Two of four grandparents came over on the boat. That should moderate my response to the waves of immigration which are forming the economy from which myself and my children must wrest a living. It doesn't.

We have 8 million undocumented workers now and the president's proposal will remove whatever legal barriers there are to a huge increase in those already huge numbers. Other barriers to immigration which kept wholesale exchanges of populations between every corner of this globe and our nation have also disappeared.

When the last large wave of immigration occured, during the turn of the century, contemporaries of my Grandma Amelia (from Germany) and Grandpa Joe (from Ireland) made the decision to emmigrate as a permanent committment. There are commuter illegals now, who divide their time, loyalty and homeland between two countries. One characteristic of the undocumented workers whom I know personally is an almost complete lack of civic involvement in US public life. These neighbors of mine are law-abiding and hard working. It is, however, very difficult to get undocumented residents of the community in which I live to report criminal activity, move to correct inequitable actions by community leaders or make an investment in the neighborhood. Their residence in Mexico, their church and community are all hundreds of miles away. Their primary interest seems to be in that identity rather than the civic life of this place where they spend the large majority of their time.