with illegal immigration. I think that's a baseless argument, but in evaluating my stand on the topic I came up with this:


I believe that we were never intended to be white bread and mayonaise. When our founding fathers came here everyone was equal for the first few years, then they got stupid. It is a disgrace. But the problems we face with ILLEGAL Immigration today have nothing to do with race, but the law and participating as a full memeber of the society that keeps the American dream available. Personally I hope all Americans are a lovely tan color in the near future!