Comments about ‘Long immigration waits show why some come illegally’

Venessa,
You got that right. Beuracats make things complicated. What one has to realize is if the beuarcrat reduces his work load, then his job can be eliminated. What every beuracrat needs is to increase his workload to a point where he can justify getting underlings highered. That way he goes from just controling the lives of people he never sees to being a manager.

I am guessing 95% of those who commented on this article did not even bother to read it. I just hope there is another group who read it and were changed by it.

Not_Scared,
Does the drug use figure include abuse of perscription drugs? Does the figure include those using drugs under the age of 12? Does it include illegal consumption of alchohol by those under 21?

How exactly is a person who was carried across the border at age 2 months a criminal? If someone can commit a crime without knowingly doing anything, it is hard to see that there is any crime involved.

What we need is a method to regularize those here, a method to allow for quick, large scale, temporary immigration that reflects the humanity of immigrants, and a method to increse respect for laws.

If compliance with traffic laws is better when they are based on an engineering study, than maybe compliance with immigration laws would be better if we wrote our laws to reflect the actual level of international migration.

The claims of having ancestors wait 9 years to immigrate from Ireland during the potato famine are based on misunderstandings. Prior to 1921 a person just showed up at the US border, and was let in or not based on health conditions and other issues. There were no quotas, no visa application fees etc.

My last comment is not to say no illegal immigration occured before 1921 or no one had to wait.

People had to wait to save up money to pay for the voyage across the ocean. As late as 1928 a lady coming with two kids from Mexico to the US could tell the border guards "my husband is working in an auto factory in Detroit and we are going to join him" and they would let her pass on. No visa, no passport, no photo ID, no fees, no study to see if she was within quota, just let her through on her word.

So any attempts to compare the process of immigration before 1921 to what it is like today are based on false premises.

Alternatively, transportation potential in the world is also different today, the cost of migration and so on.

Lastly people need to reconsider the frontier rhetoric because it ignores the fact that the busiest immigration decade was 1900-1910, and the masses were pooring into the Lower East Side of NYC and other concentrated areas to work in factories, not generally to work on farms.

What a disgusting rationalization for breaking the law. Most Americans support strong enforcement and limited immigration. Yet, special interests continue to cloud the issue with bogus notions such as compassion. Illegal immigrants, for the most part, came here on their own volition. They came for the money, and it seems the majority retain more affection for Mexico than the U.S. Let's get our house in order. We need strong enforcement. No amnesty. No excuses. No exceptions.