Yes, history is always written by the conquerors. I'm well aware of that. Do I sound hypocritical? A bit.

Where do we stop? Do you want 400 million people here? How about 1.1 billion so we can be like China & India?

America was a hell of a lot more beautiful with 200 million people. I can't imagine how it looked when the Native Americans had it.

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It's not up to me to dictate how many people live here, but just because my ancestors got here 100 years ago, who the hell am I to build a fence and keep ANYONE out.

As the leader in this new global world, it seems pretty selfish for us to shrink the Monroe Doctrine to only include the current United States citizens, and say fuck everybody else - which is basically more right wing rhetoric driving me away from the beliefs I was brought up with.

Zombie, I'm not calling you a hypocrite -because I don't know the right answer on this one. But I think immigrants bring something to the country that we take for granted - an appreciation for freedom.

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err in that case should we just let people live in our home and take our stuff since this would be 'selfish' also?

And why restrict it to just people from the south with free access why dont we just open the borders for everyone ... heck theres millions in africa and the middleeast now that would prob like to live here probably 10s of millions ... why not let em all live here and we can pay for everything also ...

We already have people from all walks of life, Americans have been kicked out of every decent country in the world. (Bill Murray - Stripes). :)
So your point Dulak is that it isn't fair that you have hoops to jump through there in England, wheras our Mexican immigrants don't? It probably isn't - what are going to do?

I guess if they can afford the plane trip or boat ride, and can pass the health tests, come on over.

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It's the bug-to-a-light problem.

We have a damn attractive light here. It attracts all too many people.

Frankly, I hate crowds. I don't even want 200 million. Maybe 20 million. None of whom can come on my half-acre of space without my personal express permission.

But I'm no more entitled to control what happens on the land surrounding my personal "heaven's half acre" than I am entitled to a million dollars or free health care.

I'm lucky. Absolutely. But what gives me more of a right to enjoy that luck than those millions in Africa or wherever?

If those millions want to come here and try their luck, it's fine with me. As long as they don't ask me to bail them out if they fail.

That's the problem. If we didn't sell ourselves as having a government that "protects" its residents from cradle to grave, the likelihood of too many millions coming would be a lot smaller. The problem isn't letting people in. The problem is saying that "if you're in, you get everything you want."

To me, its the difference between allowing an opportunity and allowing a particular consequence. America is rich because it has offered opportunities. Not because it guaranteed us (or them, or anyone) particular success from pursuing opportunities.

I'll say it again. The problem is not immigration. The problem is the notion - which we reinforce whenever we claim our "right" to a particular standard of living or whatever -- that physical presence in our geographic location brings with it entitlement to far too long a list of "public services".

Americans are entitled to an opportunity to strive to better themselves and reap benefits when they provide value to others. And we're entitled to bitch and moan when we don't get what we desire.

But we're not entitled to those things because we're "Americans". We're not entitled to them because we were lucky enough to be born on land that is part of America. We're not even entitled to these things because of the U.S. Constitution.

We're entitled to those things because we're human beings, and that is what all human beings are entitled to.

Including those gazillions who don't live here, but who think this particular place might offer a place for that striving and that bitching and moaning. Because they're the same human beings with no less entitlement to our opportunities than we have.

I don't know how many people the USA can hold before we exceed the capacity of our land. The limit on that is going to be decided by the human ingenuity of those we give opportunities to. And since I don't know which particular human beings the critical parts of ingenuity are going to come from -- and I defy anyone to tell me it has anything to do with which piece of land they happened to be born on -- I'm greedy enough to want as many people as possible to have that opportunity.

Yes, over-population is a risk. (Though overpopulation of the world is the big risk, not overpopulation of the USA.) But to my mind, the risk in terms of missed opportunities that we impose by "tight borders" is far bigger.

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I'm not worried about overpopulation where I live, cause according to VR and Formo, I live at the end of the Earth anyway. :)

So Wade, basically you're saying Americans are the spoiled, pathetic, and self righteous winners of the sperm lottery? I can go with that - and just think, we have another lottery amongst ourselves that breaks us into more pathetic groups of pampered human beings. God bless us.

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Spoiled, yes. Self-righteous, absolutely.

Pathetic, well, might not go that far. It's not surprising to me that we think we should be protected from "them" more than we are actually entitled to. (Hobbes had that part of self-interest right.)

We're just wrong in thinking so.

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We can't help ourselves - we've been programmed that way since WWII. It's a difficult thing to first realize and accept, but most difficult to change. It's also very difficult if not impossible to call yourself a Christian and live by all the teachings of Christ - and still maintain a "normal" life in America. Lots of concessions to make and things to overlook and say - I'll try better next time.

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For someone who pounds his chest demanding the 'fairness' of redistributing wealth, you certainly swung and missed on this topic. His point is just letting someone in your house, using your shit, eating your food, and worst of all not paying a dime towards rent/mortgage isn't right no matter what way you slice it.

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Well said, Formo.

I say, send all the illegals to ND. When their test scores drop, when he's stuck in bumper to bumper traffic with his towns full of gang graffiti and crime soars and everything from art to shop to music in his schools will be cut for ESL, garbage is all over his parks and non-English speaking peasants are making obscene gestures at his blonde daughters, maybe DakotaT won't have his head in the sand about this issue.

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