The Candor Gap

Why are people so offended at the thought of having an immigration policy that favors people who are educated and have english language skills? Other countries do it and it makes sense for the larger population. I live in Queens which is overpopulated with low skill workers. They have a higher birth rate, they can't build schools fast enough and the schools have to spend more of their budgets on teaching english. cousins

In response to just jerry's comment, I couldn't care less about the money UNDOCUMENTED immigrants are paying in to social security that they will never collect. It makes a suitable penalty for not following existing immigration laws. I'm more worried about younger citizens paying into social security that will never be able to collect social security unless and until the time the politicians finally get honest with folks about the financial reality of social security system. There really should be a means test for collecting social security and medicare and/or raise the age when you can collect.
TomMass

I don't know why it is so horrible or one has to be labeled racist if they support an immigration policy that favors those with skills and the english language over those that don't. This is not the country it was in 1910. Get real!

Just Jerry. Request a social security statement. My dad just got one and he has two people in different parts of the country paying into his social security. Between the three of them (dad and the two illegals) dad can stop paying into social security five years from now at around 49.

Again this is a joke coming from a guy who works for TimeWarnerAOL. You and your magazine are more worried gays, abortion, religion and defending George Bush than the "real issues". So dont point your finger at the candidates, but point it to yourself and corporate right-wing media monoply. Enough already.

This Article is just promoting hate for Hispanics (which by the way they are not all illegals and a lot of them have better education and morals than Mr. Samuelson), stop the Hitler thinking:

"...it [Nazi philosophy] by no means believes in an equality of races, but along with their difference it recognizes their higher or lesser value and feels itself obligated to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe." - Hitler states in Mein Kampf.

And for those persons with the "if you don't like it get out of the country" (which I doubt their ancestors were Native Americans), don't forget that your ancestors were also immigrants running away from their country or being expelled from it which in many cases spoke a different language I include this poem from the poet Emma Lazarus written on a bronze plate at the Statue of Liberty:

???The New Colossus??? by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
???"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"??? cries she
With silent lips. ???Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!???

So, Mr. Samuelson, stop hating others because they are not how you would like them to be and stop loving yourself for who you are and what you have thanks to your ancestors the "immigrants".

There is no way to control illegal immigration unless we are willing as a country to build a "Berlin Wall" around us and order the border guards shoot to kill. As a country I don't think we have the stomach for that. What we should be concentrating on is keeping dangerous immigrants out, not just poor people. Being poor is not a crime. Right now, that is basically the only criteria for entry into the US. If you have money, you get in, if you are poor, you are kept out. The sad thing is most of these "illegal" Mexicans and other Latins are working, not lying around collecting welfare, living off the public dole. That is a common misconception and easy way out.

One has a proven nopatisan approach- the other talks above problems. It will be interesting to find out what the people really want - feel good talk or actual solutions to the many problems ignored, or only used as wedge issues between liberals and conservatives in their never ending game of polarization.

Another thing that obstructs change- or a thing that restricts public opinion rather- is how news articles such as this are constructed. If your thesis is that public opinion is too shallow to allow for more in depth discussion of hard-to-discuss issues, why wait till the last two paragraphs to address this? Your article is titled, "Will McCain and Obama Address Our Toughest Problems", and you spend the majority of the article taking the campaigns to task for avoiding them. But you seem fully aware that you are asking for the impossible in today's climate. If I had only read the first page of this piece, I wouldn't have been wrong drawing the conclusion that the politicians were to blame for avoiding these issues. But that doesn't seem to be what your goal in writing the article was, so my question is, why write it that way? Perhaps a title such as, "If McCain and Obama Address Our Toughest Problems, Will We Listen?"

Mr. Samuelson, I enjoy your writing and think your perspective is astute. I don't know whether you or your editor should be taken to task for articles such as this, but they shape public opinion AS MUCH if not MORE than a candidate's political campaign advisors.
-Craig Zobel

Cra

If you want to know why we have so much pork barrel spending like the bridge to nowhere in Alaska while you have a bridge in Minnesota collapsing, if you want to know why we let Mexicans in illegally and drop "anchor babies", if you want to know why we are trying to establish "democracy" in Iraq while trying to stiffle "democracy" in America with things like the Patriot Act and Immunity from lawsuits for Telecommunications companies that participating in spying (EVEN though the odds of being killed in a terrorist attack are practically nil compared to being murdered by in illegal alien), if you want to know why there is so much emphasis on how much money the candidates have been raising in 2008... simple explanation:

Our "representative republic" is no longer democratic, it is simply "plutocracy by proxy". One dollar, one vote.

We already know where both candidates stand on illegal immigration - they're both for it. Both see it as a future electoral base. Most people I believe aren't concern with Social Security at the moment (other than illegals having access to free medical care, etc.), because they're took busy trying to live hand-to-mouth, day-to-day. We don't know where our next gallon of gas is coming from, let along thinking about retiring at age 67. And judging from articles in the Chicago Sun-Times and other news sources, I doubt the media would report it anyway. I feel the media is looking for the warm-fuzzies from Obama, and ignore McCain, unless, of course, there's a gaffe on either side.

We already know where both candidates stand on illegal immigration - they're both for it. Both see it as a future electoral base. Most people I believe aren't concern with Social Security at the moment (other than illegals having access to free medical care, etc.), because they're took busy trying to live hand-to-mouth, day-to-day. We don't know where our next gallon of gas is coming from, let along thinking about retiring at age 67. And judging from articles in the Chicago Sun-Times and other news sources, I doubt the media would report it anyway. I feel the media is looking for the warm-fuzzies from Obama, and ignore McCain, unless, of course, there's a gaffe on either side.

Not only is Mr. Amnesty McCain keeping quiet about illegal immigration, no one is being told that the immigrant outreach adviser on his staff is none other than former Mexico immigration official Juan Hernandez. You know Juan. He is the one with the constant obnoxious smile telling Americans they are racist and are anti-Latino. With Hernandez making the immigration policies, does anyone think McCain will stop illegal immigration? When pigs fly.

AMERICIANS MUST FIRST TRY TO CLEAN UP THEIR OWN MESS INSTEAD OF TRYING TO EXPORT THEIR PREFAB DEMOCRACY TO OTHER COUNTRIES, WE ALREADY HAVE MORE MESS OF OUR OWN (IN OUR HOMES, SCHOOLS, CHURCHES, GOVERNMENT) THAN YOU CAN HANDLE, HELL! THE ENTIRE COUNTRY IS SICK AND WE ARE TRYING TO PROVIDE A CURE TO OTHER, WHAT A JOKE.

Too many have run on candor and lost for it to catch on.

Try to separate the bridge collapse in Minnesota from these problems. They are, in fact, symptoms of the same failure. All of it is infrastructure in the sense that it requires continuing inspection, evaluation and remedy as problems are found. It's one thing for the bridge to collapse with heavy traffic, but what happens when the social security system breaks and a bunch of the aged suddenly fall into worsening health and starvation? We send in the emergency remedies, which are about ten times more expensive than the earlier maintenance which was neglected.
It's one of the drawbacks of democracy where voters put glamorous people into office who do not tell them about the seamy side of the government that they seek to run, because if they did, then they could not get elected.
We need to tell Iraq about this as they try to figure what the hell democracy is and why all of those soldiers are there to make them create one.