Just to clarify the situation as it appears to me: I am all for the amelioration of the conditions for legal immigrants to the US, from where ever they come from. I just find it irritating to see this conflation between illegal and legal immigrants. Sorry, but I think this situation needs to dealt with differently for each case. It is interesting that the Mexican government considers illegal immigrants on their soil as felons, liable for a 2 year jail sentence, and yet illegal Mexican citizens in the US, while “proudly” waving Mexican flags proclaim “We are not criminals”. Now isn’t that just a little bit hypocritical ?

There is no doubt that there the government of Mexico must also be pressured to ameliorate conditions for Central American migrants on its soil. But that does not make the fight that is occurring here any less important. Two wrongs do not make a right. Just because two governments have both failed in their respective duties to protect migrants does not absolve either government. This issue is about protecting all migrants coming to the US from Mexico, Central America, and other countries. And so, of course, it makes sense that people in the US would pressure the US government to ameliorate conditions in the US.

Apr 19, 8:28 AM EDT Few Protections for Migrants to Mexico By MARK STEVENSON Associated Press Writer AP Photo/DARIO LOPEZ-MILLS More World Video Advertisement TULTITLAN, Mexico (AP) — Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money. While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence. And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn’t on the country’s political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people – compared with 12 percent in the United States. The level of brutality Central American migrants face in Mexico was apparent Monday, when police conducting a raid for undocumented migrants near a rail yard outside Mexico City shot to death a local man, apparently because his dark skin and work clothes made officers think he was a migrant. Link

Though I guess this subject will not have our Latino political activists out in the streets demanding better treatment for illegals in Mexico…

I would be careful with an electorally focused analysis and also the preconception that Democrats are not fundamentally supporting business interests–they’re the leftwing of the elite, but still part of the elite. Most of the confusion, I think comes from the fact that there are three main components to it what’s going on now: To broadly generalize, the major agendas here come from American business classes (want immigrants, but for cheap labor); Immigrants (want rights and decent treatment); Xenophobes (want the borders shut down, people deported, etc.). American native-born workers seem to tend to side with either the first group (see an organization like Drum Major Policy Institute, for example) or the second (see Lou Dobbs). There are obviously issues of race and language and nationality involved as well. So a lot of the Senate legislation is about the alliance of the business classes with immigrant groups for limited gains; the House legislation is driven by purely xenophobia. There isn’t really a bill that represents immigrants’ interests substantially.

Now when you add to all this a burgeoning Mexicano/Latino power movement that’s intersecting with but not identical to the immigrant rights movement, you get a sense for how complicated things are.

what i don’t understand are the liberals who seem to be confusing illegal immigration w/ immigration in general – as if an attack on one is necessarily an attack on the other;

That’s because both are part of an extensive regime that criminalizes all immigrants. This is not to say that class and race and other things don’t play a role in which immigrants may be mistreated and won’t. But, basically, if you look at the trends in immigration law over the past 10 years (dating back to 1996), they are about vastly expanded the grounds for deportation for all immigrants (including green card holders and everyone down the line). This is down by increasing the number of crimes that constitute an “aggravated felony” for immigration purposes–so that something as minor as shoplifting or a nonviolent drug-related offense can get you deported–as well as stepped up enforcement of immigration laws, expansion of jailing and imprisonment of immigrants, etc.

Additionally, many immigrant communities, as you know, are mixes of undocumented and documented persons (and in some cases people in between) economically and socially and even on a very basic personal level. For example, a recent Pew Hispanic Center report argued that about 3.1 million children live in families of mixed authorized/unauthorized status (unauthorized includes undocumented people as well as some people in “quasi-legal status). Read more here. (pdf)

Of course, i suppose they are simply counting the votes. As a general rule, Spanish-americans, regardless of immigration status, are decidedly on the side of illegal immigrants for one obvious reason. Since this is potentially the deciding bloc of votes in the future, and since the movement is (rather disingenuously) declared to be the civil rights movement of our day (!), I guess the Dems are just thinking ahead….

There are also plenty of laws on the books forbidding aiding and hiring and such illegal aliens. The problem is that they aren’t enforced. The main reason why they aren’t enforced illustrates one of the main problems with illegal immigration: it breeds corruption. Those banks, growers, retail chains, restaurants, contractors, etc. that profit off illegal immigration directly or indirectly donate to politicians who then do what they want: keep the cheap labor flowing by refusing to enforce our laws. A certain company that makes a lot of money off illegal aliens sending money home to Mexico even supported the opponent of a congressman who opposes illegal immigration.