Robert I think the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with you. It is just a common sense position. All but kooks recognize the contribution immigrants have made to our country.

We just want them to come here legally.

Guest worker programs are nonsense. Someone living in a cardboard shack in Mexico is not going to come here for 6 years and live the relative good life then go back to a shack when their time is up. It ain't gonna happen.

I don't have anything against a fence in principle, but you know as soon as one is erected in a given area, human enforcement & patrolling will all but cease. After that, it's only a matter of time before the truly dangerous criminal side of immigration (the drug runners, etc., as opposed to the ones who really are just coming here for the jobs) will find a way to exploit things... How many major tunnels have been found in the southwest lately?

My preference in this, as in many other socio-economic issues, is to provide the resources to actually enforce the laws we already have before looking into making new laws - in this case, actually organizing customs & border patrol out of the mess the whole DHS reorganization put them into...

Javier Rodriguez who is one of the people behind that illegal immigration protest last week in Los Angeles has now organized a boycott to sweep across the United States on May 1st, 2006. He has called all Hispanics, legal and undocumented to come tog.....

Calling them second class citizens is wrong, given that they wouldn't be citizens at all and would be expected to leave after a fixed timetable, thus avoiding an underclass.

I'm not as crazy about the House bill as others, though I do favor a wall. I don't like the Senate bill because I don't favor a guest worker program.

My own preference is a strong fence and substantially increased quotas for legal immigrants. The status of existing illegals should be ambiguous.

A few weeks ago I would not have favored a fence and favored more immigration, regardless of circumstance. The protests have changed my mind, permanently.

I generally favor Zakaria's point but think he's mixing two issues when he talks about skilled Indian tech workers and Mexican manual laborers. There are few logical reasons to oppose welcoming the former but some legitimate ones for limiting the latter.

Frankly, I find the whole concept of deliberately creating a caste of second-class citizens morally repugnant. Immigration in the US is a major concern, but this isn't the way to solve it.