What are your thoughts on illegal immigration?

Oneidmnster, you finally started a discussion that I can agree with you on. These illegals are some of the causes of our jobless rate because they will do work at half of the cost that Americans will do the same job for. The reason for the presidential candidates deflecting this immigration problem is that these illegals are a voting bloc. These illegals kids are the future voters for the Democrats and Republican parties. So, don’t hold your breath if you think that these two parties will try to solve this illegal immigration problem anytime soon. ...

As maximax8 pointed out a lot of illegals are risking their lives coming over here if that gives you any idea of how bad they have it where they come from, so it's not a problem that is going to go away until the other countries improve their conditions. Also, they provide diversity and often fill jobs that wouldn't otherwise be filled. They do provide some good, but this could still occur with a much much smaller amount of immigrants. Also don't forget when we were adopting Chinese baby girls by the boatload to save them from the one child law. In all, I still think it's doing more harm than good, the jobs they fill especially on the low end, could be filled by Americans during times like we face now. During good times, would be paid competitively thus creating competition for labor and higher relative wages all around. If we didn't always allow so many immigrants we could afford to give asylum to people when it is really needed with less of a problem. What yet may be the worst part is that we are not only losing jobs to them, we're outsourcing jobs to their countries and they are still coming here at a greater rate. I'm sure if we added up the number of outsourced jobs and the number of jobs lost to immigration it would more than account for the number of people who need jobs but don't have them. I wouldn't however, go as far to say that even a 2-3% unemployment rate would fix the situation we are in now. However it certainly would make it far better. Before anyone brings up the cost of goods being cheap because of cheap migrant workers, just remember the increased cost would be offset by higher all around wages. There will always be poor people, but we have gone to great lengths to create a growing and now overwhelming lower class.

I think it is unfair, I am a big believer of the queue system. But I think some people in the world are desperate,I would like to see the worlg get rid of the problems in the countries that these people are running from so they can feel comfortable about staying in their own countries.

I absolutely agree with you. Those illegal immigrants cost a lot of money of our taxpayers, and some of them overpride themselves. Once I was involve in an accident by those Mexicans without legal driver's license, and eventually, they got no insurance, and nothing to pay me. They should be deported for good actually. It also endanger the general public.

You could run for President with this one! I wonder why candidates don't mention this? They won't get the votes, perhaps? Down here, it's much the same, but on a smaller scale of course. It's a big issue here for both sides of the argument. Riots in detention centres are becoming more & more frequent. We just gave Indonesia three more boats to patrol their own waters. Quite a few of these illegals are the result of people smuggling scams. There are so many different individual cases here. Either way we look at it, it buggers up wages & the economy - either from a lower wages point of view or a welfare point of view.

Even legal immigration destroying my country too. They come to my country and have no money, I do not know why my Gov't need to pay money to them every month. I work, i pay tax for Gov't to give them?! That is not make sense :( For everything they are not happy, my gov't will give money or service to fulfill them, but my gov't never do anythings for us, the local :(

This should be an interesting discussion if everyone isn't afraid of the anger that seems to come with it. Personally, I feel it isn't illegal immigration alone that is the problem, but all the immigration policies need to be changed. I actually did some research as to how many immigrants are allowed into the USA every year. And it was startling since almost all the inaccurate unemployed numbers today, equal the amount of immigrants legally and illegally admitted into the country in 2007 alone. How many more have entered since then? Where are they and where are the working? Other countries when they encounter the economic problems today, shut their borders entirely to all immigration until the problem is resolved. When you cannot employ the people who are already here, why are we allowing even more in whether legal or illegal? The job situation isn't going to get better until we deal with immigration and it seems no one wants the candidates to even touch that subject for fear of alienating some voters, legal or illegal. Makes me wonder how many illegals and non-citizen immigrants vote and we just don't have proper control over who is voting. I know several people who have stayed past the time limit on their visas and no one appears to be looking for them or deporting them, that makes them illegal too. It bothers me that we are lowering our standard of living and minimum wage for all Americans by allowing the illegals to work here. And student visas are another issue that no one seems to want to look at. I don't mind anyone getting an education in our country, but like other countries don't permit those people working there and taking jobs from their citizens, we do not enforce that, and I know their are many on visas taking jobs from Americans. Do you see any correlation between immigration, all immigration, needing reform and employment? I do and the illegals are only one aspect of it, and it doesn't matter what race, color, or anything else they are, the problem lies in the numbers coming to America and unemployment that is growing.