[Kevin M]

I think this bill boils down to two reasosn for existence: the red herring from the White House/Congress, and red state congressmen pushing an unlikely law to pass so they can go home and tell their constituents "hey, we TRIED to kick out all those dirty immigrants who are ruining our country, but those godless liberals wouldn't go along with it!"

As far as the philisophical stuff... I'm kinda soft on immigration. Like Scott and JC have said, immigration's benefits over our nation's history have FAR outweighed its costs. I personally would like to see more effort made to get immigrants who inend to be permanently here to go through naturalization, but I also think we need little tolerance for those who commit criminal acts. And the national security argument is laughable- somebody ask the CIA how effective the USSR and eastern bloc was at keeping out undesirables. If the administration ever actually proposed any kind of "hard" border controls, it would be the first step to revolution and civil war. I don't see anybody with any real power in our current system finding that to be acceptable.