>Really, 'free' minimal emergency services. Well, I have no
>health insurance and no free medical services, I have the
>thousands of dollars of unpaid medical bills to prove it.

You're not going to the right place, then, or you're paying for services that aren't considered "emergency".

>We have plenty of desperate people in America already, legal
>citizens, people who are supposed to be here, have social
>security cards, lets try helping them first.

So are you arguing for greater entitlements for poor American citizens? That doesn't seem like something you'd support. We don't give much help to illegals as it is. If we stopped entirely, and instead used the money to provide additional services for the American poor, I'm not convinced it would make a significant difference in most peoples' lives.

>We continue to ignore our homeless, hungry citizens while sending
>money and food overseas. It's time to start taking care of >ourselves for once.

You can thank Reagan for that, who turned everyone out of the mental hospitals. Homeless people largely suffer either from mental illness or substance addiction. Or both. What do you propose "we" do about them, in place of sending charity overseas?

>Hm, the illegal alien I saw on CNN a few months ago, when the
>hispanic community was going to organize a 1 day strike,
>didn't seem too bad off. He was self employed, did roofing
>jobs, owned 2 cars and his wife looked well dressed.

Like everyone else, some are more self-motivated and competant than others. This guy most likely did more than just work as part of a crew; he probably managed his own crew. He's the kind of guy we probably should have let immigrate legally in the first place, considering he apparently has a successful construction business and is contributing to society.

>Now tell me how looking the other way
>"benifits" me? How does it benefit other small time roofing
>contractors that are losing business to this person who
>doesn't exist in America?

It benefits you when your house, your food, your meals at restaurants, and your hotel rooms are substantially cheaper than they might otherwise would be.

>Keep pretending that these aliens are a benefit to our country
>and that they only do jobs that we don't want to.

In some ways they clearly do benefit citizens. That's undisputed. The question is whether it's a net benefit or the costs outweigh the gains. As for the jobs, those are jobs that Americans clearly won't do for the wages being offered, so in that sense they are taking jobs Americans don't want to do. The sorts of jobs illegals typically fill are those for which almost any American is overqualified.

The unskilled citizen without even a high school degree is still overqualified to pick grapes or clean hotel rooms. Why? Because he speaks English. So in the pantheon of jobs, "grape picking" is still going to rank near the bottom. In every economy there is a spectrum of jobs. Some require a very high degree of skill (surgeon) others require no skill (picking fruit). If the labor market were truly fluid, then the going rate for fruit pickers would be closer to what illegals earn than it would be to the current U.S. minimum wage. When we (as a country) import our menial labor and pay rates well below what we consider "humane" even for our own citizens, we're giving U.S. owned corporations a huge break, allowing for cheaper domestic prices and allowing those corporations to be more competitive overseas (which benefits American shareholders, and employees of those companies). It's sort of like like Nike with its overseas sweatshop workers, except we bring the sweatshop workers here, where at least they funnel some portion of their earnings back into the U.S. economy.

Now, clearly there's a cost associated with this. We (the taxpayers) subsidize this cheap menial labor when we pay (through our taxes) for those few services illegals actually do use. Roads, schools, emergency medical services. I'm not entirely convinced we "lose" once everything's taken into account.

>If we are to reform the system to allow more immigrants in
>legally, we first have to block the leak in the dam that's
>about to burst. Stop the constant flow of mexicans illegally
>crossing the border...

How would you propose we stop that flow? A fence sure isn't going to do it. Neither will upping the amount of border patrol agents. And as I pointed out earlier, half of illegal residents crossed the border legally. Are you going to forbid all Mexicans from entering the United States, even temporarily?

>My Grandfather came to America as a child over 90 years ago.
>His father went through the immigration system during the time
>you are talking about, the difference is, he didn't sneak
>over. He wasn't here on a work permit and never left, he did
>things legally.

90 years ago the rate of legal immigration (as a percentage of total population) was higher than the current rate of total immigration (legal + illegal). In other words, it was a heck of a lot easier for your grandfather to legally immigrate 90 years ago than it would be today.

>I find it hard to believe there are so many Liberals out there
>that honestly believe that there is nothing wrong with
>breaking the law, or that when one is caught breaking the law,
>it should go unpunished.

Few people think there's nothing wrong with breaking the law. They do recognize extenuating circumstances, which you seem unwilling to do. Many people are realistic about the situation with the Mexican border, and the fact that it's almost impossible to keep people out who want to come in. Problems that are "almost impossible" can often be solved by just throwing a ton of money at them, and this one is no different. Hypothetically, we could hire enough border patrol agents to link arms across the entire US-Mexico border and work in shifts so that the human chain remains unbroken 24 hours a day. But would that be a good national investment? I highly doubt it. The only feasible solution for reducing illegal immigration to either 1) let everyone immigrate legally who wants to, 2) create a large disincentive to immigrating illegally (e.g. summary execution), or 3) remove or greatly reduce the incentives to immigrate illegally.