"Because that's what we want: Fewer highly-skilled, productive members of our economy. "

That is exactly what we want.

I am engaged to marry a Japanese woman who is highly educated, has a good job, and is fluent in English. It will take at least 9 months before she can work in this country.

Why does it take so long to get a green card when you are married to an American?

Do people not realize that the more they pass laws saying, "such and such is not available to illegal immigrants," the more everyone is going to be asked to provide proof of citizenship? What next, showing our passports before we step onto the metro? "Well, they're illegal! They shouldn't be using taxpayer-funded transit systems!"

The unspoken but all-too-evident purpose of the USer School system is, as far as humanly possible, to prevent children from escaping the socio-economic niches into which they were born, and to provide, post facto, evidence to ratify those sorting decisions.

The villification and ostracism of "illegal aliens" by talk show hosts and Republicans on Eric Rudolph's side of the culture war is part of the larger picture that hatred of the "other", especially hatred of those of a darker skin tone, is a central theme and organizing principle of demagogues and rabble rousers.

The present day Republican Party was spawned by Lyndon Johnson's persuading Congressional majorities (which included many in what was then sometimes called the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party) to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and open housing legislation in 1968. George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign gave Southern (and many white, urban) ancestral Democrats a way station to voting Republican upon the Democrats' foolhardy nomination of George McGovern in 1972. This process was abetted by Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and appeals to the so-called "Silent Majority" and fostered by charlatans like Lee Atwater and his protege Karl Rove. (Rove later broke with this crowd on immigration, and Governor Wallace and Atwater, while late in life and seriously ill, repented of their demagogy.)

The seeds that Wallace planted and Nixon watered came into full flower when Rove and his ilk added homosexuals to the target groups.

In the 1870s Boss Tweed protested Thomas Nast's cartoons, exclaiming, "My constituents can't read, but oh those damn pictures!" Today, it is no coincidence that talk show hosts like Rush Bimbo have flourished in the only medium whose audience need not know how to read.

Though I am much more of a hard-liner on illegal immigration than most of my fellow lefties, even I think this is a bad idea. It makes no sense to punish those who were brought here unlawfully by their parents.

Ah, the Great Public Policy Thinkers of TAPPED.

I illustrate here - with easy-for-Ezra-to-understand paint.exe graphics - one reason why giving such discounts is a bad idea:

youtube.com/watch?v=WZkvEmSy1vk

Then, Ezra can do his best to understand how such discounts attack the concept of U.S. citizenship.

Given 4000+ views for the shorter version (youtube.com/watch?v=Q_l4Lawj14A), you've got to think that sooner or later someone is going to ask Hillary or one of the others about what they support, and, as long as her answer is bad enough it might even make the Drudgereport. At least, that's my DREAM.