"You can't deport people who have kids here!"
{{1 million new illegal aliens come here because of that rule and aren't deported because of it}}

"You can't deport people who have kids here!"
{{1 million new illegal aliens come here because of that rule and aren't deported because of it}}

to cross our borders, absent required documentation, and at other than a designated point, is a violation of federal law, subject to both fines and imprisonment. that, in my mind, and in the mind of any reasonable person, makes it a crime. whether it is a crime at the same level as murder or assault & battery is another issue.

that said, i see jarober's point: which crimes do we ignore, for the purpose of insuring that children have a parent at home?

i do sympathize with the kids. they are, as always, the innocents. however, i'm not sure i agree with your proposed solution, it seems like that would be a slap in the face to everyone who actually followed the rules, and provide a huge incentive for others to ignore our laws as well.

A crime in a broad sense is an act that violates a political or moral law. In the narrow sense, a crime is a violation of the criminal law.

Regardless of such Clinton-esque prevaricating over the definitions of commonly understood words ("It depends on what the meaning of is is." "A BJ is not sex."), illegal immigrants take jobs from our citizens:

Illegals taking more and more jobs  
NEW BEDFORD -- Last summer, 40 or 50 carpenters from Local 1305, the Fall River chapter of the New England Council of Carpenters, didn't work at all. Ron Rheaume, the business manager for the union, said that means about 10 percent of the union's 500-strong work force couldn't find any jobs for the first time in recent memory. The biggest reason, he believes, is the influx of illegal immigrants who have begun to work in the New England construction industry over the past four to five years. It's blatant and it's everywhere," he said. "It's happening in prevailing wage jobs and it's happening in state projects. It's happening all over the place." John O'Connor, a senior organizer with the carpenter's union, said the employment situation in Massachusetts has been so changed by illegal labor that it is even becoming impossible for high school students to find such traditional part-time positions as bus boys, landscapers or painters.

Not until you have had watch a loved one wait for for a visa.

Not until you have had to watch a navy veteran friend wait for years for their spouse to get permission to return. Still waiting.

Not until you have seen your brother have to leave the country to be with their loved one.

I am one person. I personally know of two instances at least.

My mother belongs to the Mayflower Society. Want to ask some more recent immigrants how many people in these circumstances they know?

But it's a civil violation, if presence here is your only violation.

it's an act subject to imprisonment and fine, including civil penalties. it's not the same as failing to remove signs after an election. while it usually only results in deportation, it can be punished by incarceration, than deportation to follow. how many other "civil" infractions can you be sent to prison for committing? i ask because i don't know.

-- ensuring that sick people don't enter - we don't really need more drug resistant diseases than we have now

-- ensuring that we get the people we want - i.e., it's better, IMHO, to get skilled people than unskilled.  Unlike 1900, we don't have tons of low-skill factory and farm jobs waiting to be filled.

One clear problem with bringing in lots of low skilled labor illegally is that they do take work from low skill citizens.  The people cutting grass and trimming bushes used to be teenagers and other low skilled labor; now it's mainly illegals, probably being paid exploitation wages (and, quite possibly, living in indentured servitude to mules).

Are they "criminals"?  Who cares?  Not this criminal, thats for damn sure.  Us "criminals" gotta stick together, maybe the immigrants will back me up if the state tries to break my family apart.

and so should everyone else, including the illegal immigrants themselves. the bottom line: it's the responsibility of the parents to ensure their children are cared for, not the state, except in extreme circumstances.

what makes the native-born children of illegals more special than the sons & daughters of citizens incarcerated, for crimes they've been adjudicated guilty of committing?