Interesting stuff...

UK Telegraph: Republicans winning new citizens for 2008 vote By Toby Harnden in San Diego, California:

Minutes after taking the Pledge of Allegiance, new American citizens are urged to register as voters by Democratic activists who see them as natural party supporters who could hold the key to the 2008 election.

But with increasing illegal immigration threatening the economy and security of the United States, many legal immigrants anxious to uphold the laws of their adopted country are moving towards the more hard-line immigration stance of Republicans.

Even in California’s Democratic-controlled San Diego, sizeable numbers of America’s newly-minted potential voters said that illegal immigrants should be penalised rather than given an easy route to citizenship as most Democrats advocate.

“For a long time, immigration was OK,” said Sara Wright, 49, a seamstress from Mexico who arrived in the US legally in 1986.

“But now, no more. A lot of really bad people come from Mexico and commit crimes....

I'm not sure how much this means. But the simple fact is that all the good things that immigrants come here for only happened because we have the rule of law. That's the real problem with illegal immigration. That's the first question to ask about any proposed solutions... does it uphold the rule of law?

And it is NOT being compassionate in the long run to undermine the laws that all our freedoms depend on. (A concept, alas, beyond most Catholic leaders.)