The law is the law. ILLEGAL ALIENS have trashed California. They cost the education system money, as well as the healthcare system, they often are uninsured motorists and flee accidents, they contribute to crime, they litter the streets, and do not pay taxes.

I say, build the wall, and send them ALL back, either on buses or by making it illegal to hire them anywhere.

Just look at what a cesspool the cities of Mexico are. They are largely that way because it has become culturally acceptable there to live like slobs and crap where you eat. That is not the American way. Do we want more of that in our country? Of course not. So let's stop being a landing beach for the flotsam and jetsam of the world, and let's start improving the people who are already here LEGALLY. If you come here illegally, it means that the first thing you have done here is break the law. That is not a good start, in my opinion. Go back and make your own country better, instead of tipping ours to be more like Mexico.

You libs and pro-amnesty hacks, and also Juan the illegal can all go take a hike (to Mexico).

THANKS for putting a human face on this issue.kids like juan are the future of this country.period.at the very least,where is an administrative waiver when we need one?hell,what about equitable estoppel?the government has treated juan like a citizen all his life,how can it act in a contrary manner now?dunno.
as to whether the young man is "legal",or "illegal",consider that running the real economy for the benefit of speculators used to be illegal.-so the latter bought the government and changed the law.we watched the "highlights" on c-span.lamentably,the sale of american weapons to any country,for nondefensive purposes,is illegal.the occupation of iraq is illegal.the absence of mandated accountability for the use of federal funds in the aftermath of katrina is illegal,,and unconstitutional as well.the fact that the "screwees" in this matter are us citizens is probably boring for the big boys to talk about.
i don't think that the "legalization" of this young man could shock,insult,eviscerate,or humiliate our system of laws nearly as much the self serving routine it endures from our ever more concentrated oligarchy .c'mon now,lets keep "legal" in the same ballpark as "legitimate."

They come for various reasons and they do the jobs others won't take.

That is what welfare recipients are for. Stop letting them sit on their rears and collect while selling drugs (I know because i've watched them do it.). Give up these excuses. Job's others won't take? when you're collecting from uncle sam, then you do as you're told until you get some initiative to get out and find a better job and stop leeching from the taxpayers.

So I take it by this article that he's above the law? Learn what the word "illegal" means. Juan is an "illegal immagrant" stop trying to change the language for your agenda. He will not be a "legal immigrant" until he goes back across the border and returns legally. He will not step over those that went thru the classes and paperwork it took them to get here. Boohoo, he has to follow the law like everyone else. Next time save the woe is me tales for someone that cares.

several somebodies either need a nap … or more fiber.

CD is neither Iraq nor Gaza

"My screen name is a homage to my beloved grandmother, who emigrated here legally from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s."
Oh really, and may I ask which were the restrictions those days for immigrants from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s?

Seaseal, you wrote: ..."they do the jobs others won't take. If AdeleTheCzech doubts this, I invite her to come spend a 13-hour day in the fields...". I invite you to re-read American history. During the Dust Bowl in the Great Depression, the "Okies" and other bankrupt farm families managed to get to Calif. and picked the fruits and vegetables that illegal immigrants are harvesting today.

It's true that migrant picking is now the one area where it's almost impossible to find native-born or legal immigrants to hire. We should probably have a quota for this work, and legalize the pickers. But where I live the illegals had been working mostly in contruction (far better paid than picking); this only ended with the collapse of the housing boom. The impact of this was greatest on African American men; our jobless rate in that group is now 33%! Contractors wouldn't hire them because of the available pool of cheap, illegal labor. Why shouldn't we care about poor American workers before trying to save the world?

To Rio, who said, "you fucking white hypocrite, why don't you go back to Europe?" -- Sorry to spoil your fun, but I was born here. My screen name is a homage to my beloved grandmother, who emigrated here legally from Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s.

Don't think of it so much as a wall as a great big Dam. If you open the flood gates of a Dam, what happens? The people and homes downstream get flooded. Better to equalize the 'walls' of commerce first, where everyone's boat is lifted, not where only the wealthiest do better, while pushing the rest of us out onto a tiny life raft.

This will require sane economic legislation both here AND south of the border. This will benefit both sides long term and, best of all, people won't feel forced to move out of desperation, economic or otherwise. What we often forget in these discussions is that many ordinary folK here are struggling as well because of that same 'economic dam.'

We forget the "Americas' stretch from the the North Pole to within miles of Antarctica, to paraphrase JFK and(The darling of the right)Ronald Raygun " We are all Americans, Mr. Bush l say to you-------- TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!"

Hey, Rio, relax. There are more and more hispanics of Mexican heritage winning elections all across the southwest and in California. Soon you will have a majority in several legislatures. At that point you will have retaken Aztlan and you can pass as many racist laws against caucasians as you like.

Nothing wrong with 'love,' but it does not mean ignoring practical concerns either. For example, we may get a 'feel good' president who refuses to make the hard choices. All the love in the world won't keep us from fighting if necessities become scant. We could use the immigration issue to improve conditions for ALL workers, or labor in general.

We must ask ourselves who is benefiting the most from the influx of undocumented workers. Is it we who are finding our schools ever more crowded? Is it we (or even 'they') who are benefiting from lower or stagnant wages, the rising cost of medical care and more difficult requirements for qualifying when in need?

Or is it businesses and big agri-corps who are raking in the dough and taking advantage of us all, including their 'undocumented' workers? YES!

And before we open the 'flood gates' to illegals and start singing 'everything is beautiful,' let's honestly ask ourselves how much we PERSONALLY are willing to sacrifice so that THEY can have a better life (i.e., are we willing to pay more income, property, or sales tax?) I'm sorry folks, but this is the PRACTICAL side of it. Since many 'undocumented' workers work 'under the table,' they are exempt.

Because from what I see, there is hardly anybody else talking about making those benefiting most from the cheap labor pony up.

I say compassion must be balanced with practicality, lest it not really be compassion at all, but just plain foolishness, which will eventually turn to resentment, then violence.

Sally Kuhn's is exactly the kind of presentation of immigrants' plights that is effective in influencing public opinion toward the "love" approach that she (and I) advocate. In Florida we had at graduation time last year a "case" of an equally earnest and worthy graduate about to be deported, and even some of the Republican moss-back members of Congress from south Florida intervened on her behalf. The problem, of course, with these moving presentations of individual cases is that the U.S. public sheds an occasional tear for the plight of individual victims of our mindless immigration policies and reverts back to some of the lethal fear-and-pity attitude toward immigrants generally that is reflected, for example, in some of the earlier comments. We're a long way from "love" as the basis of public policy in this country, but Kohn's effort is a start at least.

Part of the struggle for subsistence, and betterment of life's prospects, is immigrating to where the prospects are. The incumbents a few steps above on the ladder always resent or exploit the new incoming competition, and try and rig the situation. This is the population control you get when there is no serious self-restriction on population growth. A large scale program of Pregnancy preventions, education on contraception, legalized abortion, and tax penalties for large families is required. Otherwise their is a strong competition for decreasing resources, evermore stress on the planet support systems, and world full of slums. It is only a matter of time before US cities turn into slum towns. Soon we will be the only large species left, and it will be a fight to the death over scraps of food.

Adeletheczech,
Juan was uninvited ? Who the fuck invited you to come here ? you fucking white hypocrite, why don't you go back to Europe ? no one invited your white ass here either

I wish I could properly describe how differently we gringos are received these days in Mexico. Not surprisingly or unreasonably, it's a reflection of the Lou Dobbs attitude toward them. I used to be able to go anywhere 25 miles south of the border except Mexico City and encounter nothing but smiles and warmth -- the same feeling the fellow who interupted his illegal immigration to save the child's life whose mother died in a car accident here not too long ago. Now, every gas station tries to charge what we pay here for gas. It's a real tragedy, and we have nobody but ouselves to blame for allowing this 13th century xenophobia in the name of free speech. People who join in with that should be subjected to the flip side of their unAmerican ideologies, yet they call themselves Christians. Poor Mexico; so far from God, so near the United States.

if you want to scare people, use the term "illegal alien".
if you want to know the truth, they are " undocumented workers", with the emphasis on " worker", because given a chance, they would be documented.
only 10,000 mexicans are allowed to imigrate yearly, not nearly enough that are needed here in the united states.
mexico isn't our enemy, they are our friends.

To reply to the "illegal immigrants who are working at jobs that low-income American workers could fill" comment:

where I live on the Central Coast of California, all agricultural jobs below a certain dollar amount (read below living wage) are held by immigrants. It's been that way for a long time, since these people all came to pick and process: the Japanese, the Chinese, the Filipinos, the Okies, the Mexicans, and now the Central Americans.

They come for various reasons and they do the jobs others won't take. If AdeleTheCzech doubts this, I invite her to come spend a 13-hour day in the fields, with one sani-can two miles away for you; few breaks; no shelter from the sun; and no complaining or you lose the opportunity for this job.

These immigrants bring an amazing vigor to our community, and I know some from teaching English as a Second Language. The people who immigrate here are for the most part law-abiding, family-oriented folks who add immeasurably to the layers of previous immigrants from Slovenia, Ireland, and other places outside the U.S.

The salad and the strawberries you eat probably came from my area, picked by these immigrants, because no one who has any alternatives will do that back-breaking work.

Either tear down that D__M statue in New Jersey's harbor, replace it's torch with a stop sign, or change it's tablet to read " Give us your best and brightest(or at least richest), all others go home."

I would tell Juan to go back to Mexico (most likely the country he came from) and get a college degree FOR FREE. In Mexico, the best colleges are public, they have better infrastructure and professors than private ones. The only problem is that after graduation there are not a lot of jobs. Still, he has a lot more opportunities for development there, than staying in the USA where he will never stop being an "illegal".

"...as a nation, we are blessed by the bounty of generation upon generation of immigrants who have come to our shores to make a better life for themselves and, in so doing, make a better country for us all. It is the nation that .... we should be proud to love. And Juan, like millions waiting at the gates of the American dream, loves his country and asks for our love in return."

Beautifully written, Sally, Just a few factual problems though. First, if you believe we should make no distinction between legal and illegal immigration, then logically you must oppose any laws limiting the number of people who can emigrate to the U.S. This leads to the second problem: we have accumulated at least 12 million illegal immigrants who are working at jobs that low-income American workers could fill, and are driving down already-low wages. If you don't think that creates fear in the unemployed, perhaps you've never been poor!
Third problem: Juan is not "waiting at the gates" -- his parents brought him here, uninvited (and presumably, because he's smart, you'd like him to get a slot at a local college now instead of the son or daughter of a legal resident). Just think of the important contribution a promising boy like Juan could make in his country of origin, if he and his family were to go home. Developing countries will not be able to sustain a large "brain drain" in the 21st century.

America now has an unskilled labor SURPLUS, and we're heading into a very serious recession. What we need is to renegotiate those dumb trade pacts like NAFTA, which are driving millions off their small farms south of the border, up north to Uncle Sam. (If you haven't read Thom Hartmann on this subject, please do! When people can make a decent life for themselves in their native land, they aren't interested in migrating.)

If juan can't live in this country, then this isn't the country I was born in.

Juan has every opportunity to enlist as any native American born kid. I suggest he do what folks who want to serve their country do, like Sen Kerry, Jimmy Carter, and many liberals...serve Obama or HRC..enlist.