NEEDED: PRIVATE FUNDING for THE FENCE!! THE FENCE, THE FENCE !

"I feel your pain," Sara. The way I see things, now, is you're probably right, a plausible number is around 30 million. That's one in ten persons in the United States could very well be an illegal alien. 12 million is not plausible. Border patrol published numbers are a minimum of 20,000 per week for the last 30 years. Jerry says that makes 30 million, and if you account for attrition (death and repatriation) and fecundity (babies) 30 million is a highly plasuble number.

Ok, 10% of the population. Most of them work. Most of them don't want to be noticed. But if they vote, they can swing an election. (and yes, Hannah, it's very easy for an illegal alien to vote).

I suspect the little secret of the 2006 Republican rout was an anti-fence vote. You won't hear that anywhere else, but I heard it from a (legal) Mexican friend, who said no Mexican, especially legal ones, wants a fence. He said legal AND illegal Mexicans were motivated to vote in Nov 2006 because Republicans were making a lot of noise about the fence. Both groups want to go back and forth to visit grandma, or even bring grandma here. Both groups want no impediments to sending cash to Mexico.

And don't start with the "it doesn't make sense" jive. What doesn't make sense? What DOES make sense? Does anything in this crazy debate make sense?

Yes, but only one thing makes sense. The group that has the most babies wins the game in the long run, period, end of story. Let's just hope that the Mexicans who are here, G-d love 'em, really WANT to be Americans, or we're doomed.

Come to think of it, we're doomed anyway. Erase this comment.

I, for one, have no difficulty admitting any immigrant who wants to *become* an American. I have a difficulty with people who live here and take advantage of our economy and benefits but do *NOT* want to become an American, even if those people are not a drain on the economy (and they might or might not be). If they don't want to BE American, then I want them to BE whatever they DO want to BE, just in that other place where they should BE that other whatever. In other words, if you want to be an X, please go to X-Land. You want to BE French? Please, go to France. You want to BE Lithuanian? Please, there is a whole country full of Lithuanians waiting for you. Etc. See?

What is intolerable is the lying. Our system was devised to make it difficult to BECOME American. We want you to prove that you really WANT to be American, by proving that you learned more about America than most of the people who were born here. And our Gov't lies to us by telling us that's all we need -- a tough system to prevent losers and phonies from pretending to be American.

What we didn't ever do anything about was preventing people from squatting here. It's really really easy. Much much easier than coming here legally and becoming American. That's why you, Sara, like the idea of the Fence. Let's make it just a little harder to sneak in.

Unfortunately, as you pointed out, there are far too many people eager to sell everything to the giant Demographic cohort: sell them free education, free medical care, and to buy votes from them. There really is no incentive in gov't to slow down the flow.

Why is this question so hard? I've said nothing new, but I've typed two pages worth of drivel. I think I'll go do something easy for a while, like some nice nuclear physics or something relaxing like that.