“Latino groups contend that there was an undercount of nearly one million Latinos in the 2000 census, affecting the drawing of Congressional districts and the distribution of federal money. Hispanic organizations are far better organized for next year’s census, but they say that if illegal immigrants—an estimated eight million of whom are Latino—are not included, the undercount could be much greater.”

And?

Its about time that the legal citizens of the United States wake up and realize that we are now the ‘safety valve’ for the massive failure in governance of the majority of Latin American nations.

If we tried to interfere in their governnance, we would be roundly condemned on all sides and if we refuse to accept illegal aliens as a consequence of that often corrupt and repressive Latin American national governance, we condemn ourselfs as nativists.

The United States does not hasve the economic means of absorbing all in Latin America who wish to immigrate to the USA and still maintain our higher stand of living that attracts those immigrants.

Its about time that the legal citizens of the United States wake up and realize that we are now the ‘safety valve’ for the massive failure in governance of the majority of Latin American nations.

This is precisely the reason that I am in favor of making it easy to immigrate legally and to become a citizen and of making it very difficult to enter the U.S. and remain here as an illegal immigrant.

If the relief valve were shut tight, what would happen to government in, say, Mexico in the next 10 to 15 years?  Wouldn’t better government be better for the citizens of Mexico in the long run?

Does anybody understand that the census is primarily related to the apportionment of Congressmen according to population.  So the shape of Congressional districts, etc. will be determined in many places in the Southwest particularly by people who can’t vote.

The census is supposed to count citizens.

This is fraud.

If reliable pollsters took polls that showed illegal immigrants voted Republican at a rate of 75% as soon as they become citizens, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would call for the southern border to be mined and patrolled by armed drone aircraft.  This is all about political power, and possibly church power.

Why don’t we have a very tightly administered guest worker program?  Anyone who has a job waiting can come here, work, and pay taxes.  But, this is no guarantee that they automatically get to become a citizen.  I question whether today’s immigrants really want to become citizens anyway if they can get easy access to government assistance.  Earlier generations of immigrants assimilated, learned the language and the culture within 1 or 2 generations at most, and they still managed to retain their distinctive ethnic traditions while being wholly American, and proud of it.

The current arrangement just props up corrupt Latin American regimes and shows our newest residents that disregard for U.S. laws is not punished and very well may be rewarded.

No, Todd, government in Mexico would not be better in the next 10 to 15 years. Mexico’s problems are worsening significantly and the trajectory is bad. Some semblance of social peace has been bought by the federal government for a generation or more using substantial oil revenues from the government-owned monopoly, Pemex. Oil revenues have accounted for about 40% of all federal government spending.

Those who’ve gone “al Norte” (both legally and illegally) were remitting nearly USD 25 Billion annually up until about a year or two ago. Most importantly, this money went directly to the Mexican people, and almost completely by-passed phenomenally corrupt governments at various levels.

Far worse, to justify my answer to your question, is that Mexico’s oil industry is collapsing, both from decades’ failure to perform appropriate maintenance and from crashing production. The Cantarell field’s production—once second largest in the world—is dropping to a trickle. They’ve pumped it too hard since 2005, and appear to have broken the capillarity of the remaining reserves.

Consequently, the Mexican federal government is no longer able to purchase social piece. Army, police and state/local governments are infested with criminal gangs. Mexico is becoming the Congo.

The presidential election of 2006 dissolved into Marxist violence in an attempt to prevent the inauguration of Sr. Calderon, a nominal conservative. The Chavistas are working actively to foment a Bolivarian revolution in Mexico if the PRD do not win the presidency in 2012 (Mexican presidents have one 6-yr term).

At that point illegal immigration will be glossed as “refugees,” but it won’t be too much of an exaggeration. Mexico is headed to some really difficult times.

That said:
a) Illegal immigrants should not be counted in our census. They don’t belong here. They’re not on a path to citizenship. And their presence should most decidedly not influence Congressional distribution.
b) The entire northwest of Mexico has been infamous (for 400 years) as a region of bandits, robbers, crooks, and ne’er-do-wells. This is the primary source of immigrants to California and Arizona.
c) The central parts of Mexico produce a different sort of immigrant, who comes up I-35 through Texas, Kansas, and so on. These are generally hard-working, honest people, who if they come illegally are doing as something of a rite-of-passage to demonstrate their derring-do to the girls at home.
d) Mexican birth rates have dropped to slightly below a natural-replacement raw fertility rate. The current demographic pressure to head north will be much less in 25 years.

#4 Daniel wrote:

Earlier generations of immigrants assimilated, learned the language and the culture within 1 or 2 generations at most, and they still managed to retain their distinctive ethnic traditions while being wholly American, and proud of it.

The same thing is happening today, and continues to happen. I have the nieces and nephews to prove it.

Br_er Rabbit,

You raise an excellent point.  Did your nieces and nephews legally immigrate?  Did they find it very difficult to obtain citizenship, and how do they feel about granting amnesty and citizenship to those who are here illegally when they took the time to do it legally?

Daniel, my nieces and nephews were born in this country to citizens of this country. They speak little to no Spanish (although I don’t doubt that a few of them could cuss a blue streak in Spanish before they accepted Christ). Their school-age children are in touch with their cultural heritage, and I believe many of them will be gathering at their grandfather’s this Christmas for the traditional tamale feast. Their grandfather was also born in this country. He is truly bilingual, comfortable in both languages although he has never attended a class in Spanish. He worked long hours in the construction industry then came home to work more on side jobs. His parents were naturalized citizens, who learned English as a second language. They worked hard, bought property and built houses on it in which their son and one niece and one nephew still are living. I don’t know whether they entered the country legally or not. I would guess that all three generations are/were in favor of granting amnesty and citizenship.

Bart Hall, your comment about Mexican immigrants to California is offensive, defamatory, and false. I have lived and worked among them most of my life and know them personally. The vast, vast majority of Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal, are hardworking and (other than illegal border-crossing) scrupulously law-abiding. The non-migratory workers (both legal and illegal) are following the same pattern that resulted in my nieces and nephews, and in fact the same pattern of all immigrants to this country since its founding.

By the way, the State of California was founded by illegal immigrants who crossed the border from the United States into Mexican territory and then declared themselves an independent country.

LumenChristie (#3),

The census is a historical record as well as a tool for congressional apportionment. 19th century censuses did not confine themselves to recording citizens (for which we social historians are eternally grateful).

There is perhaps more of a case for not counting those in the country illegally, but even here you could argue that it’s valuable data in the immigration/naturalization debate.

The census counts a lot of people who don’t vote and always has - children, felons, etc.  There is a sound policy argument that it should not count persons in the country illegally (any more than it would count tourists) and that point probably is long overdue for clarification.  From what we know about the numbers of illegal residents (always a slippery data point, and a number that has probably declined somewhat in the past year or so because of economic conditions), we are at a stage in our history where the illegal count could make a measurable difference in Congressional representation.  That doesn’t seem either right or a good idea.

This is an area where our political leadership has been craven and incompetent.  The country needs a robust flow of immigration to remain competitive economically into the future.  It needs secure borders for security reasons.  It needs to compete globally with other countries for the best technical and scientific minds.  All this dictates what No. 2 alluded to - an attractive, user-friendly immigration system with quick paths to citizenship, secure borders with controlled portals that are easy to use, and sound measures for tracking temporary workers.  Large underground communities of illegal workers are morally and socially unacceptable, both because of their impacts on the surrounding communities of legal residents, and because of the hardships they impose on the illegals themselves.  Many of these people pay taxes and provide productive labor without getting any benefits or protections in return.  To freeze these communities in their current status ensures undereducated, un-integrated perpetuation of their lives in this country.  Their status should be regularized in some fashion to get them into the system.  The lack of political response seems largely to be driven by fear from national leaders who respond better to boom-box anti-Latino messages from the pop culture (a mild taste of which one can detect in this thread) than craft intelligent policy that serves the national interest.