Reply #3: It's the republicans who want "secure the border" only. Organized labor, the Progressive Caucus, and [View All]

[pampango]

and every other liberal/progressive group that I'm aware of are in favor of comprehensive reform, while every conservative/tea party group is in favor of militarizing the border as their one and only strategy (because they think it makes for good election year politics).

The corporate line is to not allow for a path to citizenship ("amnesty for illegals" to Rush, Glenn, FOX and the rest of the corporate folks) because that makes them legal and much more difficult to exploit. Better to focus solely on border security (which scares voters into voting for you and like most things will never be 100% effective), so that the pool of exploitable workers remains as large as possible for as long as possible

The Border Patrol has 50% more officers than it did a few years ago, deportations are much higher under Obama than they were under Bush (a sore point with many Hispanic and progressive groups), illegal border crossings are down 50%, crime along the border and in the state of Arizona is low and declining and the Obama administration is auditing the records of thousands of employers checking their I-9 records regarding the legal status of their employees - something that Bush never did.

"No one has addressed illegal immigration until now.." - If we repeat it often enough, it must be true.