Our nation.

Our President said today that we can't do much about the immigration problem until we have done something about the illegal employment problem. I happen to agree. We need to do something about the large pile of sugar that's sitting out.

Well, it appears that our President says that he wants to hold our estimated 11M illegal immigrants accountable. Okay. I agree there, too.

Barack Obama says that deporting them all would be untenable. As much as this irritates me, it's probably partially true, though exporting illegal border-crossers would certainly decrease the work taken to document them. Okay.

He says that we should make them "get right with the law" before they can get in line to apply for citizenship. Okay.

He says that they should be fined* (for a felony), and admit that they did wrong, and lean English, before they can apply for citizenship. Okay. (Side question: When are we ever going to push for English as a national language? Until this is done, frankly, the English language requirement to be a citizen seems unwarranted.)

He claims that this puts them in at the BACK of the line. I wonder.

He also claims that "there are, right now, more boots on the ground on the SouthWest border, than ever before." He also claims that crime on the SW border is down to less than it has been in 20 years. This is clearly a set-up to deny further funding to border security.

So it would appear that the President's answer to Border Security is to largely to make the illegal citizens legal.

As a guy who's constantly dealing with undocumented aliens, I'm actually not quite as disgusted with this as you might suspect.

Understand: I'm NOT anti-Mexican. I'm NOT anti-Hispanic. I'm NOT anti-immigrant. I wish to hell that the race/ethnicity/xenophobe argument was gone, frankly; it's a red herring. I'm first and foremost unhappy that the documented citizen has to pay taxes and answer for violations of the law, which the undocumented alien does not. So I'll admit that our President managed to actually speak to my interests in this speech.

But I suspect that he'll hold border security hostage until the Republican votes for the new immigration bill are in. Mark me on this one.

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By way of Tamara, I read of a little girl who insists that her mama keep her promises to be patriotic. I had to wipe my eyes to see to type a response.
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*How much? Set the price point too high, and no one is buying. Set it too low, and everyone will buy.