Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture or daily living. This week’s question: Do You Favor Deportation Of Illegal Migrants?

Bookworm Room: I strongly support deportation — and I do not believe that it will require the government hunting down and deporting every single illegal alien in the country. Just as illegal aliens self-deported when the economy sank in 2008, illegal aliens will self-deport if (a) we stop giving them endless benefits and (b) they know there’s a reasonable risk that they will be bundled across the border post haste, taking their children with them. (Clearly, I do not believe that the 14th amendment, which was intended to give citizenship to the descendants of slaves who were forcibly imported into this country, applies to people who violate the law in order to be in this country in time to give birth.)

And speaking of children and the inevitable Leftist cry that “deportation hurts the children,” there will always be children who, sadly, suffer because of their parents’ decisions. At some point, one simply has to say “enough,” and embark upon a policy that prevents people from unilaterally deciding that they have a right to bring themselves and their extended families illegally into America. A strong border and sane immigration policy is also for the children.

A nation has the right to defend its borders. It also has the right to pass laws that control who comes in — even if people subsequently determine that those weren’t the best or smartest laws. If we get control over our borders and realize that “Hey, the Chamber of Commerce was right that we need more super cheap labor to drive down wages for other Americans and to drive blacks out of the market (bad things) — all in the service of making consumer goods cheaper (good thing),” then we should pass laws accordingly. Our laws should not be decided by people who have no legal right to be here in the first place.

Puma By Design: Deport them ALL. The streets of New York City would be a lot more peaceful and safer if illegal immigrants were deported. Adding to that, the prisons would be emptier.

It is a long-standing joke here in NYC that even at a time, back in the day when illegal immigrants were being deported, it meant very little.

There are those who simply walk across the U.S. Mexico border while others cross the Canadian/U.S. border. Simple as that.

About fifteen years ago, a former neighbor and friend, may she rest in peace, an American became involved with a Jamaican fellow who did a year’s stint at Riker’s Island for the illegal possession of a firearm.

Upon the end of his sentence, he was deported, say on a Monday and standing back in my neighbor’s living room the following Friday afternoon.

As far as living standards, they bring their bad habits with them. In residential buildings across NYC, there are fifteen to twenty family members or friends living in a one or two bedroom apartment.

In private homes, often rented out, it is far worse. I recall stepping out one morning to go to work and seeing a plastic bag full of garbage nailed to a tree. WHO DOES THAT?

How does on invest in a house but not a trashcan? Some of the long time homeowners in our area are fighting with their new neighbors who popped up overnight not to throw their garbage on the sidewalk or in the service road, which they never do during the day. Now THAT would imply that they know better, wouldn’t it?

Moving on, we are all aware that illegal immigrants come to country, get an education and all sorts of entitlements, among them food stamps or whatever it is they get today on our dime.

Throughout large immigration (legal and illegal) communities in NYC, there are these storefront shipping businesses.

Immigrants, many illegal, use their government entitlements to purchase everything from clothes to appliances of ALL sizes. The items are stored in huge bins to be shipped back to the individual’s family and friends in their native countries which can be purchased at supermarkets and 99-cent stores that cater to that community.

Immigrants illegal and otherwise who are collecting food stamps purchase perishables, stock the bins with their purchases and again, ship the items back overseas to their families. The worst part is that no one bats an eye.

I only learned of this when my cab driver, a legal immigrant from Guyana complained about it to me one day.Many, legal immigrants who work for a living complain but it never goes further than lip service. Probably because for every person of family who immigrates to the United States legally, at least a dozen, two dozen and more family members follow behind crossing the border illegally.

JoshuaPundit: Why no! Let’s simply allow more and more illegal migrants in until they finish replicating the corrupt, lawless hellholes they left here right in America!

It’s very important to understand that simply deporting 20 million people or so (that 11 million figure is so 1990’s) is only a start and not a remedy in itself. Thanks largely to Ted Kennedy, (please see my obituary of him dated 2009) there is a large legal infrastructure, well funded organizations and a political elite dedicated to exactly what I proposed in the above paragraph. It will be a war to the knife with people like the Democrat Party and La Raza leading the charge, That’s something I don’t think Donald Trump understands fully after reading his immigration plan in full

A fence is a fence, but what is really going to be ultimately involved to cut to the roots of the problem is entirely new laws by which we both make it less tenable for illegal aliens to come here and determine more precisely whom American will extend the privilege of legal migration to. And ideally, these laws will also include a retroactive principal of at least a decade to reexamine who has been allowed to migrate legally as ‘refugees’ using diversity visas and phony asylum claims. That’s unfortunately necessary because of the Obama Administration’s open and long term advocacy for illegal migrants, winking at ‘refugee’s like the Tsaernovs of Boston Marathon fame and serial failure to enforce existing laws.

Immigration worked quite well for America when the applicants were well screened, when there was no extensive welfare state, when the culture of much of the migrants was compatible with our own, and when a certain degree of assimilation was a given.

The Glittering Eye: Yes. However, I think we’ll get more bang for the buck with serious workplace enforcement than we will by building a higher or wider or more closely guarded wall. Nowadays quite a few of our illegal immigrants entered the country legally with tourist or student visas and just stayed. A wall across the southern border will do nothing about those.

Well, there you have it.