What are the Democrats plan for immigration? This may be our stumbling block? We should give the people some kind of an answer, even if it's vague.

But will The Huckster still pay for their children's college costs after he sends them back to Mexico?

He's flipping like Mitt but insists this has always been his stand. A Southern Baptist minister who cannot admit he is lying about this? My, my. Isn't that convenient?

* * *

freeforall, there is nothing vauge about the Democratic immigration plan. It requires that everyone obey the law.

If you entered this country illegally, you will never become a citizen unless you go home and apply according to US law.

If you are hiring illegal workers, you will finally be punished.

The Republicans encouraged everyone to break the law. Reagan put out the welcome mat for cheap foreign labor with his GOP Amnesty Bill hoping to destroy the middle class. And its just about worked.

There is an easy solution. If there are no jobs for illegal workers, they will have no other choice but to go home. We will make those breaking the law obey it.

Immigrants are welcome, but they have to obey U.S. law...and so do criminal American employers. The Republians started this insanity for their usual reason...profits and exploitation of labor.

They will be facing a different Department of Justice when Democrats return to power. Those criminals continuing to hire cheap foreign labor will be prosectuted and a Democratic Congress will make the punishment a lot harder.

We do not advocate amnesty...only a path to citizenship that begins in other countries just like all immigrants have entered this country in the past.

Nothing vauge about that.

Thanks Sandy, I had not heard our policy on immagrants.

Beware of those who think citizenship is so cheap that it can be taken away as punishment. My grandmother was born in the US and lost her citizenship in the early 1900's because our nativist laws at that time took away a woman's citizenship if she married a noncitizen. The law was revised in 1922 and she was able to regain her citizenship. The people's representative's who passed the law in the 1800's that took away her citizenship thought it would help control immigration. Of course, they didn't make it effective if a US man married a noncitizen woman. Those who posture about this issue in the current election cycle have to be held to account for the inhumanity of the idea, and the failure of previous similar legislation to have any effect on immigration, whether legal or illegal.

SandyH is correct that Reagan and his bunch made a mess of immigration reform in the 80's. They never fixed the underlying problem, and no proposals currently being advanced by Democrats or Republicans will fix it either, though some proposals will sweep it under the rug for another decade or so.
Remember that it was very easy to qualify to immigrate here in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. You had to have enough money to pay for passage on a creaky merchant vessel, and be healthy enough to survive the food, weather and conditions during the voyage. Passports and visas weren't required. People came because there was plenty of room, and they came to work. Many came as indenture servants, and many came as slaves. For centuries, immigration here has always been about work, though our current immigration system recognizes that immigration also serves to unite families. The basic, fundamental fault in our current system is that it doesn't recognize that immigration is tightly linked to the growth of our economy. Congress rewrote the immigration rules in 1965 and imposed numerical limits on the quantity of visas that can be issued. Unfortunately, the number they picked was too low, and the system didn't allow any flexibility to adjust for economic growth. They set up a fixed process for getting a visa, and even imposed limits on the number of people who can immigrate from each country. As it turns out, some small countries never use up the number of visas they could, and some large countries have visa waiting lists that are several years long. I liken the resulting inefficiency to this: imagine you and your brother want to go to the Super Bowl. You both have the money for tickets and airfare, hotel room, meals and everything else you need. But your brother lives in Peoria and the waiting list for Peoria residents is 10 years, while there is no waiting list for Lubbock residents, where you live. Should you wait to go to the game until he can buy tickets? Or will you send him pictures with your cellphone while you sit in the stands? Even worse, imagine that the owners of the stadium only print tickets for half the seats because they didn't plan it right, and the rest will be empty. Do you think some folks will find a way to get in to the stadium to sit in those empty seats? Some of those who sneak in may be helped by concessionaires who want a full house to make money selling hot dogs and drinks.
In a nutshell, that's our immigration problem. Congress needs to create a visa system that fills all of the jobs that are created on a continuous basis by our economy. It should make sure that every American gets first shot at any job. But some jobs won't be filled because there aren't enough workers. In the current visa system, some of those excess jobs are filled by new immigrants. But our visa system doesn't issue enough visas, so the rest of the vacant jobs are filled by people who sneak in, or come to visit or study, and take a job. The way to fix the problem is to raise the number of immigration visas we issue to keep up with economic growth. Between the 1965 visa changes and the 1987 immigration amnesty about 4 million additional visas should have been issued to keep pace with growth and avoid the amnesty that was enacted as a bandage. That would have been about 200,000 more visas each year. Since 1987 we are estimated to have added another 8-12 million illegal immigrants, working throughout our economy. In other words, the economy needed an average 400,000 to 600,000 more immigrant visas issued each year to keep pace with growth. A visa system that acted as a job clearinghouse would match new jobs with visa applicants who had the necessary skills, and fill jobs quickly. If the visa system was indexed for growth, we wouldn't be wasting money on billion dollar border fences because all the immigrants in our communities would be here legally after being screened for criminal background and terrorism associations. And American employers wouldn't have to call the neighborhood smuggler to bring in another work crew as business expanded.