Before celebrating these folks' Christian charity stop and think a moment who else is squarely behind this immigration bill: George W Bush. And the Religious Right remains his adoring fan club, just about his only adoring fan club. They really think the guy can do no wrong. So I'd be a bit cynical on this one.

There are also a significant portion of the Democrats that are against this reform as proposed, creating a wedge amongst our ranks as well. Polls show that 74% of Americans want sanctions for employers that hire illegal immigrants. 65% want a border fence. Those numbers can't get that high unless they also include Democrats.

These are Democrats who are not interested in selling out our poor, uneducated black, hispanic, and white workers that illegal immigrants compete against in the marketplace.

These are Democrats who are disgusted at the racist arguments which state uneducated American black, hispanic, and white workers are stupid and lazy and not deserving of jobs while stating that illegal immigrants are hard-working and industrious and deserving of the jobs that used to go to Americans.

These are Democrats who see wages decreasing in every industry that illegal immigrants enter, which is not limited to agriculture. For example, meat packing jobs that used to pay $19 in 1980 now pay $9 per hour, which is worse when you also factor in 27 years of inflation.

These are Democrats who know the negative effects that unlimited population growth would have on health care reform, education reform, decreasing pollution, protecting the environment, sustainable development, increasing wages, reducing inequality, and other causes that we care about.

These are Democrats that see the lack of fresh water in the desert Southwest, the rolling brownouts due to lack of electricity in California every summer, the closing of hospitals in poorer sections LA and know that these are all caused by overpopulation and would only get worse with more people.

These are Democrats that see that the US already has the third highest population in the world and know that unlimited immigration is unsustainable.

These are Democrats that have not sold us out for supposed future hispanic votes or corporate money for cheap labor, like our leadership.

Corvid

I'm surprised there isn't more division on the left over illegal immigration. Consider just this one fact: The President's Council of Economic Advisers estimates that there will be a $350 billion annual loss in wages paid mostly to the poorest working Americans if the current amnesty bill passes. Of course, in perverse Republico-think, this is offset by a $350 billion-a-year gain for the employers. So isn't that swell? And, overall, an additional $30 billion a year in increased economic activity, again with the benefits accruing to employers, with a bit trickling down to consumers.
.
How regressive can you get? But, you may ask, why wouldn't wages eventually go up if all these illegals are legalized and can demand better compensation? Maybe because--if you believe the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office--the border enforcements in the immigration bill would do little to actually reduce illegal border crossings. The CBO sees a maximum reduction in illegal immigration of only 25 percent a year for the foreseeable future, and that's assuming that all the enforcement provisions are funded AND implemented--a huge and probably farcical assumption.
.
So given these two likely outcomes: 1) a massive , regressive loss in wages for American workers who can least afford it, and 2) further downward pressure on wages as illegal immigration continues unchecked, I'm curious as to why ANY progressive would continue to support this bill. Anyone out there care to answer? Please, if you do, address these two points specifically before going on to make whatever points of your own that you may wish to address.
.
(Also please note here that I'm not even getting into the H-1B visa aspects of the bill, which are absolutely horrific.)
.
By the way, how much compassion do these Baptists and Catholics have for the millions of Americans in hundreds of small towns across the Midwest and West whose lives have been ruined by this alien influx? Any mention of that in the pulpits these days? I don't attend church, so I'm just wondering.

The Congress has become so divorced from the society they claim to rule and so wedded to their patrons in industry, it can be no wonder that you get this 'grand bargain' - sheesh - who were the two parties negotiating? Was it the fruit growers 'verses' the vegetable growers?

Despite high minded principles and grandiose rhetoric this is pure 'interest' politics.

Gee, I wonder whether an entity entitled The President's Council Of Economic Advisors would be a source of unbiased and pragmatic, agenda-free, information.

Furthermore, since the economy is generating so many jobs (not), you blythely assert that somehow jobs for illegals on the order of a million a year simply rain down like manna? It's more complicated than that. Have a look at what happened to jobs when the amnesties of the mid-Eighties and mid-Nineties took place.

Exactly why all these oh-so-virtuous small towns across the Midwest and West deserve to be an all-white economic protectorate isn't really a given. 150 years ago that was Indian Country. Until mechanization around 1900 they were perhaps marginally selfsufficient- and if they had had bear the costs of infrastructure and military protections and such, probably not even that. Since the Dust Bowl they've overtly been on welfare, er, farm subsidy programs and the like.

These li'l towns are also the hotbeds of high Christianist conservative virtue and the latent anti-Indian racism that comes with denial that the land they were built on was acquired in wrongful ways. Exactly where the high moral ground against "alien influx" is to derive from historically is not so very clear.

There is an assumption in your post that the creation of the rural American West and Midwest in a 19th Century agrarian European image is a permanent and precious and just feature of American life. Historically it's quite artificial. It's been economically unsustainable for two generations, culturally unsustainable for maybe one- and the able young leave for the cities, for exurbia and megachurches (as a first stage), to have a future. Small agricultural towns are fading out from the Dakotas to Kansas already. At some point, i.e. the past decade or two, that insustainability becomes a social one. It's irresistable to scapegoat outsiders for almost all of the decline- but it's largely denial.

It's a logical fallacy to imply that because racists may oppose a large influx of Hispanics, all opposition to the proposed Immigration Bill is based in racism. The earlier immigrants you describe were documented as they entered the country. Why should we not consider the proposed en masse legalization of an estimated 20 million undocumented immigrants (along with any relatives who would be automatically entitled to entry) in the context of an overall immigration policy? Every country has a right to design and implement an immigration policy that is compatible with long-range societal goals and with the nation's short-term capability to assimilate immigrants without arousing ethnic strife.

 earlier immigrants you describe were documented as they entered the country.

Actually, no.

I shan't bore you with a complete history of immigration.  I save that for my students and I'm paid to do it.  HOWEVER. 

• The Constitution is mute on naturalization. It establishes periods for which one must have citizenship to run for office (7 years, House, 9 years Senate), it establishes that Citizens of one state shall enjoy the liberties of citizens of the "several states" and it empowered congress to establish legislation.
• Congress did so three times in quick succession, 1790, 1793, and 1798. These only established residency requirements (of increasing length).  The third was a blatant political ploy to cut down the voters likely to vote for Thomas Jefferson.  Even in those days, the Democratic Party was the party friendly to immigration.
• Congress then did nothing regarding naturalization until 1870 which it set some controls (again largely matters of residency) and eliminated the proscription against naturalization for Blacks present in the earlier legislation.
• Immigration laws, as opposed to naturalization laws, do not make the books until 1882,  If we're going to have Immigrants, we might as well tax them (50 cents a head). And we have our first defined exclusion "The legislation also gave powers to the authorities to deny entry to "convicts (except those convicted of political offenses), lunatics, idiots and persons likely to become public charges".".  It also excluded Chinese Immigrants for ten years.   So now racism rears its ugly head.
• So does xenophobia.  In 1906, Speaking English becomes a requirement for naturalization.
• By 1917 we're really scared of persons different from the rest of us, so we extend exclusion to all Asians.  Just to be really safe we also exclude. . ."undesirables banned from entering the country, including but not limited to, “idiots,” “feeble-minded persons,” “epileptics,” “insane persons,” alcoholics, “professional beggars,” all persons “mentally or physically defective,” polygamists, and anarchists. Furthermore, it barred all immigrants over the age of sixteen who were illiterate." 
• And, in 1921 and more importantly, in 1926, for the very first time a quota system is established which set limits on immigrants by nationality,  (excepting exclusion, which I guess is form of quota--zero). The quotas discriminated against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe--against Jews, against any who were "different".  
• We have no accurate data on how many persons immigrated before 1890.  There was no Immigration and Naturalization Service until 1891, which meant no central registry.  We have no accurate data for the number of persons processed through Ellis Island.  The numbers vary from 12,000,000 to 20,000,000.  (eerily like the range estimating the number of undocumented immigrants today).  We have even less accurate information about immigrants who entered via the St. Lawrence River or via ports in the Pacific.  The Chinese and Japanese Acts were no more successful at keeping everyone out than recent exclusionary legislation would be.

So, if your folks came to this country before 1890, odds are they weren't documented when they came.  If your folks came before 1921, it was come one, come all, nobody was saying "stay home" because you're from the wrong place or have the wrong set of skills. 

I don't ascribe racism to all of the opposition to this legislation. I do ascribe xenophobia to a large part of it (rather than worry about arousing ethnic strife--deal with it), and I do not believe that a country has an absolute right to design and implement an immigration policy compatible with long-range societal goals unless it is also willing to subject those goals to thorough scrutiny.  Keeping out is only a short remove from kicking out.  And like Sinclair Lewis, I believe It Can Happen Here. 

aMike

The greatest users of water per capita are not immigrants from Mexico or Latin America, legal or illegal. On the commercial side, look to agribusiness and irrigation. On the residential side, look to the largely Anglo population

So what? Even if I did believe you whether they're the greatest users or not, the last time I checked American business and American citizens have the right to be in this country using water. Illegal immigrants do not have the right to be here and should not be contributing at all to this issue.

Even so, your point does not address my point. Adding unlimited numbers of illegal immigrants only makes the water problems worse.

I also see that you chose not to address the problems with a lack of electric capacity, closing of hospitals, sub-standard hospitals, and outrageous housing costs in California - all made worse by unlimited amounts of illegal immigration.

So, my previous point that we are already experiencing overcrowding stands.

Me: Explain to me the racist viewpoint that poor, uneducated American black, hispanic, and white workers are stupid and lazy and not deserving of jobs while illegal immigrants are hard-working and industrious and deserving of the jobs that used to go to these Americans.

You: First, by denying that it is racist... "American blacks" are not racially different from Immigrant blacks from Jamaica or other islands in the Caribbean, though they may speak Spanish. They aren't racially different from those from Mozambique or Sudan, though some of these may be followers of Islam. "American Hispanics?" Heavens, where did they come from but Hispanic cultures--Central and South America, and Cuba, largely.

Wow, that is completely unbelievable.

So, according to you, American blacks and whites do not experience racism by illegal immigrants from Mexico, any other hispanic nation, or the employers that hire illegal immigrants. According to you, American hispanics, blacks, and whites do not experience racism by illegal immigrants from other foreign groups.

I'll have to let American blacks, whites, and hispanics know that the racism they experience doesn't exist. I'll have to let them know that the racist policies that push illegal immigrants to their jobs, jobs which Americans can't won't do, has nothing to do at all with racism.

Denying racism doesn't make it go away.

...how does racism enter into the question of white workers?

So, racism is only done by white people against everyone else? That is an inherently racist attitude in and of itself. I don't care if you are a white person or not - people certainly can be racist for or against their own race.

I suspect that many of the persons who read and write here, if they knew their own histories intimately, come from stock no less "illegal" than those you seem to fear so unduly.

You are attributing a fear which does not exist. I have no problem with immigrants. My arguments are about illegal immigrants, the difference which you do not seem to comprehend.

Further, your point is meaningless. Even if every single one of us were descendants of illegal immigrants, we would still have the right as current citizens of a sovereign nation to set the immigration policy as we saw fit.

To argue that liberalizing immigration is racist is simply bizarre.

Not when the effect of that liberalization is to replace poor, uneducated, "stupid", and "lazy" black, white, and hispanic American citizens with "industrious", "hard-working", "law-abiding" foreign workers who can will do the jobs that those Americans can't won't do. (And for less money!)

EVERY generation of anti-immigrant uproar (and this comes about once a generation) is based on the same canards.

As I've mentioned countless times now, the problem is not with legal immigration, but illegal immigration.

You still have not addressed other issues I have raised:

Explain to me how you propose to bring in unlimited amounts of poor, uneducated workers without decreasing living wages which harm our own poor and uneducated.

Explain to me how unions will still be relevant when they will not be able to stop employers from hiring unlimited amounts of replacement foreign workers, thereby eliminating the power of the strike.

Explain to me how you propose to handle the negative effects of unlimited population growth that would harm health care reform, education reform, decreasing pollution, protecting the environment, sustainable development, increasing wages, reducing inequality, and other causes that Democrats care about.

Re: So does xenophobia. In 1906, Speaking English becomes a requirement for naturalization.

Requiring naturalized citzens to have at least a working knowledge of English is not xenophobia and it isn't even unreasonable. They do need to communicate with the rest of the country after all, and they will be more likley to prosper if they know English. I would never consider living in any foreign country without some proficiency in its language. That's just common sense.

I stand by what I said.  Colonial Pennsylvania was bilingual--English and German.  Switzerland is tri-lingual, quadri-lingual if one counts Romansch, though I gather it is a dying language.  America was, and is language phobic.  Witness recent attempts to make English America's "Official Language" and perpetual assaults on such elemental things as permitting voting assistance for those who are not fluent in English--or publishing ballot initiatives in many languages.

aMike

Nonsense. As you like to repeatedly point out, we are a nation of immigrants. Most people have no problem with other immigrants. As such, xenophobia does not apply.

I stand by what I said.  We all indeed a nation of immigrants--all of whom have been hated by at least a portion of the previous immigrants.  I never accused all Americans of being Xenophobic.  I never accused you of being xenophobic.  Nativists tried to raise the residency requirement for naturalization to 14 years, because they hated and feared Irish Catholics.  That's xenophobia, pure and  simple.  They failed.  And so it went, and so it goes now.  The literature on this is extensive and well documented.  If you want a reading list, I'll send one to you...Scholarship respected for over 100 years and ongoing today.  In the meantime, The Library of Congress website on Immigration is a good place see how America has treated Immigrant populations, as well as documentation of what a culturally impoverished nation we'd be without them.

If you are going to call me dishonest, then please call me dishonest for what I actually say.  I choose my words carefully.  If you think I mean something, ask me and I'll clarify what I mean.  Assuming my meaning based your predispositions is a good way for helping me decide that further debate with you isn't productive.

aMike

Re: Switzerland is tri-lingual, quadri-lingual if one counts Romansch, though I gather it is a dying language.

The few successful multi-lingual countries either have a single standard lingua franca (a role English fulfills in India for example) which everyone, or almost everyone, knows, or else the countries are truly multilingual with most of their citizens speaking multiple languages (the Swiss situation I believe where German and French biligualism at least very common). The danger is in linguistic ghettoization, where citizens are divided politically and often economically by what language they speak, for an example of which see Belgium. Now, I would never argue that we should drive all other languages to extinction in the US, but I think it's best, and indeed best for our immigrant population, to make English our lingua franca since most of us already speak it, and indeed, its status world-wide means that many (most?) people who emigrate to the US already have some proficiency in it. This isn't xenophobia at all-- I'm certainly not suggesting we ban other languages. I just want to give our culture something to center on, and also save immigrants from being stuck in poverty because they cannot speak the language that gives them access not just to US American culture, but in many ways to opportuinities around the world.

By the way, how much compassion do these Baptists and Catholics have for the millions of Americans in hundreds of small towns across the Midwest and West whose lives have been ruined by this alien influx?

I got so involved in defending immigration generally that I didn't really respond to this question.  I can't speak for Baptists or Catholics (I'm a smells and bells Anglican), nor can I speak for the small towns of the West.  I can speak for some of the small towns from the Midwest, however:  especially those in Minnesota.  Far more sentiment lands on the side of the Immigrants than this question would seem to indicate.  Take, for example,

• Willmar, MN (population 18,351) "Rev. Chad Gilbertson...is the author of a resolution passed by the conference earlier this month that demands the federal government pass a comprehensive reform bill that includes an opportunity for immigrants to regularize their status and pursue the option to become permanent residents and U.S. citizens."  Gilbertson serves the 485-member Willmar United Methodist Church, where Anglo and Latino members worship together on Sunday mornings.  'We have the gift of diversity in our church,' he said. The Willmar church’s Sunday morning service usually includes from 10 to 30 Latinos, plus the families’ children who attend Sunday School.  
• Worthington MN (Population 11,283) "Barb Kremer didn't think twice about what to do...Kremer doesn't know what's going to happen next, but she knows what she would like to have happen: "These are human beings, these are people. Oh, they're illegal immigrants. No, they're not! They're people, they're my friends, my family. These children are my family. And I know there are no laws in place for the illegal immigrants. But these people aren't here to make bombs, they're not terrorists. They're here to work. They're working and they work very very hard . . . "We as a community, we know what we have to do. These are people, these are human beings. They aren't to be treated – no one is to be treated – like this. What happened to these people Tuesday night – not in America! "God is giving us a huge wakeup call and I don't know how many people are listening."
• Austin, MN (Population 23,314) "It's an emotion we've all experienced during 9-11, fear. That feeling still exists day after day in some parts of our area, however it's not because of terrorists, but federal agents. Father Dale Tupper says, 'they couldn't have attacked the heart of the Hispanic community any better.'"

So it seems that at least some small towns are more concerned about deportation and community disruption than they are about ruination at the hands of this influx.

Finally, a comprehensive statement on Immigration reform from a non-denominational organization:  Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.  Towns, large and small, are represented by the statements in it.  The website is really worth a prowl if you're interested in a wide range of support for Immigrants.

Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform represents a coalition of Christian organizations, churches, and leaders from across the theological and political spectrum united in support of comprehensive immigration reform. Despite our differences on other issues, we are working together to see comprehensive immigration reform enacted this year because we share a set of common moral and theological principles that compel us to love and care for the stranger among us, including the following:

• We believe that all people, regardless of national origin, are made in the "image of God" and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect (Genesis 1:26-27, 9:6).
• We believe there is an undeniable biblical responsibility to love and show compassion for the stranger among us (Deuteronomy 10:18-19, Leviticus 19:33-34, Matthew 25:31-46).
• We believe that immigrants are our neighbors, both literally and figuratively, and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves and show mercy to neighbors in need (Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:25-37).
• We believe in the rule of law, but we also believe that we are to oppose unjust laws and systems that harm and oppress people made in God's image, especially the vulnerable (Isaiah 10:1-4, Jeremiah 7:1-7, Acts 5:29, Romans 13:1-7).

The current U.S. immigration system is broken and now is the time for a fair and compassionate solution. We think it is entirely possible to protect our borders while establishing a viable, humane, and realistic immigration system, one that is consistent with our American values and increases national security while protecting the livelihood of Americans. (continued on the website).

aMike

- 14% of Mexico's workforce moving to the U.S., depriving that country of the people it needs

For those who'd like a fact or two or feel they need one to contradict the illogic in this statement (If the workforce is "needed" why would it move?)

• The Mexican Labor Force:  Source, Geographic Org
• Mexican Labor in the United States  Source:  Migration Information Source , , ,a project of the Migration Policy Institute

... they have direct or indirect links to various NGOs such as the SPLC and the ACLU,

I have nothing but the deepest respect for the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union.  Given a choice between an undocumented conspiracy charge or an assertion that somehow two of our most consistent defenders of the rights of the poor, and indeed, the rights of us all, and the organizations themselves, I'll choose the organizations themselves.  In fact, when I finish this, I'm going to their websites and drop a few bucks their direction. 

Land and his counterparts on the left (Wallis) are either fools or corrupt (or both).

Here's another alternative.  They are neither fools, nor corrupt, and all the ad hominem attacks in the world will not make them so.

aMike

Corvid

What a comprehensive response! But it misses the point I was trying to make.
.
I have no doubt that churches in general and everywhere are pro-illegal immigrant. More people in town mean more in the pews, pure and simple. Plus a lot of the worshipers in those small towns are now illegals, so the good reverends are, to some degree, preaching to the choir. Plus it's an easy mark for cheap compassion.
.
But let me emphasize, that compassion is indeed cheap. Churches only stand to gain. Others pay the price. And, again, the president's Council of Economic Advisers pegs that price--just in terms of lost wages concentrated regressively among lower-income Americans--at $350 billion a year. (Keep in mind, the president and his council are in favor of the current bill, so if anything they're probably understating the numbers.)
.
So, again, where is the church compassion for those Americans at the low end of the wage scale who will end up paying for the church's convictions?
.
By the way, I'm all for these lavish Christian expressions of mercy and love. If one could contrive a good Christian system in which illegal immigrants lived in only the most upper-crust communities and their children went to only the best schools, which could afford to hire additional teachers and set up top-notch bilingual programs for the kids, and the good, upper-crust Christian hospitals set up special clinics and emergency rooms and health programs to mercifully cure their ills and injuries and the illegals' rich employers compensated them generously and, simultaneously, actually raised the wages of American workers in similar jobs to counteract the downward pull on wages in the expanded labor market, then I'd be all for some kind of immigration bill.
.
But, gee, I don't see much of this. So I get a little upset when, instead, we have Congress essentially trying to pull a slick stick-up job on low-wage American workers so that they end up bearing all the burden for Congress', and the churches', alleged compassion (there's nothing quite so dandy as enlightened compassion when you can get someone else to pay for it). It's this that is neither merciful nor loving.

By your (lack of) standards, might is right and theft is the prerogative of the strong- when you're on the strong and invading side. When you're the weaker and invaded party, "alien influx" is an insurpassable evil that other people for deeply moral reasons must help you fend off- with violence if necessary.

Yes, that is a standard hypocrisy in white American life. Just because it it is painful to people like you doesn't make it any less hypocrisy and denial.

Overall I'm merely pointing out that the special virtue and unusual value to America you ascribe to that part of society isn't warranted by facts.

Technically speaking, your unsustainable assertion of virtue to what is not so and evidence-free assertion of no virtue to what you do not know is the classical definition of bigotry.

I wish I could say I was impressed by this documentation, but I'm not.

First, I think Plyler v. Doe was decided precisely the right way.  Kids should not be penalized regardless of what one thinks about the actions of their parents.

Second, Lawyers take cases, and it is a long reasoned principle of the law that everyone deserves a good attorney. I think it fair to give Peter Schey a chance to explain his ideals, rather than see him only through the eyes of groups like Free Republic, which demonize him.  Pretty nearly anyone Free Republic doesn't like is all right in my book. 

Third, it isn't at all unusual for persons in politics or law to have clients in more than one country.  One of Hillary Clinton's paid campaign staff, Mark Penn, has had English politicians for clients simultaneously.  The connection to the Mexican government doesn't disqualify him from assisting the Southern Poverty Law Center.  If they want to collaborate with him, let them collaborate with him.

Fourth, I traced back the link from your blog to V-Dare (Virginia Dare.com) which is not a site I would trust for anything except the most blatantly anti-Mexican invective--a sample:

Twelve of the 46 Republican Senators voted for cloture on S.1639 today. That is, in support of a bill which would very likely have set the seal on America’s transformation into a Third World Spanish-speaking slum. They deserve to be remembered. Most have been noticed by VDARE.com in the past.

V-Dare aligns itself with the Charles Darwin Research Organization, which publishes statements like this: 

Is race real? Do the races differ in behavior as well as in body? Are such views just the result of white racism? Modern science shows a three-way pattern of race differences in both physical traits and behavior. On average, Orientals are slower to mature, less fertile, less sexually active, less aggressive, and have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole. Whites fall in the middle, but closer to Orientals than to Blacks.

This is as much science as the kind of tripe published by global warming deniers. 

 aMike  <--updated June 28, 2007

Corvid .

I also look at immigrants as individuals first and statistics afterward. Maybe that makes my compassion "cheap" too. Alas, I'm stuck with it. I'd rather exert myself on justice for all the poor, even the immigrants, than succumb to the tactic which the plutocrats have used forever--divert subgroups of the poor into conflict with each other so that none of them recognize mutual self interest in combating those who really repress them.

.

I guess that leaves me--reality- and statistics-based as I am--with an icicle for a heart. Alas, I'm stuck with it. So let me ask you: Just what do you think--very specifically now--about that $350 billion-a-year hit on wages for the poorest working Americans?

I, too, would like to see the poor triumph over the plutocrats. And I'd like a pony for Christmas. A purple one. Nonetheless, I don't think you get to working-class nirvana by willy-nilly expanding the pool of desperate workers at the most miserable end of the wage scale. We tried that in 1986. Didn't work,did it?

Finally, despite my cold, cold heart, I can see the appeal of treating illegal immigrants as human beings rather than statistics. In that regard, here's an idea: One reads periodically of illegal immigrants pressed for housing. In some inner-ring suburbs, maybe 50 or 60 will get together and rent a little 2-bedroom house, sleeping on the floors and living in great discomfort because they can't afford anything decent.

Therefore, I think it is incumbent on all those who have sympathy for the plight of illegals to open their doors and take in maybe 5 or 6 to relieve their misery and, by the way, take some of the pressure off those inner-ring suburbs where the already-struggling legal residents aren't too keen about the presence of so many illegals in such dire circumstances. Better housing with progressives would be a win-win.

So how about it? Are you inviting illegal immigrants into your home, aMike? I'm not. But, remember, I'm a jerk.