what are you saying? that greencards are a mere "make us feel good" gift card?

Green cards are permission to be working here and protection against deportation. The latter is the biggest problem facing immigrants without proper documentation.

Bob Goodlatte is the same repooper POS that allows American jobs to be shipped overseas so that he can pay his pimps so he can keep "his job".

vabelle, I too am in Goodlatte's district. The many times I've contacted his office on veteran's issues I've only received form letters stating "He's working on it." There's never any action on the problems, but nevertheless a nice form letter. [sigh]

There's never been a moment of his time responding to the concerns/problems of his district. He feels that if you have a form letter for your files you should be satisfied.

Oh, how I wish someone like Tom Perriello could unseat taliban Bob. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Perriello

vabelle, do you KOS? I'd like to organize a meet-up in the SW Va region in the near future.

gordona, no, I don't read KOS; I'm a very staid, pragmatic, plodding liberal, too old for such enthusiasms as sprout out there.

Agree with you about the desirability of "someone like Periello"; Andy Schmookler was a sweetie with his heart in the right place, but an epitome of an impractical professor, what with his "truth telling" as the main plank of his "platform". He's still giving lectures (going on, and on, and on) on Facebook...

While I don't live in his district (I'm in Rep. Hurt's 5th district), Rep. Goodlatte is another person (much like Eric Cantor) that just has one of those faces and demeanors that makes you want to punch them square in the face.

I always know when he opens his mouth that something cruel and/or foul will emanate from it. I'm sad that he hasn't been unseated, and hope that the Dems can somehow pick up his seat, so someone sane would take over his district.

Repuber thieves are in open revolt against the Constitution of the U.S. and against the citizens of America. They just haven't started shooting yet.

@cyclist. Bitter Brew might have been plain-vanilla ultra-conservative 22yrs ago, but he sure-as-sure jumped into the Tea Potty with agility uncommon for a man his age, as soon as they started sporting their tea-bag-decorated tricorns. His raised visibility in Congress -- especially as being aligned with every vestige of bigotry going (birtherism, etc) -- dates to early/mid '09; until then, one could ignore him, because he didn't make waves.

Of course it's difficult to imagine. Pimped out repubers don's have imagination and don't need it either - they simply sell themselves to the highest bitter.

joe, it's *bidder*. Like at an auction.

You're really from redstate, aren't you?

OneWay MyWay HighWay non-thinkers are merely a collection of simple minded lookalike subscribers to a talibanistic philosophy handed down from their neanderthal ancestors who attempted to mate with saber tooth tigers and finally realized - after a "process of elimination" - it was a dead end. Thereafter, the survivors are of a single mind for a uniform kind.

ROFLMAO! Anyone gotta light?

They have been the party of NO, now they are just the party of hate.

I have never seen a more disturbing or destructive force in this country, and I am more than appalled by the T-Party. Words fail me as to how much I believe they are just out to destroy Democracy. Somehow we need to end this terrible blight on the landscape of America.

Yes lets use California as an example of Liberal Democrats

By NBC News staff and wire reports

Municipal bankruptcies are spreading like a "disease" in California, one public finance expert warned Wednesday as the city of Atwater declared a fiscal emergency with a budget gap of more than $3 million.

The city's council approved the move on Wednesday night, putting it on the path to becoming the fourth city in the state to declare bankruptcy this year.

With a population of 28,000, Atwater fell on hard times after its housing market imploded and sent property tax revenue plummeting. Furloughs and a hiring freeze had not been able to stem Atwater's losses.

San Bernardino becomes 3rd Calif. city in 2 weeks to file for bankruptcy protection

Municipal debt market analysts are keeping a close eye on the finances of local governments in California out of concern that some could use fiscal emergency declarations as a way to speed Chapter 9 filings to attempt to shed financial obligations.

"In California, we have a disease, and the disease is spreading," David Kotok, chief investment officer at Florida-based Cumberland Advisors, told the State & Municipal Finance Conference conference in New York on Wednesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

"I suspect we're going to see wholesale warnings and downgrades" among bond rating issuers in the state, he said.

If it went bankrupt, Atwater would follow Stockton, San Bernardino and Mammoth Lakes by making a Chapter 9 filing.

San Bernardino, California's city council in July authorized a bankruptcy filing after declaring a fiscal emergency. The city of 210,000 residents 65 miles east of Los Angeles, filed for bankruptcy on August 1.

By contrast, Stockton, a city of 300,000 located about 62 miles to the northwest of Atwater, became California's first city to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection this year after 90 days of inconclusive mediation with its creditors.

Liberal Democrats did not tank our economy in September of 08. Wall Street speculators are 99.9% GOP.

GWB 100% GOP.

India

Can you back up those statements with any documentation????

If you disbelieve her, and the thousands of videos/news articles over the past five years, look them up yourself.

Remember, Google is your friend! Just be thankful it's only electrons...

A moron as ignorant as you certainly is No Laughing Matter, but could you please remember "Remove head from ass before commenting"? Thank you.

LOL! seems to be the "repuber way"! makes sense that repuber oppressors would do anything to keep their maids from filing a complaint. never thought about it but yeah. GOOD OBSERVATION!

you know, they thieving repubes could get a whole lot of home rebuild - EVEN CONSTRUCTION - under the same scenario. so that would be for home costs as $LABOR + $MATERIALS + $LOAN INTEREST - $LABOR!

naturally the wimped out boehner would call that "being a success".

#10 "The vacuum of Philosophical bankruptcy"

Geez, Dragoon, at times you are a poet!

That was a fine post!

Sure was.

repubes like him have a serious MENTAL DISORDER.

Sounds like he wouldn't mind bringing slavery back.

Bingo! You have the Neo-Confederate strategy in a sentence.

She's a writer. She was using aliteration.

Maggie, you do realize don't you, that if any illegal worker is being paid by check, taxes are being withheld? And that illegal worker can't file for a tax return or claim SS benefits?

Or do you, too, have a "French model" boyfriend you met on the internet?

The right wing doesn't do thinking. All they do is talking points. If any thought requires more space than a bumper sticker, they're lost.

The big problem is that the word "illegal" has be appended incorrectly to the term "immigrant." Crossing the border without documentation does not actually incur a criminal penalty. There's no fine for it, no jail time for it (Jail for those awaiting deportation is to prevent them running away. It's not a punishment under law.)

As for your first question "Gun" became a bad word when it became an idol of worship.

You will certainly be the Future Prez of Wingnuttia. Over the months I have watched your idiocy and ignorance bloom and flower, and now I have finally decided to put you where you belong: "Ignore Author."

You have to marvel at how selective the right wing is with their disdain for "illegal." They have absolutely no problem with using tax payer funds to send kids to parochial schools. They have absolutely no problem with their churches blatantly supporting a particular political candidate. They have absolutely no problem suppressing voters who might vote for the "wrong" candidate. They have absolutely no problem with beating up someone for their sexual orientation and then try to claim that it was their religious right to do it. They have no problem hiring an "illegal immigrant" to be a maid, and then short changing her on her wages.

But let some guy cross the border to work at something that needs to be done that no American citizen will stoop to doing, and all of a sudden they find religion. They really are disgusting.

And not only do they crucify someone who doesn't have the power to defend himself, but they also do everything they can to make it impossible for the guy to come across legally. Then one of these stuffed shirt bloviators starts pontificating about waiting in line knowing very well that the system is such that there is no way that guy can ever get papers making it legal to work here.

Never crossed your mind to go to where she was, marry her and then return to the US?

Others should suffer because you were dum...oh, wait.

Never mind.

Hey "rev": "Please remove head from ass before commenting." Thank you.

How nice that there was a way for you to do it legally. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had the same opportunity?

What TC said.

HOW SHOULD WE REGULATE IMMIGRATION? A SENSIBLE IMMIGRATION POLICY pg. 95

By GLENN FRANK (1)

(1887- ) As Editor of and contributor to The Century Magazine Glenn Frank showed unusual comprehension of great public problems. As a public lecturer he has exerted strong influence in molding opinion. In 1925 he became President of the University of Wisconsin.

Among his works are The Politics of Industry, and An American Looks at His World.

§1. How old is American anti-foreign feeling?

An H. G. 'Wells (2) might write an "Outline of American History" in terms of the waves of "nativism" or anti-foreign feeling that have periodically swept over the American mind. We are today at the crest of one of these waves. We are in the midst of a crusade against the foreigner. This crusade is expressing itself in various fields and in varied ways, in Ku- Kluxism, in the new passion of the Nordics, (3) who, by self-appointment, have become" the chosen people," with a divine commission to play the role of racial Mussolini (4) to the planet, in the almost immodest Americanism of the professional patriot, in a social reaction that needs a bogy with which to scare the electorate into its camp, in a political strategy that needs an emotional issue to distract attention from the oily naughtiness of certain Nordic politicians, and in our legitimately serious discussion of our immigration policy.

The most superficial excursion into the history of anti-foreign feeling in the United States shows that all the arguments and all the catchwords that are doing service today ill our anti-foreigner crusade were in vivid use by Americans at least a hundred and seventy-five years ago.

As Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman (5) pointed out in an address before a recent meeting of the Academy of Political Science, Benjamin Franklin (6), in his "Observations on the Increase of Mankind, " wrote in 1751: "Why should the Palatine (7) boors he suffered to swarm into our settlements and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by England, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?"

In 1782, Thomas Jefferson, (8) in his "Notes on Virginia," says of immigrants: "They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leaves, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty." And years later Jefferson asks "whether it is desirable for us to receive the dissolute and demoralized handicraftsmen of the old cities of Europe." To-day we are likely to assume that immigration became a thorny problem only when migrations from the South and East of Europe set in. But, as Professor Seligman indicates in the address from which I am quoting, almost a hundred years ago Americans were crying for protection from English and Irish immigrants. In 1837 an anonymous American, signing himself "A Native," states in a letter to the Mayor of the City of new York that "Even the English if they are more tasteful than the Irish can never deviate from the precise customs of their country." From 1830 to 1810, a period that saw riots against foreigners in the streets of New York, Boston, and Cincinnati, the anti-foreign feeling in America was directed against the English, the Irish, and the Germans. And virtually all of the arguments and catchwords now being used by the Nordic apologists against immigrants from the South and East of Europe were then used against those Nordic stocks to which much of the current discussion looks back longingly as the ideal source of immigrants.

(1) Reprinted by special permission of Glenn Frank.

(2) Herbert George V\ells (1866- ). A distinguished English novelist, author of An Outline of History.

(3) Nordics. The races of northern Europe.

(4) Benito Mussolini (1883- ). Premier of Italy; a man whose influence is felt in every side of Italian life.

(5) Edwin R. A. Seligman (1861- ). Professor of Political Economy and Finance, Columbia University.

(6) Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). A distinguished American statesman, scientist and philosopher.

(7) Palatine. A part of Germany west of the Rhine; a region from which many people emigrated to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century.

(8) Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). Writer of the Declaration of Independence, and third President of the United States.

§2. What immigration policies have been proposed?

It is desirable to have clearly in mind the various immigration policies that have been proposed during our history. These may, I think, be accurately classified under five types of policy, which we may conveniently call the open door, the closed door, the swinging door, the door ajar, and the guarded door. I want simply to sketch briefly these proposed policies in turn.

The open door, by which is meant a policy permitting any and all who desire to come to the United States from any quarter of the globe to come without let or hindrance. Few, if any, Americans would seriously' suggest such a policy as possible at the present time.

The closed door, by which is meant a policy of complete exclusion. The impossibility of a policy of permitting no immigration whatever is so obvious that it need not be discussed.

The swinging door, by which is meant a policy under which we should allow very free, if not wholly unrestricted, immigration for a period of years and then exclude all immigrants until we had thoroughly assimilated the blood and culture of those we had let in, as one eats breakfast at eight and allows his digestive system five hours in which to do its work before going to lunch at one. The narrow basis of analysis upon which such a policy rests and the obvious difficulties that would be encountered in its operation permit us to pass it with a few sentences.

The door ajar, by which is meant the sort of policy that adopts an arbitrary basis of calculation, such as the census of 1890, and an arbitrary percentage, such as two per cent. There are several aspects of such a policy that lie open to serious criticism, but I desire to emphasize only the fact that it is inadequate as a permanent policy because it is arbitrary and mechanical. If we had arrived at a final notion of what Americanism is and what we want it to become, and if we could invent an infallibly accurate meter that would tell us exactly when an immigrant is assimilated and record accurately the point at which our machinery and processes of assimilation break down, such a mathematical determination of the question might be possible. I submit, however, that we have yet to round out and enrich our conception of Americanism, and .that we cannot yet, save by guesswork, say that we can assimilate two per cent., but cannot assimilate three per cent., of any given number.

The guarded door, by which is meant a truly scientific regulation of immigration. Every sort of guard is to-day bidding for control of Ellis Island. (9) Sentimental humanitarianism long held the post. Racial dogmatism is asking that the keys be placed in its hands. A perverted nationalism wants to write the rules of entry. There is only one applicant for the job who has unassailable references, and that applicant is scientific statesmanship.

(9) Ellis Island. A small island in New York Harbor, used as an immigrant station.

§3. How can we regulate immigration scientifically?

Under a scientific regulation of immigration we shall, of course, select the sort of immigrants that will, in our judgment, help rather than hinder the building of a superior social order on this continent. Speaking broadly, we have all the people we need in the United States. The open spaces are filling up. If we are to build for the benefit of our children and of the rest of the world a superior social order, we should not be in a hurry to make population press hard against food supply. The task ahead of us calls, as someone has phrased it, for the "skim" of the earth rather than for the "scum" of earth. Therefore we must select our immigrants.

In selecting them we must scrutinize carefully the motives of migration. The quality of immigrants varies with the motives at inspire their migration. The religious motive is likely to give a good immigrant, equipped with a stern sense of conscience and duty that is not a bad ingredient in a social order. The political motive has, in the past, given us good immigrants, but we must recognize that most of the world has caught up with the democracy we were pioneers in preaching and that much of the justification for the asylum-for-the-oppressed theory of America has disappeared. The economic motive is, perhaps, the poorest credential for an immigrant. In earlier days, when men came to carve a permanent home out of this unsubdued land, the economic motive gave us adventurous immigrants, men of valor and vision. But to-day the economic motive gives us largely unskilled labor in search of quick returns in high wages. The ease of migration to-day means a lower type of immigrant.

And we must, I think, select our immigrants upon the basis of their individual fitness for participation in our national life rather than upon any arbitrary racial classification, I do not dispute the fact that races have differing endowments of blood and culture. I do not dispute the fact that the promiscuous interbreeding of races makes a coherent and creative national life next to impossible. But for us the die has been cast. Whether we regard it as a subtle poison or the elixir of life, foreign blood is in the veins of our national life. We are already a medley of peoples. We face a problem of social procedure as well as a problem of biology and anthropology. We cannot tear apart the racial strands of our national life, make outcasts of all but our own Nordic folk, and proceed to breed back to a one-race America. That way lies an ugly century of race hatred, social bigotry, and organized intolerance, with the spirit of the Nordics poisoned in the process. It seems to me, therefore, that we must decide what qualities this national experiment of ours calls for in its citizens, and then set about perfecting ways and means of judging whether or not prospective immigrants have those qualities. As the mental tests are perfected, we shall find them among the instruments o our selection. We shall evolve a method for getting the family background of prospective immigrants. We are only beginning to explore the possibilities of the science of human measurement. A truly selective immigration policy can come into effective operation only as fast as this science develops. If we Nordics are as certain of our superior qualities as our more ardent press agents assert, we need have no fear that we shall not fare well, in a scientific selective process administered by ourselves.

Scientific statesmanship will not leave the number of immigrants to be determined as a by-product of the competing strategies of employers and labor leaders, but will determine that issue in the light of a far-sighted program for the economic development of the United States. It has been well said that a "shortage of labor" does not always mean a "shortage of laborers." As long as the problem of unemployment has not been solved, or as nearly solved as may be humanely possible, we have no right to meet what may be technically called "a shortage of labor" by calling in immigrant laborers. In the intensive development of the American social and economic order for the next half-century we shall need leaders more than we shall need laborers. We must select out of the mass of men and women who would like to come to the United States those strains of blood and culture that are most likely to produce leadership. As yet we are mere babes in the matter of knowing how to go about the job of selection, but the fact that it is a difficult and challenging process does not justify our falling back permanently upon the lazy method of rigid racial classification and mathematical percentages.

Then, too, scientific statesmanship will see to it that those who come to us are wisely fitted into our national life. Immigration challenges us to a vast national adventure in vocational guidance. There is nothing but trouble ahead for us if we go on importing low-class laborers to do "the dirty work" of the country on the theory that" good Americans" will not do it. Half a century of that sort of policy gives the lie to all our talk about the dignity of labor. A scientific social order will not recognize any work as "dirty" work. The national organization of information and guidance will enable us to prevent the congestion of immigrants in cities and will in time give back to all work its inherent dignity.

§4. What is creative Americanization?

And, finally, scientific statesmanship will give us a realistic and creative notion of Americanization. It will invest this attempt of ours to build a superior social order with a richness of meaning that will force us to see that Americanization is something more than saluting the Goddess of Liberty, learning the English language, memorizing the Constitution, and forgetting one's racial and cultural heritage. Under scientific statesmanship Americanization will not be something we "do to the immigrant," but the whole going process of American life. Americanization will be a national adventure in which we shall invite the immigrant to cooperate, not a specific course of treatment to which we ask the immigrant to submit in classrooms. Most of the things that now go by the name of Americanization will be taken for granted as obvious means to an end; they will not receive the major emphasis they do today. Under scientific statesmanship we shall not act as the frightened guardians of "institutions" which must be forever "protected" against assault; we shall act as the directors of a living human experiment in nation-building, an experiment in which the abundant vitality and authentic vision of the people will readjust old institutions and create new ones better to serve the changing needs and better to express the growing spirit of America. Under such statesmanship the immigrant will not be made to feel that he is faced with the doctrinal test of a static political creed; he will be made to feel that he is receiving the inspiring opportunity to share in the creative task of building a new and superior social order. As. any good modern teacher does in the classroom, we shall rule the immigrant by the awakening of his interest rather than by the imposition of arbitrary discipline.

The hour for very severe restriction on immigration has come, but let us so administer restriction that our policy shall make for the moral and spiritual unity of America, not for an America split asunder by the warring hatreds of mutually suspicious and intolerant racial groups.