A lot of people miss the point. It is not aoubt the benefits immmigrants receive. Its about the incompetent politicians who have run the USA at the federal, state, county and local level. For example in Los Angeles they built a huge behomoth wall along the freeways in order to keep out the noise. A few people complained aobut noise along the freeway, (mind you they were undoubtedly financed by the construction industry) instead of moving to a nice quite palce they got the rest of us taxpayers to fund the wall that cost tens of millions of dollars, milking the taxpayer dry.

Racism is also a big factor despite the panting of denials by anti-immigrnat lobbyists. Notice there is no US-Canadian wall, despite that border is fluid with massive narcotics trafficking.

President Obama-Have the guts to tear down this wall on the U.S.-Mexican border

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that the same disingenuous tactics are still being used almost 25 years later. Mr. Simon lumps in “illegal aliens” with “immigrants” which is a common tactic for the open boarder crowd.

Another tactic they’re fond of is using statistics for educated naturalized citizens as if they apply to illegal aliens equally when the majority of illegal aliens have a high school education or less. College educated workers don’t need to sneak across the boarder under cover of darkness.

I wish they did because the 1986 amnesty welcomed 8 million predominately poor and uneducated workers (25% more than the maximum of 6 million the 1986 studies proclaimed) that were an economic burden without granting citizenship to the millions of educated immigrants that obeyed the law and waited in line. Slap in the face? You bet.

Simpson-Mazzoli was supposed to be the last amnesty because the “economic fence” was going to keep foreign nationals from invading by imposing harsh sanctions on employers that hired illegal aliens. Unfortunately while the amnesty portion of the law was welcomed the enforcement aspect was almost completely ignored. The result? Even the most liberal sources indicate that at least 10 million more have crossed the boarder and the actual number may be more than 20 or even 30 million.

Mr. Simon mentions cultural diversity citing French and Chinese restaurants as an example yet again hiding the fact that 75 to 80% of illegal aliens come from Latin America. Most of these (57% of all illegal immigrants) come from Mexico. This is not a rainbow of skin colors and cultures as Mr. Simon pretends. These are economic refugees coming here because their nations of origin are poor, their governments corrupt, their freedoms limited, their education nearly non-existent, and their populations are growing at a completely unsustainable rate. Latin America’s birth rate is on a par with India and China.

Mr. Simon discusses that people are “against immigration” except when they know the person. Aside from the straw man of yet again lumping in illegal aliens with naturalized immigrants he fails to consider that most people that own property are against illegal entry (breaking and entering) while favoring entry for those they know (house guests). Mr. Simon’s failure to differentiate between the two concepts is further evidence that his intent is to deceive.

Ms. Akers, Mr. Boudreaux, and others that write for the Freeman still use these unethical tactics. Sad really.

And let’s not justify our xenophobia with unsound economic arguments.

It’s not about xenophobia at all- you’re totally missing the point. The real problem isn’t the illegal immigrants that come here to be productive. It’s the illegal immigrants that cross the border (either by will or by coercion) that engage in unlawful behavior as a means of receiving income. Illegal immigrants that do receive benefits under a welfare state, are using benefits that would otherwise be available to legal citizens or immigrants.

It’s not an easy problem that can be fixed with a magic wand, but I think we can make great strides in curbing the flow of illegal immigrants across our borders if address the issue on a couple of fronts:
–Increase security at the border
–Encourage Mexico to prosecute illegal border crossings
–Reduce the size of the welfare state for everyone