Most illegals are family types, either with families here or back home that depend on them for support. They're usually older than the high crime-prone ages, and their primary mission is to be invisible. You can always tell them when you're driving, on the street they follow the traffic laws so scrupulously that they're a menace to public safety. It's their kids, who were probably born here and are citizens, who get into gangs and drugs and unemployment. Of course, things may be different out west, here the bulk of the illegals are central and S Americans and not as many Mexicans as in California. There is also a new population of middle-class, well-to-do-do illegals from Columbia and Venezuela who are escaping from drug mafias or Chavez. They start their own businesses and pass for legals (they speak good English) so no one knows how many there are. There is also a rapidly growing population of Puerto Ricans, escaping their own illegal alien invasion in Puerto Rico (from the Dominican Republic and South America and the crime wave that they have brought with them to Puerto Rico.) The Puerto Ricans are US citizens, and they are entitled to be here, but there are so many of them, along with the legal and equally well-acculturated Cubans, that they serve as camouflage for the illegals. You have to speak Spanish well enough to tell them apart by their accents.

The situation is further complicated by black immigrants, from both Creole-speaking Haiti and the English-speaking islands, and there are conflicts between them and native blacks over both jobs and social services. It's not just browns and blacks, either. The Irish are also showing up in droves, taking over the construction trades, and a lot of MittelEuropeans and assorted Eurotrash too, from Russia and the former satellites. The one thing they all have in common is that some American businessman is willing to hire them for less than the going wage and pay them under the table. Everybody agrees that is the crux of the problem, but nothing ever seems to get done about it.

The way to solve this problem is to allow in only those who have some education and assets, and speak the language, who have a trade and can be assimilated into the middle class or the professions. They would be an asset to this country. The rest, if history is a guide, will eventually assimilate, but for the time being they are a great force for disruption. Unfortunately, the demand is for the ones who will do the shit jobs no one else wants, so those are the ones who find it easiest to get in.

There is an another source of potential exploitation, too: The "activists" who feel the need to speak for the immigrants. Sure, legal immigrants need protection within the law, and someone who can counsel them on how to fight for their legal rights, but too often the activists are simply interested in maintaining their own position of leadership and it is in their interest to keep immigrants helpless and unacculturated and as numerous as possible for as long as possible, preferably speaking their own language and practicing their own customs exclusively so they have to rely on these parasites for support. It is difficult to identify and distinguish these people unless you are very close to this issue, and of course, the Right will gladly lump anyone who helps fight for immigrant rights in the same category. All they care about is that their source of cheap labor remains cheap and too scared to speak up.

America needs fresh blood every now and then if for no other reason than to remind us that we were all immigrants at one time, and that even the Irish and Italians and Scandinavians and Asians were once exploited and insulted. But America just simply cannot take everybody in. It is a finite resource and can only accept newcomers so fast. I don't blame the illegals, most are good people trying to survive in an increasingly hostile world. I blame those who exploit them by enslaving them when they get here.