Honestly, what most people have forgotten is not about legal/illegal etc.. The biggest problem that most should focus in Jersey City but more so for NJ is "Classism." We are at a point where our higher education system is becoming more and more unafforable. We should seriously look into that more than argue over something that neither legal or illegal "citizens" will soon be unable to afford.

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+1/-1 we are looking at a graph covering a very long time span. In a single year, GDP can be increased by government borrowing however that debt eventually has to be repaid and so current private consumption should be reduced to adjust for the fact that future taxes will increase and need to be saved for in the present (I forget the title of this theory; also, I agree that in reality people are not that rational and it falls apart a bit)

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The end argument from BorisP is that inflation numbers are a lie. Ah, unverifiable assumptions! The mortal enemy of all things practical.

BorisP, let me make sure I understand... your argument is that you believe that inflation has been significantly higher than calculated every year its been collected. So since the inflation assumption is invalid, and we only should care about stuff in real terms, there is no way to calculate what the real change has been?

I agree that inflation is higher than calculated (the method has been gamed since at least the mid-80s, gotta love reagan?) and that the effect compounds, but I suspect (gut feeling) it isnt that big of an impact as there are likely plenty of years where inflation was less than reported as well...

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+1. Government spending paid for with taxes nets against private consumption and/or investment. zero sum.

The AP Stylebook Concedes in the use of "illegal immigrant"


By: Patricio Gomez (Mexican American Political Association)

The AP Stylebook finally declared that it will cease using the term "illegal immigrant." It's about time. According to their corporate spokespersons, "The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term "illegal immigrant" or the use of "illegal" to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that "illegal" should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally."

The specific instruction in the stylebook now reads, "illegal immigration: Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission."

Associated Press has opted to better label behavior and not people, similar to labeling a person "diagnosed with schizophrenia" instead of schizophrenic," for example. As this relates to an undocumented entry into a country, it would be preferable to describe it as "someone in a country without permission." Ironically, AP had previously excluded the use of the term "undocumented" as being an imprecise description. Someone could have entered a country without permission, yet still have different types of documents in their possession, they observed.

This is significant considering that newspapers throughout the country, and even internationally, use the AP Stylebook as a reference for correct language usage in their reporting. In fact, it is also used as a refuge by editors and publishers when confronted about the continued use of the derisive term "Illegal," both print and electronic. They have argued that their point of reference in language usage is the AP Stylebook as the rock solid code of language not to be tampered with.

For years the Los Angeles Times and other major metropolitan newspapers have been challenged for their language usage. Lou Dobbs was drubbed out of CNN for his persistent anti-immigrant tirades and constant baiting use of "illegal." Fox News' right-wing television pundits, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, KFI-Clear Channel Communications' shock jocks, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of the John and Ken Show, and syndicated radio windbag, Rush Limbaugh, darling of the Tea Party and oxycontin addict, have all been roundly slammed for their denigrating use of the terms "illegal aliens" and "Illegal immigrants"

However, even supposed left-of-center newspapers published by the Village Voice, which has local editions in California, Arizona, and New York, all major immigrant population centers, continue to use racist terminology in reference to immigrants. The most infamous example is the "Ask a Mexican" column penned by Gustave "Gus" Arellano, editor of OCWEEKLY, which includes a racist stereotypic graphic of a toothy mustachioed Mexican wearing a big sombrero. The son of Mexican immigrants who legalized their status through the 1986 IRCA immigration reform, Arellano doesn't even speak Spanish fluently and is flippant about his continued use of "illegal" as irreverent shtick and hyperbole - all at the expense of immigrants. A better explanation for his language and behavior is self-loathing.

What these corporate media outlets have in common, whether from the political left or right, is that they are corporately owned by whites with a predominantly white audience. Probably never before in the history of the country has the corporate media been so monopolized in cross multiple mediums, and almost entirety in the hands of whites.

What's behind this use of language to label people in a denigrating manner as has historically occurred in the U.S.? The corporate media, part of the 1% as popularly known now-a-days, can control the narrative about a people when they can define them by such labels. Labels, then, are used to define the identity, role, and quality of groups of people. The objective is to stigmatize them as a social group in society's eyes and thusly control them in the economy. Ultimately, it's about how they are used in the economy in the interest of those who control the economy. If society's majority can bring itself to view another social group as inferior, less than human, less than the norm, thus, dehumanized, than that social group can be exploited, abused, and mistreated without a near whimper by the larger society.

It's no accident that people of color have predominantly been the object of derisive name-calling, racist labels and stereotypes - blacks, Native Americans, immigrants of working stock, Mexicans and Latinos generally, Asians, but even women and gays. It's all about keeping working people divided by promoting fear of differentness, prejudice, and homophobia. The beneficiaries are the owners of the principal means of expressing ideas.

In the 1970s the legendary labor and immigrant rights leader, Bert Corona, coined the saying, "No Human Being is Illegal." In 1986, Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel, a holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, affirmed, "You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is 'illegal'. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, and they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?"

So the fight between ideas and over labels continues unabated. The AP Stylebook thinking heads finally conceded to the light. Chalk one up for the immigrants.

Patricio.gomez93@yahoo.com - authorized to republish. Join me on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr (SinFronteras2013). 4/04/13

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Oh, yes. Remember how everyone was stunned when the Soviet Unions went belly up? Crashing, burning, huge inflation and total deficits of everything? Nobody expected it! Well, almost nobody - except for Ronald Reagan, - but this underscores the point since he was universally vilified as an idiot. In great part for believing that the USSR is a fake economic power, Potemkin village with nothing to back it.

Why did everyone from the NY Times to economy professors in Yale and Harvard believe that the USSR was a great powerful economy? Simple. The Soviet government published some very great looking numbers, created some farms-factories-hospitals to show to western journalists, and western journalists like Walter Duranty did the rest.

Like now, - Cuban government tells stories how great their medicine is, or Chinese tell us how great their monorails and autobahns are, and our own Government gives us carefully prepared data that the inflation is low, and the GDP grows, and millions, millions, millions of new jobs were created. Or "saved". Relying on the same journalists to help them cement those lies as "facts".

And when this thing comes crashing down madoff-style, like it did in the USSR, everyone would be surprised, - like who could have thunk it?!

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here's the hole in your argument, you can increase government spending not just through taxation - you can do it through adding debt as well. this is how government spending exploded even as tax rates were cut during the Bush years.

and of course, adding spending through adding debt does not mean we're more productive. buying stuff on a credit card doesn't mean you're wealthier. so this is why GDP is misleading. given that, i'm not shocked that the government promotes it as a valid production metric.

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Yeah, I mean "population" and "population growth" - who can possibly tell them apart?

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Ok. Imagine you are a talented investor and earn 5% in your brokerage account. Now, if the inflation is 2%, it means that your REAL growth is 3%. If the inflation is 4%, it means your REAL growth is 1%. And, if the inflation is 6%, it means you have no growth, but your real worth is going down at 1% annually.

Now, the hard part! What if I tell you that your REAL growth is 4% and that I assumed that inflation is 2% when I calculated it? Well, it is obvious that I must have started with the notional growth of 6%, subtracted 2% and cam up with 4%, right?

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Hardest Part Ever. The pinnacle of addition and subtraction. The one that would require the whole mass of knowledge your learned in the second grade. Here it is: imagine, that you find out, that I cheated when I told you that your real growth is 4%, assuming the inflation is 2%. Specifically, you find out that the TRUE inflation is 5%! So, what do we conclude? Well, that means that 6% notional growth translates not into 4% real, but into just 1% real!!!

So, we see that if the formula for the inflation was changed to make believe that the inflation is 2% instead of 6%, - it means that the real discounted reported rate of GDP growth must be 4% LOWER than what is reported.

Ah, arithmetic! The mortal enemy of all things socialists.

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Not true. Since gov spending is tax dollars, if you increase gov spending without economic growth you must increase taxes and reduce capital available to investment and consumption, then these components of GDP shrink, resulting in a zero sum game.

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well, GDP includes government spending. so if government spending increases, of course GDP will increase, if all else is equal.

Re: Comment by Yvonne (#4) on military service -

Would you give an exemption to an "illegal immigrant" who was not a member of the U.S. Armed Forces but instead is active in the peace movement?

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The wiki you quote says current US pop is 12.5% immigrant. So much for that argument.
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Except that in neither linear nor log is growth markedly changed post 1980 when the methodology changed. So, even using your log scale, growth was not damaged by US social programs, it stayed exactly as it was at the same time as we were able to provide retirement programs for seniors and healthcare for them and the poor: what you call theft.

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An, in my opinion, you are engaged in a strawman argument. A logical fallacy where you invent an imaginary position for your opponents and then proceed to attack it.

Imaginary position that you attack is "illegal immigrants do not have human rights, they are non-persons, they do not deserve due process" and so on.

And, it being imaginary, it really matters not how well you attack it.

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Ah! Arithmetic! The mortal enemy of the left!
Do not worry, I can explain. Some things increase at a constant speed. For example, if someone will pay you 1 dollar a day, and you will save it, the graph of your net worth will look like a straight line going up. And other things increase at constant rate[i]. For example, if a bank will pay you 0.001% every day, the sum in your account will increase "exponentially". The graph will look similar to your picture. When you look at it, it seems that it was growing slowly originally, and then took off upward. However, an educated observer would not be fooled by this. In order to reveal the [i]rate of growth, an educated observer uses so called "logarithmic" scale. Without going into boring details, think of it as some special scale where by sheer mathematical magic a graph of constant-rate-growth looks like a straight line going upward.

If you go back to the site you linked, under the graph you will see a pull-down dialog, that allows you to choose between "linear" and "log" scale. Choose the "log". Now the true nature of the growth is revealed!!!

Well, almost.

The GDP is only a part of the story. Note two things.

First, the rate of immigration. Consider the first half of the XIX century, when the immigration rate when up to an incredible 10% of the population! In the second half ot the XX century it was much, much, less, fraction of a percent. In the middle of the XIX century USA needed to increase the GDP by 10% annually just to maintain the same per capita GDP! And yet, the per capita GDP was growing at more or less the same rate as nowadays.

Second thing to look at is the way the GDP is dicounted by the inflation. Specifically, you need to look at how the inflation is measured. Have you thought to yourself recently, - why do I pay so much more when I go shopping, yet, the Official Government Numbers tell me that no great increase happened? Well, the reason is the government alteres the way CPI is calculated. If you use the same formulas that were used before, the inflation will be not 2% right now, but about 6%. Now, if you apply THAT inflation to discount the current rate of growth in GDP, it will just annihilate the whole growth in the latter years.

So, anyways, as I said. While the USA was a libertarian country, it managed to turn itself from a small agrarian colony, - into The Dominant Economy of the World. No other country was able to do that. Not even close. And, while doing that, the USA managed to digest an enormous influx of refugees from all over the world.

And now, under the socialistic tutelage we went from that, - to the beggars who owe to everyone around them and keep postponing the inevitable by refinancing the debt, and remortgaging the future. Eventually, the credit line will dry up. And then you will be like "where is my promised pension, medicare, and all those great safety nets????" And they will tell you to shut up and get in the soup line and be happy that the Party in its infinite charity decided to feed you!

I saw it happen in the USSR in the nineties. The difference is, - them soviet citizens had an excuse, - they did not vote for the system, they merely did not resist it.

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sing it in D minor for all I care, the data is obvious, growth after "US socialism" is far greater than before.

This is a no-brainer. Until somebody has the cojones to take on the big issue, this makes sense for NJ.

And regarding this:
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The ACLU:
"The fundamental constitutional protections of due process and equal protection embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights apply to every "person" and are not limited to citizens. The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well as the authors and ratifiers of post-Civil War amendments, all understood the essential importance of protecting non-citizens against governmental abuse and discrimination."
http://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights ... immigrants-rights-project

so if you want to get all semantic, perhaps "non-citizen" is better than "undocumented."

maybe people in this country should be judged by how productive they are, without regard for documentation? living here in JC, everyone knows there are hundreds, if not thousands of people who behave "illegally", but just because of their birthright, are allowed 3 square meals in jail and continuing right to live in this country.

I say take away their citizenship and give it to someone more deserving. and charge those people in-state tuition.

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Thanks Asif!

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No. I am not trying to make you "believe that it is wrong." I don't care what you believe. I posted theory, arguments and other evidence to demonstrate to other readers. You posted your opinion. You have your opinion and you can have your opinion. You may have the "antibodies" but you don't have the facts. You can say all you want but when it comes down to it, you don't have the arguments to support your position.
I did not "invent" the "politically correct euphemism." Thanks for the credit though. As I demonstrated intellectuals, reporters and lawyers wrote those points. I'm not that smart. I'm just well-read.

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Plot it in the logarithmic scale.
I can explain what it means if you need me to.

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And you were talking about denying legal rights and due process, - where there is none.

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We don't have documents out of some weird desire to have our picture affixed to a piece of paper. We have documents for a purpose. Namely, to verify something. In this particular case - to verify that we are citizens.

If a citizen or an immigrant loses his documents, - that can be called "undocumented". If someone is here in violation of the laws, then lack of documents is not an issue. The problem is he is violating the law. And that means, - he is here illegally.

You may argue that it is wrong to have laws that restrict immigration, - as I said, fine by me.

However, if you are going to argue your point by trying those word games, inventing politically correct euphemism because you want me to believe that it is wrong to use the word "illegal" about something that violates the law, - well, good luck with that. I was born in the USSR, I had this disease when I was very young, trust me - I got the antibodies.

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No, it doesn't. It means "something that violates the law".

It would appear that the word ILLEGAL has many shades of grey !
Maybe the 'Americas' should set-up something like they do in the EU, whereby you can start a business and work in any country that signs up !

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That's quite a fairy tail. Is it relevant that all economies in 1800 looked like libertarianism when there was no liberal system in existence? What is a fact is that the progressive movement you despise created the world dominating economy you speak of. Here's the US GDP per capita in 2005 dollars. It takes off after the New Deal and never looks back.



http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/s ... estic_Product_GDP_History

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Am I missing something? I don't see your straw man argument line.
All I saw was
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I was responding to your #1 point.

And regarding your #2 point. Exactly. Currently Countries have documents. As I stated in my posts before, these migrants do not have documents and that does not make them "illegal." Currently, there are "borders." Until the borders are eliminated, migrants are undocumented and not "illegal." I personally believe borders ought to be eliminated.

Read
A world without borders makes economic sense
Allowing workers to change location significantly enriches the world economy. So why do we erect barriers to human mobility?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-deve ... n-increase-global-economy

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Ah, yet another member of the Party of Tolerance and Civility.

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Pardon, but do you not know the history of THIS country at all? 3 centuries ago it was like Somalia nowadays. With bloodiest wars between many local tribes, toil, hardship, and so on. Then, some libertarians arrived, and established a country. Not perfectly libertarian, of course. In the South they were of the opinion that it is permissible to force one person to work on behalf of another. As a result, the Southern economy was much weaker than the Northern one. When the war came, this decidedly non-libertarian economy of the South buckled and crashed, - and that allowed the North to win. Despite the fact that the South had better soldiers and better generals. Anyways, after two centuries of libertarian economy former small agrarian colony became the domineering economy of the World.

That's when the locust descended. And I do not mean immigrants. They came here to work. When I say "locust", I mean - socialists.

But do not worry, eventually, the libertarians will leave. And you will suck this country dry. You are diggin a hole, - and I was born in a hole like the one that you dig. I know what's there. You... well, you will find out.

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arcy, I am confused. I just told you that this is a strawman argument, did I not? Strawman is only useful if you can pull it off so that other people do not notice. When they do, - it just doesn't work.

The real question is how many of them end up attaining college? They should look at data from other states that have this in place.

I think that a system of allowing people to come and work the jobs that for whatever reason "Americans" don't care to want nor do....really needs to be implemented. Something akin to the Bracero program.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program

They would be allowed to come and go but still would have to apply like everyone else to become permanent resident.


Arcy you ROCK!

I'm proud to have supported this and worked for its passage.

You may not care much for the parents of these children, but you should not be under any illusion about the children's status. They are Americans. Born in another land, here without legal residency, they have grown up here, this is the land they know and the land they love.

If you don't support in-state tuition on humanitarian or moral grounds, you might consider it on pragmatic ones.

The state offers an in-state rate to its citizens on pragmatic grounds. By making it easier for NJ citizens to attend college in-state, we make it easier to retain educated citizens as long-term NJ residents. Having invested in childrens' education from K-12, it is in the state's long-term interest to educate them further. People who move out of state to attend college are less likely to return to the state than in-state students are to stay.

The same argument applies to children of illegal immigrants. Until we have a national solution, these kids are a permanent fixture in U.S. society. Like it or not, they are in NJ and will be here as adults. We have already invested in their education. Why not help them to stay in NJ as better educated, more productive, higher-earning (and higher tax-paying) residents?

The state universities are agreed that this legislation will be revenue-neutral and that it will not deny placement to other qualified in-state students.

It's the smart thing to do for our state, and the right thing to do for these kids who are our neighbors and our future.

ACLU: "When the government has the power to deny legal rights and due process to one vulnerable group, everyone?s rights are at risk. The ACLU Immigrants? Rights Project is dedicated to expanding and enforcing the civil liberties and civil rights of immigrants and to combating public and private discrimination against them."
http://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights

"When one refers to an immigrant as an "illegal alien," they are using the term as a noun. They are effectively saying that the individual, as opposed to any actions that the individual has taken, is illegal. The term ?illegal alien? implies that a person?s existence is criminal. I?m not aware of any other circumstance in our common vernacular where a crime is considered to render the individual ? as opposed to the individual?s actions ? as being illegal. We don?t even refer to our most dangerous and vile criminals as being ?illegal.? "
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04 ... o-Human-Being-is-Illegal#

"I have been allotted 700 words to make a simple and direct point about the use of the phrase ''illegal immigrant.'' Here it is then: ''Illegal immigrant'' is a term that no self-respecting journalist ought to ever use. Not because it is politically incorrect, or inhumane -- though an argument can be made for both -- but because it is imprecise.

It adds nothing to the political debate and, more important, it says nothing about the person(s) being written about. Good journalists seek details and work with facts. Mediocre journalists are content with labels and generalities."
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0524-28.htm

"You shall know that no one is illegal. It is a contradiction in
itself. People can be beautiful or even more beautiful. They may be just or
unjust. But illegal? How can someone be illegal?" -- Elie Wiesel
http://thecounterpoint.blogspot.com/2 ... no-person-is-illegal.html

"Recently, in an important story about child migrants, Ms. Preston described six-year-old Juan David Gonzalez, as an "illegal border-crosser." Ms. Preston argues that the term applies in some instances, but a court has never found anyone to be "illegal" in the history of immigration court. Neither "illegal alien" nor "Illegal immigrant" are terms defined by law. Only when people are caught entering the country without inspection and are then prosecuted, does the possibility even exist for them to be charged with a misdemeanor. People who have entered and are present in the country without papers are held to civil code. Still, whenever someone's actions are in violation of the law, that does not make a person's entire existence "illegal." We know she was convicted of a crime and still we don't call Martha Stewart an "illegal businesswoman." Firearms can be "illegal." Contraband can be "illegal." A person cannot be described as such."
http://colorlines.com/droptheiword/bl ... o-the-new-york-times.html


"Advocates for immigrants are calling on the New York Times, arguably the most respected newspaper in the U.S., to stop using the term "illegal immigrant." They argue that the term is not only an inaccurate description of unauthorized migrants but also promotes racial stereotypes. On Oct. 1, M?nica Novoa, coordinator of the Drop the I-Word campaign, wrote an open letter to the New York Times calling into question the paper's use of "illegal immigrant." In particular, Novoa takes issue with the rationale of Times' staffers who argue that the term is "neutral."

"The term is far from neutral, given that it was popularized by anti-immigrant restrictionists and recommended for use by Republican strategist Frank Luntz in an effort to encourage an understanding of immigrants as 'criminals' and create a politically useful division among voters," Novoa states in her letter."
http://racerelations.about.com/b/2012 ... erm-illegal-immigrant.htm

Howard Zinn in 2006, "Ironically, having just gone through its own revolution, the United States was fearful of having revolutionaries in its midst. France had recently overthrown its monarchy. Irish rebels were protesting against British rule, and the new U.S. government was conscious of ?dangerous foreigners??Irish and French?in the country. In 1798, Congress passed legislation lengthening the residence requirement for becoming a citizen from five to fourteen years. It also authorized the President to deport any alien he regarded as dangerous to the public safety.
There was virulent anti-Irish sentiment in the 1840s and ?50s,especially after the failure of the potato crop in Ireland, which killed a million people and drove millions abroad, most of them to the United States. ?No Irish Need Apply? symbolized this prejudice. It was part of that long train of irrational fear in which one generation of immigrants, now partly assimilated, reacts with hatred to the next. Take Irish-born Dennis Kearney, who became a spokesman for anti-Chinese prejudice. His political ambitions led him and the California Workingmen?s Party to adopt the slogan ?The Chinese Must Go.?
The Chinese had been welcome in the 1860s as cheap labor for the building of the transcontinental railroad, but now they were seen, especially after the economic crisis of 1873, as taking away jobs from the native born. This sentiment was turned into law with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which, for the first time in the nation?s history, created the category of ?illegal? immigrants. Before this, there was no border control. Now Chinese, desperate to change their lives, tried to evade the act by crossing over from Mexico. Some learned to say ?Yo soy Mexicano.? But violence against them continued, as whites, seeing their jobs go to ill-paid Chinese, reacted with fury. In Rock Springs, Wyoming, in the summer of 1885, whites attacked 500 Chinese miners, massacring twenty-eight of them in cold blood.
In the East, Europeans were needed to work in the garment factories, the mines, the textile mills, or as laborers, stonecutters, ditch diggers. The immigrants poured in from Southern and Eastern Europe, from Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, and the Balkans. There were five million immigrants in the 1880s, four million in the 1890s. From 1900 to 1910, eight million more arrived.
These newcomers faced vicious hostility. A typical comment in the Baltimore Sun: ?The Italian immigrant would be no more objectionable than some others were it not for his singularly bloodthirsty disposition, and frightful temper and vindictiveness.? New York City?s Police Commissioner Theodore Bingham insisted that ?half of the criminals? in New York City in 1908 were Jews.
Woodrow Wilson?s decision to bring the United States into the First World War brought widespread opposition. To suppress this,the government adopted legislation?the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act?which led to the imprisonment of almost a thousand people. Their crime was to protest, by speech or writing, U.S. entrance into the war. Another law provided for the deportation of aliens who opposed organized government or advocated the destruction of property.
After the war, the lingering super-patriotic atmosphere led to more hysteria against the foreign born, intensified by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In 1919, after the explosion of a bomb in front of the house of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, a series of raids were carried out against immigrants. Palmer?s agents picked up 249 noncitizens of Russian birth, many of whom had lived in this country a long time, put them on a transport, and deported them to Soviet Russia. Among them were the anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. J. Edgar Hoover, at that time a young agent of the Department of Justice, personally supervised the deportations.
Shortly after, in January 1920, 4,000 persons in thirty-three cities were rounded up and held in seclusion for long periods of time.They were brought into secret hearings, and more than 500 of them were deported. In Boston, Department of Justice agents,aided by local police, arrested 600 people by raiding meeting halls or by invading their homes in the early morning. They were handcuffed, chained together, and marched through the city streets. It was in this atmosphere of jingoism and anti-foreign hysteria that the Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were put on trial after a robbery and murder at a Massachusetts shoe factory, found guilty by an Anglo-Saxon judge and jury, and sentenced to death.
With the increased nationalist and anti-foreign sentiment, Congress in 1924 passed a National Origins Quota Act. This set quotas that encouraged immigration from England, Germany,and Scandinavia but strictly limited immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.
Following World War II, the Cold War atmosphere of anti-communist hysteria brought about the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which set quotas of 100 immigrants for each country in Asia. Immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany could take up 70 percent of the annual immigration quota.The act also revived, in a virulent way, the anti-alien legislation of 1798, creating ideological grounds for the exclusion of immigrants and the treatment of all foreign-born residents, who could be deported for any ?activities prejudicial to the public interest? or ?subversive to national security.? Noncitizens suspected of radical ideas were rounded up and deported.
The great social movements of the Sixties led to a number of legislative reforms: voting rights for African Americans, healthcare for senior citizens and for the poor, and a law abolishing the National Origins Quota system and allowing 20,000, immigrants from every country.
But the respite did not last.
In 1995, the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed, with the deaths of 168 people. Although the two men convicted of the crime were native-born Americans, the following year President Bill Clinton signed into law the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which contained especially harsh provisions for foreign-born people. For immigrants as well as for citizens,the act reintroduced the McCarthy-era principle of guilt by association. That is, people could be put in jail?or, if foreign born, deported?not for what they actually did, but for giving support to any group designated as ?terrorist? by the Secretary of State. The government could deny visas to people wanting to enter the United States if they were members of any such group, even if the actions of the group supported by the individual were perfectly legal. Under the new law, a person marked for deportation had no rights of due process, and could be deported on the basis of secret evidence.
Clinton?s signing of this act reaffirmed that the targeting of immigrants and depriving them of constitutional rights were not policies simply of the Republican Party but also of the Democratic Party, which in the military atmosphere of World War I and the Cold War had joined a bipartisan attack on the rights of both native and foreign born.
In the wake of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, President George Bush declared a ?war on terrorism.? A climate of fear spread across the nation, in which many foreign-born persons became objects of suspicion. The government was now armed with new legal powers by the so-called Patriot Act of 2001, which gave the Attorney General the power to imprison any foreign-born person he declared a ?suspected terrorist.? He need not show proof; it all depends on his say-so. And such detained persons may be held indefinitely, with no burden of proof on the government and no hearing required. The act was passed with overwhelming Democratic and Republican support. In the Senate, only one person, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, voted against it.
In the excited atmosphere created by the ?war on terrorism,? it was predictable that there would follow violence against foreign-born people. For instance, just four days after the 9/11 events, a forty-nine-year-old Sikh American who was doing landscaping work outside his gas station in Mesa, Arizona, was shot and killed by a man shouting, ?I stand for America all the way.? In February 2003, a group of teenagers in Orange County, California, attacked Rashid Alam, an eighteen-year-old Lebanese-American, with bats and golf clubs. He suffered a broken jaw, stab wounds, and head injuries.
Shortly after 9/11, as documented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights Watch, Muslims from various countries were picked up, held for various periods of time in tiny, windowless cells, often beaten and abused. As The New York Times reported, ?Hundreds of noncitizens were swept up on visa violations in the weeks after 9/11, held for months in a much-criticized federal detention center in Brooklyn as ?persons of interest? to terror investigators, and then deported.
?Muslims became a special target of surveillance and arrest.Thousands were detained. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis told of one man, who, even before September 11, was arrested on secret evidence. When a federal judge found there was no reason to conclude the man was a threat to national security, the man was released. However, after September 11, the Department of Justice, ignoring the judge?s finding, imprisoned him again, holding him in solitary confinement twenty-three hours a day, not allowing his family to see him.
As I write this, Republicans and Democrats are trying to work out a compromise on the rights of immigrants. But in none of these proposals is there a recognition that immigrants deserve the same rights as everyone else. Forgetting, or rather, ignoring the indignation of liberty-loving people at the building of the Berlin Wall, and the exultation that greeted its fall, there will be a wall built at the southern borders of California and Arizona. I doubt that any national political figure will point out that this wall is intended to keep Mexicans out of the land that was violently taken from Mexico in the War of 1846-1848.
Only the demonstrators in cities across the country are reminding us of the words on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor: ?Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.? In the wave of anger against government action in the Sixties, cartoons were drawn showing the Statue of Liberty blindfolded. The blindfolds remain, if only symbolically, until we begin to act, yes, as if ?No Human Being Is Illegal.?
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/2663:no-human-being-is-illegal

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Boris, take your Libertarian crap and shove it. Better yet, go to a truly free paradise like Somalia where there's no government to speak of. I'd be willing to bet that without the US public education system of the 20th century your job would not exist. If you had your way this country would be even further down the road to a oligarchical kleptocracy than it already is. Arguing about who qualifies for publicly funded benefits doesn't mean those benefits shouldn't exist.

As for the actual subject, while the children have my sympathies for their position, I'm reluctant to reward anyone who disregards our laws when there are plenty of people all over the world who would love to live here but have chosen to obey our immigration laws. On the other hand the kids were not the ones who made that choice. It's a tough one.