We can stop immigration without stopping "the urge to come to the US" or using guns to kill people. And we likely will, only for very sad reasons. As horrible and "immoral" as the pro-immigration crowd want to paint a stoppage of immigration, it happened once before - during the Great Depression. And it wasn't turned on again (for the most part) until Teddy Kennedy and his team got fired up about it in the 1960's. That's 30 years without significant immigration. The country survived fine, the world survived fine. No one went to hell because of it.

Ultimately I don't see how that won't be the story again if things go as badly as they could once oil production starts to decline. You will not have a Great Depression II, with high 25% unemployment, and a government that looks the other way as employers hire illegals from Mexico.You will not have a Great Depression II and have a government that cows to the incessant begging and whining of greedy businessmen who claim they must have more and more foreign workers or they won't be able to compete ... with the American company down the block. And you will not have a Great Depression II with 25% unemployment and a million new immigrants each year waiting for their citizenship papers.

And also, you will not have a Great Depression II, and have a government that looks the other way as employers send jobs to China and India in massive amounts. Pulling back jobs from China and India while simultaneously freezing the US population would be a great way to lesson world demand for oil, just as sending massive amounts of jobs over there was a great way to hit Peak Oil sooner rather than later.

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Where do people like you come from? Are you posting from your bunker in the hills, or what?

The mind boggles.

Surely, Americans do consume and waste enormous resources. Why do you feel you have the right to spend a life of luxury, while others should be denied of these things?

I am not denying anyone anywhere in the world the ability to live a life of luxury. You don't have to come to America to live a life of luxury.

Everyone here wants a better life for themselves and their loved ones. And if its in America, people will go. If not legally, then by illegally crossing the borders.

It is a simple matter to stop illegal immigration. People can't come to where they aren't wanted. Right now the people in power want illegal immigration so it occurs, but if they decide they don't want it then it wouldn't matter how much a Mexican crossing the border or an Indian or Chinese overstaying their visa wants to come they wouldn't be able to get a job, get any services, etc. because Americans would know the penalty was too to severe if they deal with them.

Do you know how many illegal immigrants enter the US every year?

Tons, but you have both George Bush and John McCain who want to give them another amnesty. Rich men love illegal immigration. They lose no jobs due to it, have no salary lowered from it, don't have their neighborhoods taken over by it, have no gangs in their kids schools because of it, etc. - they only see it benefiting them as they hire cheap and desperate gardeners and nannies and maids and what have you while all of society, rich and poor alike has to share the burden of the costs of the illegals. I wouldn't be surprised if Barack Obama was all for it. If the people in power ever decide they don't like illegal immigration they will stop it. If we go into a Great Depression both legal and illegal immigration will stop. Any politician who continues the "great immigration propaganda" at that point will be voted out of office.

Actually, a good part of that money comes straight back to us in the West. Typically 50-75% of foreign aid is "tied" foreign aid, that is the receiving country must use it to buy goods and services from the donating country.

For example, a few years back the US gave $175 million in aid to Afghanistan, and $125 million of that went on building a luxury hotel for foreign VIPs to stay in. Entirely built by foreign contractors, and staffed at most levels by them, I think they might have let some Afghans sweep the street outside or something... But hey, it's foreign aid, honest!

If you really have a population argument rather than a xenophobicracist one, then you must argue instead to ban all immigration legal and illegal, and not differentiate between the two. But the insistence upon differentiation is the clue to the racism in the arguments made against illegals.

You pulled out the race card on the wrong guy. I am against all immigration.

Whether they realize it or not, most Americans concerned about illegal immigration DO have xenophobia and blatant racism, fuelled by right-wingnuts in power in politics and media. They are not clamoring for waspy-looking immigrants to be stopped at the borders. They are upset about the brown impoverished non-english speakers from south of the border.

Doesn't matter if they are calling for it for because the immigrants are of a different race or if they are calling for it because they don't speak English or any other reason - just calling for it is the right thing to do. Immigration is ludicrous in a period of declining critical resources and/or finite resources. Immigration is ludicrous into a crowded country with expensive cities with over 300 million people. Immigration is not sustainable. At this point in time, as we face tremendous crisis, anything that is not sustainable should be stopped as soon as possible. It's technically possible to stop immigration tomorrow.

Regarding the increased crime comparison you cite: Many illegal immigrants are the victims of crime. They are known to be 'walking ATMs' because they can't open checking accounts, and so they are targets of 'native' thieves looking for an easy mark so they can go do more meth amphetamines while the immigrants go do underpaid outdoor manual labor all day.

Not too many natives forming gangs and doing drive by shootings. I think you have a tough task ahead of you if you try and make a case for immigrants committing less crime than natives. But that's irrelevant. The primary reason for stopping immigration is not crime anyway. There are negatives that far outweigh more crime committed by immigrants in the areas they inhabit - except of course for the victims of those crimes.

How can you argue immigration and racism are the same, or that illegal and legal immigration are the same? How can you claim that Americans in general don't mind "waspy-looking" immigrants sneaking across the border? Do you invite poor illiterate criminals to live in your house and feed them at your expense? Why not?

If we going to over-generalize, why is that liberals always want to give away my money and resources, and use up other peoples, yet won't part with their own?

It's simple for me -- rule of law. If we have space and choose to allow immigration, come on in legally. If not, stay out. If you are here, legally or illegally, and you break the law, away you go to prison or deportation (or execution -- what's this nonsense about people coming here and not living according to our laws??).

If you don't want to speak English, don't come. If you don't want to take care of your offspring, PLEASE don't come - we have plenty of deadbeat parents here already.

The entire problem with immigration isn't one of hate, but of the extent of finite resources and the cost of liberal hand-outs. It was bad enough when we built a welfare state for citizens, but to extend it to non-citizens is ludicrous. We can't afford it, and we don't owe it to anybody.

And FYI, the media is way left, not right. Most politicians of both parties as well. Us true conservatives don't mind being called conservative, and certainly no big-gov't advocate is one!

Australia is a big country. If space were the only issue, we could house the entire world here. The real isssue is that it is a dry, drought-prone country and the sustainable population is actually about 20 million when you take water management and soil degradation into account. We are already past that, and are seeing the river system dry up as a result.

I have heard of impending water problems in certain dry states in America like Nevada for quite some time, but population growth has still continued at a faster pace than other parts of the country. I heard a show on the radio that discussed how the state of Connecticut was recycling a certain admirable percentage of their trash and wanted to increase it. Later a government employee said that they had to increase recycling in order to keep from having to transport more of it to other states because the amount of trash they were collecting kept going up. He never mentioned stopping population growth even though they were now trucking their trash to 3 different states, one of which - Ohio - was over a 450 miles away.

America also has vast amounts of land in its center that is "underpopulated". And this land is pointed to by proponents of infinite population growth via infinite immigration. However, and Australia is probably similar - they do not start any cities in those areas for immigrants to live in. The immigrants come to existing cities and make them more crowded and congested and expensive. I remember hearing the Bee Gees comment on how different America was from when they toured it in the 1970's till now. They said "You have a very crowded country now" with their voices rising in a way that seemed to say "Why did you allow that to happen and will it continue to get worse?".

In America both parties are for immigration and that includes illegal immigration. There is some call for a stoppage of illegal immigration from a portion of the conservative Republican party, but the big-business elite Republicans, the ones that have the ear of the politicians via their large monetary gifts and country club discussions, are all for illegal immigration. They love cheap desperate workers. They can fatten their bank accounts while all of society must share in the costs of immigration - both legal and illegal. The current Republican president and the current Republican candidate are both for illegal immigration. They use politically manufactured terms like "comprehensive immigration reform" to try and disguise that fact from the part of the party that is against it. And they have to say different things at different gatherings. But there is not accountability for politicians from a submissive and enabling press, so they get away with it.

Importing overpopulation into the countries that are currently least affected by this issue just spreads the misery around evenly. It's a curious kind of morality that requires you to import people to help destroy your environment because they've already reached the limits of their own carrying capacity.

I have often wondered what limit, if any, do the American pro-immigration group see as to American population. China got up around a billion and saw a need to stop it (but still hasn't). I was astonished to read once that China had 10 to 20 million people die of starvation in the early 1960's. But I don't think the "one-child policy" started until 15 years later. On the other hand, India has passed a billion, and even though it has hundreds of millions in extreme poverty, they still apparently see no problem due to overpopulation.