immigrants should vote right after they go home and come back into the country legally. I can't bring a nail file on an airplane but illegal aliens can walk into our country totally without security or controls. I think not.

Well, for these purposes I was talking about legal immigrants who live here but aren't yet citizens.

Paul Krugman is an idiot--where on earth is he coming from!!!???

"Unskilled immigration depresses the wages of low-skilled workers."

I'M SURE!!!

Yes, A LONG TIME AGO Cesar Chavez did concede that he could never have organized the United Farm Workers until growers could no longer hire guest workers during strikes. And the great 5-year grape strike in which the UFW was born began the year after the old guest worker program ended...

Furthermore, predictably, the old program was inherently abusive to the immigrants, with its opponents stressing how these workers should have been given equal status and not been treated as disposable labor used to settle strikes...

So what's the real story here...???

One must take note of how legislators promoting farm subsidies are taking advantage of the popular misconception that such subsidies exist to stabilize the incomes of poor family farmers who are at the mercy of unpredictable weather and crop prices... WELL HA!!!--if that were the case, the fed. gov. could bring the income of every full-time farmer in America up to 185% of poverty level for just $4 billion per year, not the $20 billion spent anually on agribusinesses!!!

CA is by far the leading farm state in terms of sales, but 90% of its farmers receive no agriculture subsidies. Only the state's relitively small number of cotton and rice farmers merit payments--some of them scandalously high!!!

But Paul is all worried about the effect guest workers would have on wages...??? OH DO SAVE US, PAUL!!!

And what a ludicrous idea that US cities with a large immigrant population tend to have worse public services!

Isn't such "generosity" all cut and dry, and determined by the law of the land!

Which isn't to say that the bastards at ENRON and Osama Bin Laden didn't do equal numbers on CA's economy..., and human services!!!

And I disagree..., about your "having a voice" argument...

First off, do 'the people" actually have any voice at all???

Bush won in 2000 precisely because of wrongly disenfranchised voters, and the DOJ investigators simply turned a blind eye, this after the US Commission on Civil Rights report described incidents of blatant crime!!!

Furthermore, so it would seem, the new voting machines were precisely designed to be tampered with...!!!

While it's an intersting topic and I'm glad someone brought it up, it's a ridiculous idea.
Voting should be left to citizens (I'm certainly not offended not being able to vote in the S. Korean elections, where I currently reside) and if obtaining citizenship is a problem, then it's first we should address.
I'm all for opening up our borders and even making citizenship policies more lenient, but voting? really?

Having legal immigrants not vote is taxation without representation. Why, if I am a working legal alien, pay taxes and not commit crimes, am I not allowed to have a saying in the way my tax money is used? It seems to me that all immigrants are thrown in the same bag of cats, where skilled and unskilled, educated and uneducated, Mexicans and Northern Europeans are considered one and the same. Well, it is not true and it is not fair and it is not democratic. Taxation without representation should be a crime, mostly in smug America, a country built on the shoulders of immigrants. By the way, is any of you a descendant of the original inhabitants of this land? No? Well, then you all come from immigrant families. All comments above are very disappointing. I would expect to read those kind of comments in a right wing publication ... but here?

If immigrants really want to vote and become part of a democratic system - have them stay in their own countries and make the neceassary changes and sacrifices to improve their own homeland.

I'm an American citizen living abroad in Oslo and I have lived in Norway for over 20 years. Here I can participate in all local elections, that is the city government but in order to vote in national elections I would have to give up my American citizenship and become a Norwegian citizen. In order to vote it is necessary to be registered as a resident in the town or county where I'm living and to have a visa. Visas are now more restrictive than previously due to the EU. Unlike the US there is no requierment concerning registation as a voter. All citizens and residents receive in the mail an election slip and on election day you need this slip and some ID to vote. The voting system here in very inclusive, and the desire is to get maximum turn out. Hence turn out can be as high as 70 to 80 percent. Having read some of the comments above I aggree with Mar. If an immigrant has all of their papers in order (resident visa and a work permit), pays their taxes, lives by the law of the land then why can't they partcipate in local elections? Illegal immigration does force down wages while legal immigration ought to make no differnce because the labor aggreement between the immigrant and the employer must fall with in the labor laws of the given state as well as the federal system otherwise the labor contract is void. Legal immigration might make wages sluggish because labor aggreements might tend towards the minimum wage for a given profession. I guess that is why Ceasar Chavez was so unpopular back in the 70's when I lived in California. Still his idea of a farm worker union is important because it would force wages for farm workers to increase and that would function as a buffer on immigration since the labor market would become saturated (the unionized workers would attempt to stop non union members from working and this could dampen the flow of Mexican immigration). Illegal immigration is a weapon used by employers to hold illegal immigrants as slaves, which in turn leads to harsh and inhuman conditions.

"Galean Fouquet"

Is that an Iroquois name?

If Mexicans are so inclined to be patriotic, show off their national colors etc., why don't they fix their country instead of letting it rot and go to the drug dealers and the dogs? It's not like Mexico lacks the potential, just apparently the desire...? They go on and on and on about how hard-working the mexicans are, well let's SEE it. Let's see Mexico take the crimelords to task, let's see em clean up their industries, their cities, Mexico City is like a super-filthy place, and it's not alone. But, Mexico's well on it's way to becoming a global pollution leader, pollution PRODUCTION not pollution-fighting, part of that is america's fault, part of it is mexico's fault, either way it sux to be the people still living IN mexico. If we're going to be such great border partners with mexico and all, let's focus on FIXING mexico, not just opening the gates wide to let all and sundry bum-rush the united states, because that's about what's gonna happen.

Thank you.

My fear of letting non citizens vote in our country is the posibility of large numbers of votes being bought, why not, they don't have an investment in our country and they are so often very, very poor.

I am personally repulsed by comments that blame mexicans for the "rot" within their own countries. It would take massive revolution, nay, a complete change of culture and socioeconomic status for Mexicans to exact any significant change. And I could only suppose that the majority of the Mexican population is living on a subsistence basis, working as hard as they can to simply feed their families. When might they find time for civic duties? Furthermore, is not this rot merely a product of their poor economic system? Sure, there are "drug dealers and dogs," but one must examine the social conditions prior to condemning anyone for making that choice. I could only suspect that they are driven to such things by poverty. It is a vicious cycle to contend with.
Additionally, one might argue that by coming to America, earning drastically superior wages, and sending that money home, they ARE making an effort to "fix" Mexico. I certainly agree that we should be laboring to help Mexico and their economy, but it would take a massive effort on the part of both our governments and citizens. And who is to say that there aren't other countries just as or more worthy of our aid? For now, I think the best thing we can do for Mexico, is to allow workers in. And if they're living and working here for the long term, why shouldn't they be able to vote? I can only agree with another poster in saying it would be hypocritical for us, immigrants ourselves, to deny anyone the very American dream we are currently living out.

There is no doubt that immigrant workers should be allowed to vote in State and local elections. Not just because Salma Hayak would make a great Governor of California, but because it would improve living conditions for all the working class.

It is the classic tale: Immigrant comes to an nearly empty land (or just a family from another state or county). As more and more people show up, the first ones there start trying to keep others out by different means. It wasn't too long ago that the Fedral Army was commiting genocide against the North American Indian, but we have conviently chosen to forget about that; back in the early 20th century the entertainment industry portrayed this inhumanity all of the time.

California and all of Southwest US was Mexican, so why should we now get upon our "high horse" and act as if we are somehow being victimized; payback is hell..! Get over it!!!!!!!!!!

The grandparents of all those WASPS and big right wing politicians, weren't they just a bunch of nobodies when they got to America's shores? America,let's get it straight, was first and foremost Indian land. But white Anglosaxons got in, assassinated, and stole it from their real owners. Now they feel they have the right to decide who gets in and who is left out. Actually, Mexico is only taking back what is theirs by going in California and other southern states.

No citizenship, no vote. It is as simple as that in my opinion.

As for Mr. Galarza above, not only do we feel we have the right, be we do have the right. Read our Constitution and understand our laws. Mexico owns nothing in these United States of America.

Mr. Jones, being so respectful of the law, what can you say about the wars of conquest that your country embarked upon so many times? Does your Constitution also accept that? Mexico and its northern states such as Texas, California, etc, etc is a case in point, among several.I think that the U.S. does what it likes, so when the interests of the Empire are at stake SILENT LEGES INTER ARMA, which may be translated as in times of war, the laws fall silent. By the way, I have nothing against the American people who, in general, are kind and generous although I cannoy say the same thing about your elites. I think that the whole problem is the fear of some sectors of American society about the invasion of a darker race, which is basically a racist issue.

The wars of "conquest" as you describe them, Mr. Galarza, were hundreds of years ago. They are history and nothing else needs to be said. Americans of all races and creeds have used their land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship, working within the framework of our Constitition and laws to develop these states that are part of the USA and always will be. It is not racism, just reality. You need to accept that and forget ever thinking things will revert. If Mexico would only wisely use the land and natural resources it has wisely, maybe life would get better there and its citizens would not feel the need to come here illegally.