I guess my whole problem with the illegals issue is the "They do the jobs no one wants" song and dance.

If they weren't there willing to DO the crappy jobs for minimum wage, companies would be forced to pay a living wage to thier employees and provide better working conditions. (For example, in my hometown we have a chicken processing plant that has been known to employ illegals...back when there were fewer, the working conditions weren't as bad...now, if you miss a day for any reason, you don't have a job AND you have ZERO chance of promotion within the plant unless you speak Spanish.)

People complain that hiring people at a wage that's considered livable (livable NOT being 10 people in a one bedroom apartment) would cause a raise in prices...and it probably would, since companies that have been padding thier wallets with goods made by people living in substandard conditions sold at inflated prices is standard practice, but do we really want to ENCOURAGE this sort-of behavior in companies by making it easier for illegals to be here?

Then again, I'm sure if we closed the border, more companies would just move to Mexico to exploit it's economic situation.

I'm sympathetic to poverty, but comming from a state where we've got people who live a step or two above Mexico conditions, I'd rather see the border closed and more focus on taking care of the abundance of people this countries already got.

(Yeah, I know someone's likely to make the arguement that NOWHERE in the US is as bad as Mexico, but there ARE people who live in shacks without electricity, running water, and who sometimes have to bet their next meal on what they can catch in backwater parts of Arkansas...like Madison County)