And, Mark D., I suppose you’re technically right–the law does not impose special quotas on specific countries. The higher number of applicants from certain countries does result in longer waiting lists for those countries. It’s sort of like saying that a law decreeing that nobody can be over six feet tall is not targeted at anybody in particular–but tell that to the guy who has five inches removed to come into compliance with it.

But they are not saying that the policy that the government enacts should be more compassionate than what is being proposed (whatever that is–I don’t follow Utah politics). In fact, one account said that they reiterated their nuetrality on the matter.

So I think some are trying to spin the Church’s words (which we don’t even have an exact account) to fit their pro-illegal immigrant positions.

#106: I don’t think you contradicted anything I said. The law treats each country equally. That is a different objective than treating each applicant equally, hence the longer wait in countries with lots of applicants.

And the Democrats most definitely are trying to make immigration (including illegal immigration) about as easy as possible. President Bush, Senator McCain were too. Obviously many people disagree.

Re: b)

I think we have a bigger problem with socio/economic bias than with racial bias (and concern with economic status isn’t necessarily a bad thing) though the two seem to be joined at the hip. If we had millions of “white, [poor], illegal immigrants” flooding across the border from Canada then we’d probably be thinking about building a wall there too.

Mark B.,

Oh, I think we’re trying. Straining at a [camel] vs. swallowing a [gnat] isn’t a sign of unfairness so much as it is the natural ostensible reaction to stress. What else can you expect when hundreds of thousands pour in from the south while only the tiniest fraction trickle in from the north?

Just as birth in the U.S. isn’t allocated fairly, being born in a situation where one might have a chance of emigrating to the U.S. is also not allocated fairly. It requires connections, usually family connections, or money to get here as a student and then work the employment-based immigration system.

And we sure aren’t trying to make immigration legal. If that were our concern, the immigration laws would not set arbitrary limits on immigration, but would provide opportunities to immigrate that were correlated to economic principles. It’s as if we have built a Hoover Dam in a river channel that’s only 300 feet deep. Somehow that last 400 feet of dam don’t seem to be doing a dam bit of good–the water just flows around it.

The 2 most amusing parts of this discussion are
a) the assertion that all the uproar over immigration — the brushfire, grassroots campaign fueled by AM radio that killed the Im-reform bill, the minute-men movement, the inability of any GOP candidate to assume an even marginally moderate position without party-base backlash — all this is really just motivated by indignation on behalf of the would-be immigrants who lost their place in line when somebody jumped the river; and
b) that this would be just as hot and heavy an issue, just as galvanizing for the republican base, if the problem were 20,000,000 white, middle-class, illegal immigrants from Canada who came here for service-sector or tech industry jobs and our vastly superior health-care system (i.e. that race/ethnocentrism is not a significant factor in all the outcry).