Well, Obama could just cut to the chase like Bush did, and declare himself absolute dictator for 4 years, and do whatever he wants to do.

But in order to really copy Bush, Obama would have to start taking a lot more vacation time...

Who cares who caused the problem. You should add that Mexico has had an exploding population, so much so the a quarter of all Mexicans live in America. You could blame it on greedy capitalist who exploit labor whenever and where ever they can. You could blame it on Democrats who don't want to work for our vote by passing progressive legislation, but they try to be the great benefactor and give away the country in order to get loyalty and votes from the people that receive amnesty. You could blame Reagan for doing the first amnesty which has started this nightmare. Or Clinton for kicking off a new round of mass migration illegal immigration. It goes on and on.
But what are we going to do about it NOW?? Are we going to debate the issue, get to the bottom, FIND OUT WHAT THE TRUTH REALLY IS? Or are we going to try to feel guilty and ashamed. Through around these whimsical, almost comical sayings like "we are all immigrants". and "they do the work no one else will do".

MMmmNACHOS, Cool name, and one of the two most important food groups, the other one being kale, of course.

I was asking if the situation with government employees around here being mostly foreign, is nationwide; I don't know.

I suspect it might have to do with some of those people having done some American diplomat or whoever a favor in their country of origin, and in return they got citizenship and a job. I know a Russian women who got over here that way.

If our country was properly run, it could handle a lot of immigration.

All presidents' actions are challenged in court. A somewhat recent phenomenon of the pre 2007 Republican Congress is that many vacant federal judgeships of the Clinton era went unfilled because the Congress persons used a procedural method called a "blue slip(?)" - or such - to block an appointment almost EVERY TIME that Clinton tried to fill a vacancy. The "blue slip" - or whatever it's called - allows - if it's still in practice - a senator or representative who is from a state that is under the jurisdiction of the federal court of the appointee to file the "blue slip" whichh blocks the appointment indefinitely. Then when Bush was elected those vacancies were filled by Republican judges. In this way the federal courts became very partial to the Republican cause.

That's more the real story. Wild, conjectural platitudes - "great leaders are never questioned", "no excuses in hockey" are so absurdly impertinent they are much more than irrelevant. They are willfully disingenuous, but we ain't buyin' it.

Collect your $20 anyway.

DAVIDABBOTT...First thanks for raising your question, it is a good one.
Personally I don't think non-American government employee's are as "wide spread" as you make them out to be. I have lived all over the country and it isn't that way in Indiana, or North Dakota, etc. as say where you are, or in another major "multi-cultural" citie, i.e. New York, Chicago, and don't leave out Miami, San Diego, and Los Angles.
But more to your point regarding "whoes getting the government jobs?" Isn't it ironic that the very people the general public caste as outsiders, (Immigrants), are the very people working in government agencies?

Then again...What goes around comes around. Ain't karma a bitch!?!?

Sad...Our Countries culture was built on immigration (legal & illegal) now, either way. it's looked at as intrusive, threatening, and in someways even feared.

...Since we are no longer interested in the "tired and poor", or any "huddled masses yearning to be free"...Someone should take down the sign on Ellis Island...It's false advertising!

Hear hear!

I will drink to that!

We're in way over our heads. Even if no more guns were sold; there are already way more weapons in circulation than are necessary to commit , , , -- what is it, a major massacre's worth of homicides, every few days? Limiting the sale of weapons only keeps an already beyond-control situation from becoming much worse, not better.

Actually, I just checked World Homicide Rates (Etc) mostly on Wikipedia; and The USA at 5/100,000 (17,000/year, 46/day) is slightly below the world average. Yes we're more than Western Europe, but considerably less than many other countries around the world. Lots of good (and bad) information there -- stuff that hasn't been mentioned in "our" dysfunctional national debate.

As for better screening of felons and "mentally-ill" -- WHAT is the research on the homicides that occur every day, plus the occasional massacre? Would these people have been discovered and stopped by the provisions in our proposed new legislation?

I have no answers; we're simply in way over our heads. And with our dysfunctional tribal political circus -- I expect little good can come of this.

This is the most obstructionist fiasco I've seen in my lifetime, and to continue blaming it on lack of leadership totally misreads the situation. Truth is not always found by splitting the difference between opposing arguments. Both-sides in a dispute are not always equally at fault.

Indeed our President is faulted by the fringe of The Left for trying too hard, compromising too much -- politics today is a no-win game. Meanwhile to those funded by Mega-money, it IS a game, a richly successful no-holds-barred game of self-interest -- and The People be damned. It's the old-old "Colonial" game of Divide and Conquer: while the local tribes battle each other, run off with the loot.

The country is dysfunctional, while we have huge difficult issues we must attend to. Unfortunately, after several decades of demagoguery, our population is divided into tribes, literally living in different realities, unable to even share a common language. President Obama inherited an impossible national and global economic collapse, coupled with political unrest and wars around the world. (No accident for those, with conspitatoral-leanings).

With consistent unprecedented opposition, this Administration has to a very large degree turned the collapse around and put the economy well back on track. The numbers pro and con are there -- along with a barrage of lies and misinformation from the opposition party.

Fortunately it may be that a critical mass of citizenry are figuring it out. This last election may have been a turning point. The disloyal Opposition simply fooled itself -- the rest of the country didn't buy their empty fantasies. If that continues they may become less and less relevant -- -- even while the hired professionals of Mega-money, continue their political shenanigans.

We're by no means out of the swamp. However, As I look back on the first four-years (and the eight-years preceding that), I have renewed respect for the quiet measured attempts to lead a country (and deal with global issues) despite fierce obstructionism, who's stated goals were to use dysfunction to prevent any successes much less progress towards the future.

I'm tired of constantly hearing The President blamed for what by any rational analysis is unprecidented obstructionism. Let responsibility be assigned where it belongs, and the obstructionists be held accountable.

The leaders of the Republican Party are behaving as though they are bought and paid for by leaders of large corporations. The Republicans are not serving the interests of the American people. Even though more than 80 percent of Republicans in America are in favor of restrictions of guns, their elected representatives do not. The National Rifle Association is a lobby organization for manufacturers of firearms. The NRA pretends that they are representing their gun owning members, they are not! The NRA does not care about the rights of its gun owning members, they only care about the profits of the manufacturers of guns. The NRA is hiding behind the 2nd Amendment. They are only interested in increasing gun sales.

I can't believe how many times President Obama's decisions are challenged in court. Is it normal down there for that to happen?

I coached and played hockey for 30 years and one of the best lessons that I received from it is you could never win championships without great leadership, and great Leadership is NEVER challenged. I think you might have picked the wrong captain. I really hope I am wrong though.

Well, Ken, to paraphrase a scene in The Princess Bride, you better get used to puking, because I don't see Thom agreeing with you.

You ask why we look the other way when crimes are committed? But you have answered your own question, because you look the other way with regard to the fact that the Vietnam War was a criminal act by America. You simply say, "Hey, war. Sounds like a really great idea, let's do it," no matter what the circumstances are.

Yes, we're bleeding jobs to China, but it's kind of a stretch to blame that on Mexicans. And you don't quite get around to mentioning the republicans and tea partiers who own businesses that employ illegals.

You know, in all my decades in construction, I was only cheated out of money three times, and two of the people who cheated me, were "Christians" who were always beating people up with the Bible. (Which is not the use I thought it was intended for...)

You want Americans to go back to work? We need tariffs on all imported goods. But it is easier to just blame latinos for the problem that our republican-owned government and republican-owned corporations have created. Just look around for someone to call "the enemy," and blame them, rather than the people who actually did- and are doing- the crimes.

At the time when your Irish ancestors came to America, which is around the time my Irish ancestors came here, too, it was legal to horribly mistreat workers, to use them as slaves, to indenture them. Just because something is legal, doesn't make it right. And just because something is illegal, doesn't necessarily make it wrong. Some laws are wrong.

But I agree that employers who hire illegals should be liable, if the illegals are going to be liable.

As far as illegals flooding the hospitals goes, Walmart is more responsible for the flooding of hospitals, with their low wages and the fact that wherever Walmart puts stores they drive virtually all of the family-owned business, out of business.

I am sorry your father got cancer. If we had single-payer health care- socialism- your father would have gotten the treatment he needed. It is for the sake of people like your father, that I want single payer. It just doesn't pencil out, losing people just so hospital corporations can get rich enough to bribe congress.

You blame illegals for taking American jobs, but many of those jobs can't be done by Americans because Americans aren't tough enough to do them. And besides, it is our agribusiness corporations that created this situation in the first place. I mean, it's like if I took away your job and then blamed you for trying to find another job.

Your daughter is a teacher who has trouble with illegal's children. I know a teacher in Big Bear City in California and a principal there, too. They both say that the Mexican parents are incredibly grateful to be here in America, and that they cooperate in every possible way with their childrens' teachers, and that they make sure their kids do their homework. Interestingly, the parents that that teacher and principal have all the trouble with, are some of the white parents, the American parents who come to the school and scream at the principal for an hour without stopping except to draw breath. There white kids are the ones that my friends worry about.

Ken, have you ever actually looked at the laws your republicans vote for and against? Because it sounds to me like you're just repeating a bunch of sound bytes from that foreign guy Rupert Murdoch, who owns the tv and radio stations that you get all of your news from. But don't get me wrong, this is America, you are perfectly free to get all of your talking points from some foreign guy. And I have nothing against foreigners in general, but it just seems to me that the billionalre foreigners like that foreign guy Murdoch from whom you get all of your talking points, ruin everything they touch, while the illegal immigrants who come here and work hard for a better life, sort of represent the best of American values, such as hard work and trying to get ahead.

As a military guy or at least someone who claims to be a military guy, you know how to take orders. It just puzzles me a little that you would want to take orders from a foreign guy.

Kend, I agree with you about a workable solution: give foreign workers temporary work visas, and make them pay taxes on their earnings.

But I would also like our government to address the fact that IT CAUSED this problem, and in that sense it is very different from Canadian oil field workers going overseas to work. And it is also different in the sense that most undocumented workers are doing work that Americans can't or won't do. I spoke at length with a strawberry farmer, who told me, "I have tried hiring Americans to work in my fields, but it's hot when strawberries are being picked, and frankly Americans just aren't tough enough to do the job. They get exhausted very quickly and then if they keep working they get heat stroke. The Mexicans I hire are used to hot weather, they work all day long, no problem."

And it's true: when twenty generations of a family have worked all day long in the hot sun, the twentieth generation can do it easier than the first generation could. But if the republicans keep driving our economy into a ditch, why, in twenty generations Americans will be used to working in uncomfortable weather for almost no pay.

Oil field workers are paid very good wages. Strawberry pickers are paid very low wages.