Also, oddly enough, Rubio actually pointed out our number 1 immigration problem

[Recursion]

that's why we need e-verify, and entry-exit tracking system, and so-forth. And, until that happens, we're not doing anything else.

This is actually a very good point: we're very unusual in that we don't actually do a visa check when somebody leaves the US, just when they enter (most countries have entrance visa passport control both directions and explicit exit stamps). As it is, the US literally doesn't know who is and isn't in the country right now, and has no way of verifying that a person who came on a time-limited visa didn't overstay.

[okaawhatever]

1. Didn't know that. Thanks for bringing it up nt

[Recursion]

2. It's a constant complaint by the State Department

We have a frankly stupid system in which State grants a visa and then ICE (part of DHS) does a further assessment at the US airport. It's stupid. Plus the State officers can look at a guy's application and say "OK, you've come to the US twice before, and clearly you left at some point because you're here, but did you leave within the time allotted by the visa?" and they have no way of knowing.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Well the US could do what Mexico does

they used to do the passport control on the way out. These days, on the way in you do that, and you keep your exit form in your passport, which is handed on the way out if you fly out to the airline that makes sure you got a passport.

Where it gets funny is in the 100 mile frontier area.

[Recursion]

4. Pretty much every other country does it. I have no idea why we don't (cost maybe?)

I also have no idea why ICE waits until the petitioner is physically in the country with a visa; they should have foreign service agents in actual embassies and consulates doing the background checks there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. I don't know but the way I described this, is the way

it used to be in the US. I think it still is, since my mom had to go turn the form physically at the US Embassy a couple years back when the airline forgot to take her stub. And yes, that pissed her off. She is not precisely a young person and traffic in Mexico City around the embassy is a nightmare.

[Wounded Bear]

6. They don't for a simple reason...

Politics, especially RW conservative politics, depends on having a never ending pool of problems to campaign about. Actually solving problems is kind of counter productive. Repubs have been doing for decades (since 1973, actually) with abortion. Now that they have some people actually trying to actively "solve" the "abortion problem" they're getting a lot of bad publicity about it.

It's like when Dubya let bin Laden get away from Bora Bora. He was more valuable as a boogie man hiding in the woods than he ever would be if he got killed. Sure that's kind of -ish, but with folks like Cheney and Rove in the mix, one should always suspect an ulterior motive.

Cost is a non-issue, unless they can turn it into a talking point.

[Recursion]

7. I don't think that's tinfoil at all

I know that's true for a lot of lobbies; Brady and the NRA need each other, for instance, and the last thing NR2LC wants is for abortion to be illegal because they'd be out of a job.

[awoke_in_2003]

8. I don't think it is tinfoil...

the MIC needs an enemy to fight to justify their existence. I wouldn't doubt if we are the ISIS crowd through covert channels.

[Nevernose]

9. Only semi-accurate

They only check passports at major crossings (Tijuana for certain), but only sometimes and then not for everyone (also 100% certain). They don't check anyone entering by car, nor does one have to show any ID to a Mexican authority to leave, and sometimes not to an American authority!

The smaller crossings have none of this, and most of the poorer countries ice been to have little passport control, either.

I believe that Mexico's "crackdown" is to both make it more "legitimate" when they enforce their own southern border -- sometimes pretty harshly -- and at the request of US border patrol, who were constantly letting drunk Anericans without passports back into the US.

I mean: Tunisia are great countries and all, but few people are kicking down their doors to live there illegally.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Land crossings are within that 100 kilometer

area that I stated gets kind of funny