A Thoughtful Post on Immigration

Dafyyd, of Big Lizards, has written a rather thoughtful post on the Immigration legislation currently going through congress. He makes a case by first making the distinction between a guest and an immigrant. You should read the whole thing, but he rightfully states that any solution to the immigration debate must be able to distinguish between them. An excerpt:

An immigrant wants to renounce his citizenship in his country of origin (usually birth but not always) and become an American;

A guest wants only to visit for a time; this includes tourists, students, and workers (legal and illegal). A guest worker, of course, wants to come here and work, then go back home.

These two groups create two radically different "cities," which can exist in the same physical space: on the right hand, a city of foreigners who are really just Americans in training, who think and act as much like Americans as they can; and on the left hand, a city of foreigner who like being foreign, who don't like America or Americans, who may even seethe in resentment that the American Southwest was "stolen" from Mexico (to which it actually never belonged) -- a city of people marching in the streets waving Mexican flags and holding signs that say "this is MY continent!"