I'm confused about your mother. Presumably she was able to come to the US because she was married to your father -- while there can be a great deal of paperwork and wait with this process, it is not a matter of "waiting your turn." To my knowledge if you are poor, without family connections or a job already set up, you can only get into the US via the diversity lottery, which is what, 50K green cards a year? The fact is, if illegal immigrants -- poor, hard working immigrants, willing to work one of our many labor intensive low wage jobs in order to support their families -- "got in line," they would never get to come to the US. There is no immigration fast track for day laborers, unlike the one for doctors and engineers. Heck, there isn't any track at all.

So while I appreciate your sentiment, and I agree that there is an underlying ugliness to the commentary, I don't really disagree that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are Mexican, and because they are unskilled of course they are poor -- if they were rich they would surely remain in Mexico. But they are willing to come here and work, and companies are willing to hire them. While the immigrants are out on the cold companies can keep their wages down and attempt to pit them against native workers who should be their natural supporters. The conundrum is how to sanction companies without penalizing illegals.

Anon
