Residing here without immigration status is not a crime. Sure, it's "illegal," but so is breaching a contract, or rear-ending a car when you were distracted by your kid howling in the back seat.

As a legal matter, "illegal" doesn't carry much opproprium. Your pejorative use of it demonstrates that you attach more weight to it than the law does. And your support for criminalization of undocumented immigrants confirms your agenda.

So, you're an immigrant? Big deal. We're all immigrants here, except for the Natives, and many of these immigrants are descended from Natives (unlike me.)

uracca was correct to call out "my two cents" (probably yet another of your straw man alter egos, or maybe uracca is too. . . ) That the Mexican government has bad immigration policy has no bearing on the humanity of its exiles. That's true of just about every country which has immigrants here.

The U.S. is, and always has been, unique in welcoming immigrants. Other countries, with restrictive immigration policies, think we're nuts.

But that's OK with us native-born Americans. We think their immigration policies are nuts. We're xenophiles, not xenophobes.