Matt Stoller from MyDD has a good post on the immigration debate currently going on. It criticizes the McCain-Kennedy bill, which they say ignores the problem of income disparities between the two countries (US and Mexico) that leads to mass immigration, legal and illegal. It argues that the bill focuses too much on legalizing new immigrants through guest-worker programs, and not enough on the root cause of why people immigrate to America for jobs.

The unanswered question is, how do you fix the root problem of income disparities. It would seem that NAFTA is actually a step in the right direction in that regard. I know that most Democrats are opposed to this, but I have to think this tackles the problem quite well.

I should add, I agree with speeding up legalizing the working immigrants. We should enforce our borders (without machine guns and citizen militias) for security concerns, but also be accepting to allowing new immigrants if work is available.