My family is of latin decent. But since the little island we are from is a US territory we were blessed with US citizenship at birth. I have my cultural pride, but I'm an American first.

I had an interesting discussion with my sister today. In a nutshell she's all for legalizing the illegals, I feel they should all be shipped back to mexico and I'd gladly drive the bus. She works in the Hispanic center or something at the college she's attending. I can understand her emotional response. I mean, if you know people who are illegal but still contribute to society, obey the law (cept for the illegal immigration part), and are generally good people and really are working hard to assimilate and live the american dream it'd be hard if not impossible to brand them a felon and deport them. I understand that, but the principle still stands that they should not have smuggled themselves in here in the first place and that they are a small percentage of who is sneaking across the border.

Anyways, I have to dispell this illusion that somehow the illegals are all wonderfully peaceable people simply looking for a job and illustrate to her that they have tremendous social and economic costs, threaten  the sovreingty of this nation, and in general aren't looking to be american, they just want to plug into our welfare, healthcare, and educational systems for free.

You guys have some good articles? I remember some accounts given by ranchers near the border about all the drug runners and stuff in AZcentral. Stuff like that would be great. Nothing that would be to easy to dismiss on accusations of bias, though she did send me an article from the NYtimes to back her side up.  Thanks

this months SWAT magazine has an excellent article on the warfare and defense being conducted on our border just a few hours south of ushug.gif