I would venture a guess that the downturn in the economy has had a significant effect in the numbers of illegals coming north, but the dynamics of the situation have changed little.

Make no mistake, I work in the building trades and as a white person should feel aggrieved that much of my prospective work is going to my little brown brothers from Central America. But I can see enough of this situation that I hold no grievance with these workers. THEY ARE HERE BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN INVITED HERE. In spite of all the negative yammering about the ills of the illegals and the horrors it is causing our culture, there is still a market for their labor. There are still a sufficient number of employers that are not just willing to employ them but seem to prefer them, and here is the shocker; IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE WILLING TO WORK FOR MUCH CHEAPER. In some cases, employers will stiff (as in not pay) illegals because they know they can. In others they will actually pay them but less than what they had originally contracted for because, clearly, illegals are not going to seek legal remedy.

The old saw about illegals draining our precious state and federal resources is mostly bullshit. Few illegals are going to expose themselves to official anything for fear of deportation and the hassle of having to cross the border again, (and again and again and again). The ones who utilize phony SSI numbers end up dropping some portion of their earnings into a fund they have exactly zero chance of ever recovering. Just chalk that up to the price of working in America.

I've got an idea. Do you really want to create a dent in the numbers of border jumpers? Have the Federal government arrest the CEOs of Tyson Foods, Con-Agra, Monsanto, ADM, Hormel and a few select other large industrial operations that rely on illegals to do the crappy industrial work they provide. Tell them that when their corporate operations are CERTIFIABLY clear of ALL illegals workers, they will then be offered bail, (to be tried later on subverting the Federal labor laws they have routinely been violating). I can just about guarantee that by the next day, the border will be as quiet as a church on Monday morning. The biggest impulse driving the desire for illegals to come here is; the shitty economy in their own country, (an issue that needs to be addressed, but some other time), and the fact that there is a standing invitation, offered by these mega-farmers and related industries, for these workers to come north, risk the border, live like serfs outside the law and make more money than you could ever dream of in Mexico or Guatemala and actually be able to afford the clothes that your cousins back home are making for pennies an item.

I have no bitch with the workers. I stand with workers everywhere, legal or not. There is a clear economic incentive for these large corporations to have these people here and offering their labor on a black market. The workers are not the problem, these corporations and their codified avarice is.

And this; How often in the history of this nation, when we have a downturn in the economy, the first people to feel the heat are immigrants. Once upon a time, it was the Irish, (and other Catholics generally), the Italians, the Germans. On my coast it was the Chinese. It's the Jews, and more recently it's the Muslims. Always blame the immigrants. It's an old and very tired American script that never seems to go out of style.

For the record I am a 'Chicano' of the ‘70s. Been an Altar boy, Boy Scout & Eagle Scout, attended 'Devil Pup Marine' training (way before the Scouts went Homo phobic), a Viet Nam Vet, a college grad, a tax payer, political activist, home owner, etc. all the things I was expected to be by our great American society.

So this state's rights vs. ...? What is this about? Not really about the ones who come up with these ‘laws’ & pass them or those that enforce them, the police. But you & me, the ones who find this so offensive, that the best we can do is bitch about it, online even.

As for the ‘peaceful’ protests against SB 1070 etc, what kind of joke are we convincing ourselves with? As a brown man whose father lived through the ‘Great Depression’ & WWII and the ‘50’s, I understand & accept ‘white guilt trip’ as part of my American Dream experience. See if this was ‘black’ people being treated as such well whoa be tide we’d be talking a whole different lexicon of words & actions.

Being brown ain’t quite the thing most of America can perceive or relate to, even though as in California, we are 40% to 60% of the population, in every economic strata and about in every family. An aside: California has had and enforces an circa 1930’s ID law, just to walk on the sidewalk. No one talks out loud about it, no one is affronted by it. Here we are in 2012. This isn’t a new attack by any means or definition.

Oh, least we over look another certain fact, this California ‘ID law’ was not about Mexicans, Asians or blacks, at the time it was to keep the poor ‘white Okies’ out, talk about hating your own

Yet our Declaration of Independence always states, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…’ How come my government still allows the ‘citizens’ of each state to be treated not equal? How come you & me do? Equality and/or equity for one must be the same for all, if it is to have worth and/or purpose. When do we become strong? There are only two kinds of power in the world. The first is ‘real’ power of which there is very little, the other is ‘assumed’ power which is whatever you can get away with. For me enough is enough.

State rights are important, our national history exemplifies this repeatedly, however it does shines brightest when the Federal Government not only mandated but enforced one national definition of certain inalienable rights. I vaguely recall a civil war being fought for something of that nature. Not the slavery stuff that came towards the end of the conflict. What shall we do?

History does repeat itself, but we here & now can actually decide to make things right. Not only by words, mumbled in private, or posted online, but by real world, brick & mortar world actions, confrontations & pain. The courage of our convictions, the intrinsic worth of our freedom & liberty are at hand. Why should America remain lacking or wanting for not being what we all know we can & should be already.

Imagine the meaning of ‘America the Beautiful’ then, with our defines, not the 2%ers. Forget not that throughout our history there have been those who stood alone against the wind, without them I fear where we would be now. They kept us from the abyss, will we?

Once the Republican Party was for ‘all men’ now for some & the same for the Democratic Party in reverse. This isn’t about political adjectives but the content of our American nature our substance as a people, not citizen but mere human beings struggling for a better way to meet tomorrow. Let’s wake up roaring with fortitude, strength, courage & insight to our context.

Is it only about citizenship, or it is about how free are you, and the breath of your liberty.

God don't bless America! WE, the people ... DO!

Once again I point out that that Yankee act of aggression should have settled this whole mess but all we did was set ourselves up to have to decide it later. Since 2000 we have been increasingly divided as a country and those in power use this to continue to divide people presently. Just as the KKK used the light skinned blck people to convince black people in the south that one was better than say your darker cousin. In New Orleans they have whats called the paper bag test if you are the color of a brown paper bag then you are Creole if not your nothing get the picture lol. What we have to do is avoid this war that's coming as even idiots you know understand its on its way to us.

Personally, I would willingly subject myself to a check of my citizenship status, just as I gratefully submit to my bank's conscientious identity checks to ensure that my transactions are in fact legitimately made by me and not by some impostor. Citizenship checks ensure that I, as a taxpayer, am not put in a position of having to pay for social benefits for undocumented aliens who claim rights to benefits that rightfully belong only to citizens. There really should be no argument about this. Theft is theft, and if we are to have a just society, we need to do what is necessary to protect ourselves against it.

The federal government has been vilified by the Right Wingers for a long time and it only gets worse. Federal government has an important role to play in America. Besides federal roads and highways, hospitals, schools, etc. we need federal funding for these and many other parts of our states' facilities and structures. Perhaps the protection of human rights trumps everything else.Without protection for human rights we will be no better than China where everyone must bow to the government's agenda.