He deserved to be booed, mainly due to snubbing them the year before, and because they DO disagree with him. McCain is trying to appease conservatives, to show that he is a viable option for them. I think his response to the boo's was great, and I think his answer was even better.

Congress has been foolish with regards to immigration on both sides of the isle. All this talk of path to citizenship is the most asinine thing I've ever heard, and does nothing to address the real problem.

Step one is to crack down heavily on under-the-table jobs in this country. Illegals come here to work, to make money, if you take that ability away, they will go home. Hire undercover cops to pose as illegals and look for jobs. Hire non-illegals to go after under-the-table jobs in small businesses. Start a mass of sting operations, create a special sub-section of government to deal with this. The new tax revenue created by more workers paying taxes would more than pay for the new section of government.

Step two is to secure the border, something McCain mentioned, and something conservatives badly want. This will not only help with immigration, but with drug trafficking.

One of the main reasons I was never sold on McCain was his Immigration plans, so I'm glad to see him change them.

Actually, it does address the problem. And in the only really practical terms available. It's why Reagan supported amnesty (and actually called it "amnesty"). And it's why even Bush supported it.



The "real problem" as conservatives define it is with the 12 million illegal immigrants who are here right now. At BEST, your step 1 and step 2 will discourage more immigrants from coming here, but you do not address at all how to deal with the ones who are already here and aren't going anywhere.

You have three options. Amnesty, the status quo, or deportation. You right-wingers need to get it through your heads that deportation is NOT going to happen. Never. Even if you had a president sympathetic to the cause, it is absolutely impossible and impractical, even if we had the money, which we don't. So you have amnesty or the status quo. And of the two, McCain's choice is the only one that makes sense: it's feasible, it's practical, it means more revenue for the government and higher wages for immigrants.



Huh? He hasn't changed his position at all. In his talks with anti-immigrant wingnuts, he's focused his talk on border patrol, which was always part of his plan. But he's still for amnesty.

you can't deport 12 million people...

Its next to impossible....

Trying to get rid of under the table work. Almost impossibile....
The govt would have to raid almost all of those small restaurants to those big companies....

Beeble, you take the jobs away, they go home. It's been proved, shown, tried and tested.

ofcourse you also end up with Help wanted signs all over the place that nobody wants to fill up.

And the cost of food rises all over the country.

We don't live in a perfect world. You do A, expect B. In this case, if you get rid of illegals, many jobs will need workers. Fair enough, is that such a bad thing? Obviously it won't be great for the economy, but is that more important at this point?

I say no.

If you take away the ability for illegals to earn money, you take away their reason for being here. Most will go home, it's just a simple fact. Not all, of course, but a good chunk of them.

Do all states have as many illegals as border states? No. Do those states manage to fill the jobs that illegals do? Yep.

12 million people. 12 million people. 12 MILLION people.

They are here illegally, working jobs that pay next to nothing just to be in America. You seriously think they're just going to pack their bags and go back to wherever they came from because we crack down on employers?

And you had the nerve to call someone else's plan "asinine"?

One problem is that people want easy solutions to complicated problems. Not all political problems can be solved, seriously. All you can do sometimes is make them not as bad as they once were.

We will never "solve" the war on drugs, "cure" poverty, or prevent abortions. Nor will we solve the problem of illegal immigrants. All we can do is keep the damage to a minimum.

By the way, 12 million illegals is a lot of people, as was pointed out. Just for comparison, here are the top 5 most populated cities in the US as of the last census:

New York: 8 million
Los Angeles: 3.7 million
Chicago: 2.9 million
Houston: 1.9 million
Philadelphia: 1.5 million

So, basically, there are more illegal immigrants in the US than there are people in NY and LA combined. Imagine NY and LA completely empty and that tells you how many you will have to deport.

Houston evacuated about 2.5 million people for Hurricane Rita, and the freeways were jammed for three days. 12 million is a lot of people.

McCain was right in saying the greatness of a country should be measured by how many people try to get in versus how many try to leave.

What's especially silly about Eagle's "plan" is that he's arguing that you don't have to deport them. They're all just going to pack and go home. 12 million people just drifting back to Mexico, Canada, and countries beyond. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

Just saw this cartoon and thought it was relevant to the earlier discussion

They revere Reagan because Reagan was a charismatic leader that charmed the nation. Many people hold good memories of Reagan without knowing all that much about the man.

Regan is sort of Like Trudeau in Canada.

Trudeau did some good things and bad, however is well revered as simply the leaders following him were average at best.


That is what Regan is....