[i]Illegal immigrants as individuals just trying to make a better life are sympathetic.[/i]

It's good to see that even the great Glenn Reynolds is capable of penning grammatical atrocities like that one.

My take on the matter is that it's about respect. If you can come here, willingly break our laws, break any other laws you feel don't matter, and then turn around and participate (or worse yet, send your kids away from school to participate bearing "La Raza" banners and Mexican flags) in rallies demanding citizenship for you... no.

Sorry. You have no respect for the laws of the US, and you've proven that by being here in the first place, which pretty much removes any sympathy I might have.

There's also the larger matter of the drain on the American economy - no matter which way you slice it, there's no way to convince me that illegal immigrants put enough money (in the form of sales taxes and any taxes the landlord of their apartment/housing may pay, or even in social security/medicare taxes paid on falsified social security numbers) into the system to offset the cost of hospitals going bankrupt due to unpaid bills, insurance paid out on accidents caused either deliberately (scamming the system) or just the fact that they drive without insurance or even licenses in deathtrap cars, money spent educating their kids in the public education system (that could be spent on better classroom materials and teaching enhancements for our own kids), police who have to deal with the drug/gang problems that inevitably follow the smuggler rings as well as their not-quite-well-raised kids, and of course Mexico's #2 industry right under oil drilling, the $16 billion wired home yearly.

And as for the claim that Americans wouldn't do those jobs? Most of them are the entry-level jobs that 25-30 years ago were done by high schoolers or those who needed temp work. Low-income Americans, be they "white trash", low-income African Americans, or anything else compete for those jobs all the time, and they WOULD take them, too.

I don't consider this an emotional argument, but a rational one. The facts are that illegal immigrants do put a strain on the American economy, and that anyone who insists they take jobs "Americans won't do" is either uninformed or engaged in duplicitous demagoguery.

A couple key differences between the way we approach the issue is that (a) I do not consider LaRaza to be indicative of Mexican immigrants and (b) to the extent that these groups are a malignant force it is the product of current circumstances the same way that Irish and Italian political machines were crucial a long time ago but lost their importance as those immigrants rose out of poverty. Regarding the rallies, though, I specifically mentioned (okay, cited) that they make me considerably less sympathetic to their cause. They don't, however, shake my intellectual support for them because the basis of my point-of-view is not a particularly emotional one - if it were, I would demand that they get paid more than they do and work in a safer environment.

I've noted before, Mike, that you need to stop equating your positional with the "rational" one and the other as "irrational." It unnecessarily antagonizes whoever you are talking to that disagrees with you.

I believe that the economy has, on the whole, benefitted greatly by immigrants (both legal and illegal, to an extent) and that this benefit has not been concentrated. You believe otherwise. That is the nature of our disagreement. Not that you are thinking rationally and I am thinking emotionally. You don't usually say that in so many words, but that's what is coming out when you talk about how rational your position is.

A lot of smart people agree with you and a lot of smart people agree with me.

Perhaps I did confuse the issue by mentioning my personal connection with illegal immigrants. I mention it because after having lived among illegal immigrants and worked with legal ones for an extended period of time, I find many of the stereotypes put forth by anti-immigration scaremongers (I'd differentiate here, but since there are legal immigrants at LaRaza too, theoretically they should be tossed out by association) simply do not have credibility with me. People telling me how Mexican immigrants are doesn't work -- and without those assumptions I do not come to the same conclusions.

LaRaza aside, I am avoiding specific arguments because I made the decision a while back that you are not a person I debate this particular issue with because we come into the discussion with such different assumptions (see first paragraph) that it has not been fruitful whenever we have.

[revised 4/6 6:44am]

I guess we just have the differences, then. I would put forth however that while I consider my arguments rational, yours are not any LESS rational thereby. You too come into the argument with certain filters on (such as being willing to filter out certain behavior such as MeCHa and La Raza activism).

However, I'll still take issue with certain of your points:

#1 - Irish and Italians were, for the most part, legal immigrants. This stands in stark contrast to the current debate.

#2 - As far as "scaremonger" stereotypes, did I ever say that the illegal immigrants coming here didn't work? Far from it, I think the $16 million they take out of our economy and mail to Mexico every year is enough to put the lie to that stereotype.

However, do they depress entry-level wages being paid under the table? Do they take jobs that Americans would take? There is where the argument falls over. I am certain that there are Americans who would want those jobs. Those on the other side insist on pushing the idea that no Americans can be found to take those jobs.

As for your personal experiences with a subset, please note that nothing I have said impugns them as people. They might be the nicest people in the world. They might not be. The fact remains that if there are 15 million illegals in the country, that makes them 12% of the population, yet the percentage of illegal immigrants in our prisons is 27%, 35% if you take just the federal prisons.

And even if they're the nicest people in the world, we have legal channels for a reason.

[comment deleted by author. moving on now...]

Mike,

I've been reading Mickey Kaus over the past few days as well as several others that agree with you to one extent or another. This is the first one that has invited a rather sharp response from myself. It was my intention not to make any comments on this particular post. I probably should have stuck to that. I thought about this thread earlier today and came up with a couple reasons that your response wore on me so immediately.

Firstly, any time someone makes a point to say that they are making "a moral argument" or "a rational argument"... the implication is that their argument is more moral or more rational than the other argument (or in this case, seemingly differentiating your "rational" argument from the opposing "emotional" one). Otherwise, there is no reason to bring it up. You may not have meant it that way, but that is how it will be read -- and not just by me.

Secondly, your response employs nearly every ugly stereotype in existence about Mexican immigrants short of reconquista. It is a characterization so broad that it could be used against nearly any group except middle-class and upper-class whites.

Thirdly, it closed off an entire avenue of discussion (what jobs they take and how willing Americans are to take them) because the side that isn't yours is "either uninformed or engag[ing] in duplicitous demagoguery."

Coming from a comment with the opening sentence being "My take on the matter is that it's about respect."

The one area I suppose we do agree: respect is important.

I'm going to make these short:

#1 - I apologize for not thinking before using the words "rational argument" instead of "my reasoning."

#2 - As for stereotypes and the rest... we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm understanding now that you don't mean it that way. It just comes across that way.

Moving on sounds good.