Who here believes immigration reform means amnesty?

[Rucker61]

Deport them all. No exceptions. If you're not a citizen you're loaded onto a bus and shipped back to wherever you came from. If you had kids in the US and you were illegal than your kids are illegal by default. No more of this anchor baby crap. No more wellfare and other benefits for the anchor baby with illegal parents. If you can't afford to live here get a job or GTFO. If you can't keep your legs closed and can't pay the bills then GTFO. Secure the border. Build a fence along the hundreds of miles without one. And man the fence with armed personnel. It's about time we actually start protecting this country instead of fighting wars on foreign lands. Foreign aid to countries that hate us must stop. What's the point? Securing our borders is simple to do, but the clowns in DC don't want to secure the border. The more voters and cheap laborers they get the better. And who pays the price? You guessed it, citizens. And for fuck's sake declare English the national language. Everywhere I go in and around Denver feels like friggin Tijuana. We shouldn't be bending over to please all the illegals, they're here illegally after all. They're turning the US into the smoldering cesspool that is Mexico.

/rant

Can't fully support this. It's not economically feasible, for one, especially for folks that hate big government. What's it going to take create and staff a new bureaucracy to locate, arrest, detain, feed, house, transport, review the status, and deport 10 million people to various countries that may not take them back. Additionally, who is going to pick our fruit and vegetables if the illegals are gone? I'm not for any path to citizenship that doesn't involve military service, for sure. Are you going to make it illegal to speak a foreign language?

[Ronin13]

9/10 signs? I've been downtown twice since moving here 2 years ago and both times it was for the Ski expo.

Forgive me, I don't understand what you're saying here...

Are you going to make it illegal to speak a foreign language?

The other bleeding heart comments aside- because I'd rather not get into that- I have to address this. Did anyone say that? No. Just that it's very difficult to be a French speaker in Saudi Arabia, yet not illegal, thus here, if you don't speak English, it should be difficult for you to function in America. No one is saying make it illegal, just make it harder for those living here who don't speak the language. You're trying to turn things around... Look at Brazil, they have a big illegal immigration problem with immigrants from Boliva- Brazil speaks Portuguese, Bolivia speaks Spanish. Don't you think it rude to move to a country and refuse to speak the language of that nation? I feel like we've been on this topic before, so before anyone makes the fallacious claim that "we don't strictly speak English in America" I dare you to explain why our laws, our congress, and other forms of business in this nation are done in English...

[Rucker61]

Forgive me, I don't understand what you're saying here...

The other bleeding heart comments aside-

Actually, that's the most interesting part of the discussion. I consider it an interesting thought exercise, and wish I had the time and resources to do a study on what it would take to "deport all of the illegals". Let's put the political and funding as givens, as those arguments aren't that interesting - can we get enough votes in the government to do it, and can we fund the activity? If we assume "yes" and "yes", then the fun begins.

Goal: Deport all illegals.
Basic premise: round them all up and ship them back to where they came from.
Step one: how to identify them? Let's assume 10 million illegal immigrants, just to make the math easy. That means there are around 300 million of us that aren't. Somehow we've got to pick out every 30th person in the US, prove that they are not here legally, then locate them.
Step two: locate and take them into custody. Given that IA's are less likely to be in any database than legals, we're forced to do things more manually. Do we throw a cordon around entire cities, or neighborhoods, then go door to door? Let's say our foolproof ID method works. Then we need enough resources to go get them and arrest them, and bring them to the detention centers.
Step three: We're going to need a lot of detention centers with staffing and resources.
Step four: Shipping them out. Assuming that we get them all, interview them, throw the wrongfully detained legals back, and identify through the language barriers where they came from, then we send the back. According to one report, 56% of illegals in 2006 were from Mexico. Let's say it's 50%, to make the math easier. We need to ship out 5 million people to Mexico. Can't afford to fly them, even in USAF assets, so we use mass transit like buses and cattle cars to take them from the centers in EL Paso, San Diego, Houston, NYC, etc. to the border. Let's say up and down the border we can send 100,000 a week. What happens when Mexico closes their side of the border? Just because we tell them these are Mexican citizens coming home doesn't mean that a) they believe us, so they'll need to do their own screening or b) screw you gringos, we can't feed those people you keep them. Pretty soon there isn't any room in No Man's Land to take any more people. And if they do get through or remain in border camps, they will be victimized by the predators in the group or waiting for them across the border. We'll need to be prepared to address the victimization of thousands of women and children. And that's just for the half that are Mexican. How do we get the other 2 million back to Central America, or back to Asia, Europe and Africa.

I'm a logistician at heart and by training, so that's usually the first way I look at a complex problem. It's not a bleeding heart view, it's a operations professional's view. And it also calls to mind related rates problems from early Algebra classes - as the pipe is emptying the pool at one rate, the pool is getting filled by another pipe at a different rate. That's going to increase the total deportation requirements, unless we find a way to turn off that input flow.

And that's without even considering the political, judicial and financial hurdles. The DEA just had to pay a kid $4M for screwing up an arrest. At a 1% error rate for false arrest and detention, even at $1M a pop that's $100B.

I have to address this. Did anyone say that? No. Just that it's very difficult to be a French speaker in Saudi Arabia, yet not illegal, thus here, if you don't speak English, it should be difficult for you to function in America. No one is saying make it illegal, just make it harder for those living here who don't speak the language. You're trying to turn things around... Look at Brazil, they have a big illegal immigration problem with immigrants from Boliva- Brazil speaks Portuguese, Bolivia speaks Spanish. Don't you think it rude to move to a country and refuse to speak the language of that nation? I feel like we've been on this topic before, so before anyone makes the fallacious claim that "we don't strictly speak English in America" I dare you to explain why our laws, our congress, and other forms of business in this nation are done in English...

Agree with all of that. Given the position of English in our country, why ask for a national language? What would change? Would it be illegal to offer forms and tests in any language other than English, either by a private business or by a government at any level? I have no idea what the OP wants in a national language, or what restrictions would occur.

[Superorb]

Forgive me, I don't understand what you're saying here...

Someone had mentioned a 9/10 sign and I have no idea what that is.

[Ronin13]

Someone had mentioned a 9/10 sign and I have no idea what that is.

9 signs, out of 10 signs, on W. Colfax just outside of Downtown, are in Spanish... Maybe Google Maps street view can help with this. I just find it disturbing that we as a nation just let this happen without any protest or second thought. I guess I'll just go buy a billboard and put up an advertisement in Russian or Dutch, see if anyone notices or cares.