That's kind of funny in a sad way; this means there are two cities in Arizona that will reap tourist-type benefits early in the season regardless of the intents and purposes of the visitors.

What's really sad is that people are trying to do economically what they should be doing on moral grounds. If anything shows where our 'hearts and minds' are in this country, it's the way we make economic hay out of everything. Compared to our Mexican and other Latin American cousins, we are a rapacious, greedy, money loving lot. Some conservative minded people writing to Common Dreams have mentioned the horrible mess that is Mexico. Some of the best people I've met have been down in Mexico, peasants, middle class, you name it. They seem to value family and friendship, relations and kindness. Underneath the slick wealth of middle class America is an empty greediness, an overwhelming desire to climb up the ladder no matter what. I'm not very proud to be an American, at least not the U.S. variety.
We are a nation run by corporate interests, but we as a people have let this situation arise, have let it exist since the very beginning of our nation. We stole the continent from indigenous people, made slaves of people we kidnaped from Africa, rode rough-herd over our neighbors to the south and north, stealing parts of their countries. We are a nation of thieves. Everything we have in our land is stolen. I'm not wallowing in guilt, but I'm not proud either. At least I have enough since to know what's what.

So why, if Corporate Amerika is looking to kill the unions, kill our healthcare, kill our pensions, etc, are they NOT letting MORE Mexicans in? Seems to me that would be JUST what Corporate Amerika is looking for. Low cost laborers.

That's what I have been mulling about, cause you KNOW it isn't the reason they are handing out to us all.

In talking to a friend in Tucson,AZ last night, she said the place has changed completely. They have military stops ALL over the place.

Now it makes complete sense! They are using the border as an excuse to get people used to the fact that there will be military checkpoints on roads in the US. They will start near the borders and then expand the operations through out Amerika. The drones now flying the border will also be brought inside the states slowly but surely.

This has NOTHING to do with keeping Mexicans out of the US.
This has EVERYTHING to do with trying to keep control over the average US citizen from rebeling and taking BACK our country.

The federal government (Border Patrol) has for some time surpassed the intrusive behavior included in the AZ law. The Border Patrol at interior highway checkpoints routinely asks motorists about citizenship, and occasionally goes beyond citizenship to ask other intrusive questions such as where you're coming from, do you own the vehicle, etc.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the BP can inquire about citizenship, but in Miranda the Supremes reaffirmed our constitutional right to silence -- so there's a conflict.

Yesterday the Massachusetts senate voted 28-10 in favor of far reaching legislation that cracks down on illegal alien's and those that hire them. The new provision also toughens rules that bar them from public health, housing and higher education benifits. The boycott movement is going to be very busy.

Outside Agitators, eh?

We'll show 'em... just like we're showin' the Illegals!
___________________

Just practicing in case I decide to go undercover.

Mexico is a failed state, in part because it is irresponsibly overpopulated. So they are invading the USA to create a "greater mexico". Many Mexicans in the USA still speak Spanish, not even bothering to learn English, and wave large Mexican flags during their marches.

Canada also shares a border with the USA, but in many ways it has succeeded in creating a better quality of life than we have in the USA.

I know a Ukrainian woman who legally came to the USA just a few years ago. She mastered English within a year, and earned a Masters degree, and now works as a concert violinist. And on weekends she is music director for several churches. She is so beloved that people created a fund to give her a new expensive violin.

Under Barry Obamageddon the USA government cannot stop illegal immigration, nor a run away oil company.

I believe his administration is a purposeful impotence and incompetence.

This shill is working out very well for the ruling elite plutocracy.

We are ALL descended from immigrants. Poorer people from less developed countries will inevitably seek better opportunities in developed countries. Let's pass immigrant amnesty legislation for those already here.

From the article:

"Arizona, we feel, is America's Alamo in the fight against illegal and dangerous entry into the United States," said Gina Loudon of St. Louis, who is organizing the "buycott.""Our border guards and all of Arizona law enforcement are the undermanned, under-gunned, taxed-to-the-limit front-line defenders trying to hold back the invasion."

The next question should have been "Gina, what the hell have you been reading or listening to?" This is seriously deviant, I can't remember such bizarre delusions outside of a comedy act. Wow! Don't know whether to laugh, cry or consider emmigrating to someplace better, free of this ugly nationalistic insanity.

These misguided missiles ought to protest in Washington D.C. against the Obama administration which refuses to free Guantanamo prisoners against court orders. Ah, I forgot, it is always whose ox is gored. The other ox does not count.

And then there are the formerly legal, suddenly transformed:

-------------------------------------------------
WELLS, Me. — It was an unusual sign, even for a restaurant here along the Maine coast, where seasonal home-grown businesses are a way of life.

“Closed. Gone to try and get a new visa,” read the hand-scrawled message taped inside the window of Laura’s Kitchen, a cozy eatery that specialized in corned beef hash and omelets and where the tiny tables were still set with brightly colored napkins. “Hope to see you in the spring. Dean & Laura.”

The sign turned out to be overly optimistic. Dean and Laura Franks, a British couple who opened the restaurant in 2000, found that after nine years of running their business, they could not renew their visa, forcing them to shutter the restaurant and leave the country.

The Franks are among thousands of people who enter the United States each year on E-2 visas, which allow citizens from countries with which the United States has certain trade treaties to invest in businesses and work here. The visas generally are renewed every two years, but there is no limit on how many times they can be renewed. Still, they are not intended as a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

But now, immigration advocates say they are hearing more and more accounts of renewal applications being turned down. It has been an enigmatic process for the Franks, uprooting their lives even though they have paid all their taxes, own the restaurant and its adjacent rental house, and have no debts except a mortgage on their home in Arundel, about 35 miles away.

“This is the forgotten story of immigration,” said Angelo Paparelli, a prominent immigration lawyer in California. “The headlines deal with Arizona and border crossings, but these are real people too. This is what happens when you play by the rules.”

In denying the Franks’ renewal application last year, immigration officials said their restaurant had become a marginal business. The government sets no specific dollar amount, but it defines a marginal enterprise as one that “does not have the present or future capacity to generate more than enough income to provide a minimal living” for the visa holder and his family.

The Franks were surprised and confused to learn last year that they were deemed marginal. Their tax returns show that their gross annual income in 2008 was $64,000, in addition to rental income of $16,800. Their gross profit for the year was $38,800, which was down from their gross profit in 2007 of $50,700 because of the recession, which hit most businesses. They said they barely needed more than enough to provide for minimal living because that is how they live — minimally.

“We live frugally, we don’t drink, we don’t smoke, we don’t party, and we live within our means,” Mr. Franks said by phone earlier this year from Nova Scotia, where friends had given them use of an empty house. “We pay all our bills, we don’t have car payments, we pay our credit cards off every month, and that seems to count against us.”

Daniel Maranci, a lawyer in Boston who represented the Franks, said the couple met the test of earning more than enough to make a living because they had enough to hire three or four Americans as waiters and to pay for their properties.

“The marginality requirement is fairly subjective,” Mr. Maranci said. “U.K. nationals are saying there has been a shift generally in the way these cases are being adjudicated, with a more draconian view of marginality.”

Over the last two and a half years, 8,468 requests for E-2 extensions have been filed, and their approval rate does appear to have dropped, according to figures provided by William G. Wright, a spokesman for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. So far in the 2010 fiscal year, he said, 82 percent of the applications have been approved. In 2009, 84 percent were approved, and in 2008, 91 percent. The service does not track the reasons for denial, so the extent to which marginality was a factor is not clear.

The Franks said the vagueness of the standards made them hard to meet. “Because there are no hard and fast rules, they can get you on whatever they want,” Mrs. Franks said.

...

They worry that they will not be able to sell their properties before their time expires, when they expect to go to Canada.

“I love America,” Mr. Franks said, but he has become embittered because their hard work and frugal ways seem to count for nothing.

“You can go from ‘illegal’ to ‘green card holder,’ but we’re going from ‘legal’ to ‘no way you can get a green card,’ ” he said. “We did it wrong. If we came here illegally, we’d have a chance of becoming citizens.”
-------------------------------------

Shades of the Japanese Relocation Act. I wonder who the connected individual is who will now be able to buy a home and successful restaurant for a song.

No doubt Native Americans are looking upon the protesters on either side Pro and Con and thinking:

What a bunch of Jack Asses?

Number two v. number three for who has more right to claim priority place on this continent.

The native Americans arrived here before the Europeans by about 30 thousand years.

Most Mexicans are a mix of the two groups.

Good Grief.

The motivation for undocumented people to come here is understandable, but their welfare, environmental, and social costs cannot be sustained.

Their high birth rates here, which further adds to their numbers and to their medical costs, are encouraged by our policy of granting citizenship to those born here regardless of the conditions of their parent's occupancy. This policy stems from a misapplication of the 14th Amendment which was intended to guarantee citizenship to the freed slaves. Granting citizenship under these conditions was clearly not the intent of the legislators who passed the amendment. Abolishment of this reward for overpopulating is paramount for resolving the immigration problem.

This problem would diminish dramatically, at a relatively modest cost to us, if we were to help them improve their home conditions by assisting in family planning, education, medical care, and by rectifying flaws in our trade practices.

Mexicans are a mix of 35 ethnic groups from all over the world, just like in the USA. Many people in the USA also have American Indian blood. I personally have American Indian ancestors on both sides of my own gene pool. But I do not think this gives me or anyone else the right to overpopulate the USA, or any other part of the planet. Nearly 7 billion is already far too many for earth's life support systems. Thousands of unique forms of life are being driven to extinction each year by human pressure on the environment.

In Mexico and in other countries the Catholic church and other religious groups bear heavy responsibility for encouraging overpopulation. These excessive numbers, create poverty, crime, and mass migration.

Overpopulating countries will never deal with their problem as long as they are allowed to dump excess population on their neighbors.

We have reached a turning point in history where no nation can allow itself to be used as a dumping ground for the excess population of another country.

China has shown leadership by establishing a one child policy some years ago, and this has been a major factor in China's remarkable economic progress in recent years. Without the one child policy there would be 400 million more Chinese today in that already overpopulated country. That would be equal to the USA and Mexico combined, and would surely have caused China to collapse. All other nations must follow China's one child example.

Over population and environmental pressures are at the heart of this debate.
With a world population approaching 7 billion, there can not possibly be a decent lifestyle for everyone.
Yes, we are very wasteful here in the US, but even if we weren't, the Earth would still be stretched beyond its limits.
Furthermore, immigrants to the US adopt our very wasteful lifestyle.
I get very annoyed when well meaning people talk about eliminating poverty by creating jobs.
Most jobs are about depleting resources and destroying the environment.
By providing cheap labor, Illegal immigrants keep costs low.
People respond to low prices by wasting more.
For example, meat is cheaper than it should be because the hideous and dangerous slaughterhouse jobs can be staffed for very low wages. As a result, we can go to restaurants and get enormous meals for very low prices.
Cheap labor contributes to every green space being razed and developed with strip malls, housing developments and big box stores.
The Arizona law is good for the environment, bad for corporations.
I heartily approve.
It is very strange to have to say that it is a crime to be an illegal immigrant.
Such redundancy.
It is a crime to break the law. That goes without saying.

Dafoe
"The Business of America is Business" as one of the Presdents said in the early last century and so it is, everything has a price now, everything. This is a nation where most people know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
What do you expect, corruption rules at every level of government, every level, no one speaks for this nation and hasn't for half a century and certainly not the GOP presdents. This Arizona bit of racism is just the tip of the iceberg. It is another breeding ground for bullies and thugs, like the border guards at borders and airports, they are answerable to no one for their rotten behaviour as they get their marching orders from the thugs in management, they don't serve the public. Find me a government department that does serve the public.
This nation is falling apart before ones eyes, fearful and afraid of being found out that it is all puff and wind, no underlying substance except the worship of money and the need to have someone to look down on.