At first glance, I thought the initial post was bias. After reading the others and reflecting on my own experience, I'm understanding the positions here.

I grew up in a largely rural and agricultural community, working on cattle and sheep ranches, a large hog farm, and spent two summers farming on a tractor. Now, we can blame a work force for not being willing to work at cheaper wages, but that wouldn't be the whole story. Those in agri-industries all over this country are under constant assault from an economy where it is increasingly more difficult to earn a living doing what has often been a multi-generational endeavor. This is reflected in various lobbying and famously in Farm Aid (john melloncamp, willie nelson, etc.) So, the farmer and rancher have to widen their profit margins where ever they can. They have been doing so in Texas ever since the area separated itself from Mexico with the Rio Grande. And at least this long throughout the southwest. To save the farm? Yeah, but damn, this is free enterprise and cheap labor equals better profit and this is the American way. Losing the farm is not always the motivator. Not only the people, but also the trend of cheap labor migrated north and to other industry, right along all the paths of free enterprise.

I also grew up working with these illegals. Some had different names for them: wetbacks, often used derrogatorily, but sometimes as a valid term of designation that implied the wage for which the person in question was willing to work; "wetback" was financial term. They called themselves mujou (pronounced moo-how'). I don't know what this word really translates to - there are several other Spanish words for deer. But I know what they meant - they had to stay hidden, in brush and shadows and quietly dissappear at first sign of la shota, their term for the Border Patrol. Crossing the border and traveling crosscountry, they lived much like the deer with which they shared the countryside. These people sometimes spent their entire working careers working for a family, becoming permanent figures in the day-to-day lives of those with whom they lived. The arguments then were similar to those now: illegals were often not financially responsible for themselves. But sometimes they were, more often then than now, I'll bet. They stole jobs from locals. They drained an area of its finances. More recently, they take up our prison and welfare space.

I don't know what the answers are. I know that having grown up here has put me in the habit of seeing these problems as ones that are familiar, a part of life, and borne of and perpetuated by a need for a convenient solution to an insatiable economy.