I'm guessing that I "run-on" so you can say you're too busy with other things to actually read what I wrote and respond to it.

you did not.

In all that running on, I said that I don't care about what happens to me as a member of this site. Do something with it since it was you who brought it up.

I asked for an answer to my questions, which I noticed you were able to avoid by still insisting this thread is about me. you didn't answer or address my comment beyond saying the analogy I made was offensive, but you haven't refuted the issue that the comment is about.

And you're certainly right that people are being hurt here, and your mind is as sealed shut as you insist mine is to the idea that all those people who are being hurt are only ILLEGAL immigrants.

What about the legal ones?

I have made many comments about this issue in the past, and it's easy to see why people at Kos get slammed with comments about Kool-Aid and marching orders. I'm one to fight that claim to the teeth, and here I am having this discussion yet you haven't made any effort to address the substance of my comment.

"people are being hurt here"; that is certainly true. Legal immigrants for one. Those who obey the law are being smeared with the pejorative stereotypes you think I am making. I'm not, and I'm "running on" because I want you to stop being so condescending and recognize I am still not upset that the troll rating was assigned to me, I'm upset WHY it was assigned to me because I can't get anyone to prove to me that I made such an offensive comment if in fact it's a true statement.

What do you say to the Malaysian immigrant who realizes his visa has expired, and despite the fact he has a good job, his employer wants to keep him, the patrons to his place of work want to keep him, but he can't get INS to change their mind? There aren't enough Malaysians in this part of Pennsylvania to march in the streets and hide him from authorities and threaten to shut the town down if he's turned in. So he goes back to Malaysia, and is facing about $23,000 in travel costs and other "fees" for applications and petitions if he hopes to come back.

And since he's single, there's no family to "tear apart" by simply deporting him.

Never mind him, instead we're going to say that it's unfair to deport an illegal alien because it might tear apart their family - a family that was started after they set up their life here despite the immigration status of the parents that made them legally vulnerable to deportation despite the fact the kids are citizens.

That's no one's fault but the one who broke the law. Did someone change the law after they came here? Or is it true that when they crossed the border they knew the consequences?

If this is about economic refugees, as some have alleged, isn't it strange how we're concerned with the economics of only those countries who can make it here on foot; there are many countries far worse off than Mexico or other Latin American countries who simply have too far to go or too much geography to conquer. Their economics may make their situation as desperate as the latino, but geography somehow changes how we treat them (with indifference)  

I have made many coments that suggest that is not only our obligation to change the law if the law is unjust, but that we all look like absolute fools to be bragging to the world how America has the greatest system of government in the world where the people can participate in it's own rule; but we have failed to change the law in this case.  

Come on - you're respected around here, and I'm a nobody that makes his share of enemies. If you want it to be about ME, then continue to dodge my question. If  you want to take ME out of the argument, then stop whining about me as a person and address my comment.

Funny thing about an argument, NPK - it takes at least two to carry it on. And anyone who wants to get into a snit about how vociferously I defend myself has proven themselves just as tenacious by carrying it at least one step shy of where they insisted I should stop.

Now this is about comments that are about so offensive that they destroy the harmony of the discussion or are so offensive that they literally cause people to leave just out of lack of decorum.
I don't think mine was, and I'm making a cogent and reasoned argument to defend myself. If you find objection to that, what are any of us doing here?  

Are you officially here to state that there is not one single person who has ever decided to have a child in this country hoping to use the idea that it's unfair to tear apart a family to deport undocumented/impoperly documented parents when the child is a natural born US citizen?

Really? I'm not allowed to make an issue of real world events because the idea is offensive? I think the burden is on you to prove i'm wrong, and I'm still here because you haven't done that yet.

Why don't you just prove to me that I'm all wet and show me the evidence that it's never happened and then I have no choice but to retract it? I don't think that's possible, and that's why I'm bent out of shape.

For the last time, I don't care about my respectabilty or my membership at Kos. If it is that important to you, then I will walk away from this site without so much as a GCBW diary at your request. Just ask. You're the one who has brought up my membership here or my troll rating; not me - again I'm asking why it's beyond the pale to make the argument, not bitching that I got TR'd.

But I'm making a good faith effort to demonstrate that it is you who is making this issue about me, when it is not, and I want you do address my comments on the subject.

I certainly did not write

the suggestion that people are charging over the border, procreating like crazy, and that this somehow benefits them is paranoid.  I deal with these tragic cases almost daily, and it almost never benefits them.

If the argument is that it is unjust to tear apart a family because the kids are citizens and the parents are not, why is it beyond the pale to ask "what parent would put their kid in that kind of jeopardy in the first place?"

My point is that if an American parent puts their child in a situation that is detrimental or risky to the child's well being, (for instance taking the child with them when they are a fugitive from the law) and the child is taken away from the parents and there is no indignation about the future of the child. Why? Because in the American's case, it's so easy to point the the parents and say, "Well the parents should have been more responsible not to put their kids at risk for this to happen".

That's why I'm upset.

There seems to be a staggeringly un-transparent double standard that absolves the parents of an immigrant child of the responsibilty of putting their kids at risk; whether they did it on purpose to give them an "anchor" to make such a case is apparently where I pissed everyone off, but I don't think I'm the first one to make that argument, and if it doesn't benefit them, then why is the issue of tearing families apart when parents are deported part of the diary?

Do we as a socity care about these children? If we don't there'll be the devil to pay.

All I want is for someone to ask the question:

Do the parents of these kids care about them, for if they do, why would they put them at this kind of risk in the first place? As a society, I do care about kids. I'm 40, I'm single, and because I've never found the proper person I felt comfortable with to raise a family or established what I felt was a comfortable economic stability to afford one, I don't have any children.

Whether it's out of indifference to the consequences or deliberately on behalf of the parents to give everyone reason to pause before sending the parents away without their kids, why are the parents never assessed with any of the blame of putting their kids at such risk in the first place?

Yes, it's tragic and it's ultimately bad for the kids, but it's the parents fault and that's that - or - are we saying that since it is ultimately not the childrens fault yet they suffer for it,  it's unfair to tear the family apart and somehow this lets the parents off the hook?

I'm sure I got everyone's hackles up by the way I phrased it, but has anyone said that I'm all wet that this is an issue? It's the main thrust of the diary.

If I'm going to risk life and limb to make it in a new country and realize that the whole thing can come crashing down simply by someone catching me at a traffic stop or an INS check at my place of employement, I would say that it's irresponsible to have kids and put them at risk for that.

I think the tone of the diary that the whole situation is unfair to the kids ignores the idea that the parents are ultimately responsible for them, and I don't think I should take the blame for conceiving the idea that some - not all - children have been conceived to use as leverage in such an argument.

It's either they are leverage, or the parents are irresponsible to inadvertently put their kids in that position. Again, I ask what it is that happens to children of American parents when the American parents get arrested for a crime - any crime?

I am standing my ground on this because I thinks it's a poor ad hominem to attack me for bringing up the point that parents are responsible for the risk they subject their children to whether they are immigrants or not, and we don't hear a whole lot about how unfair it is for state departments of Children and Families to take American kids away from their parents who get caught doing something illegal.

I'm really stunned by all this animosity.

I have made the case many times, I guess I'll have to put it in a quote box at the top of every comment I make that we live in a country where the citizenry, through it's elected representatives, has the power to change any law on the books. We abolished slavery, we gave women and blacks the right to vote, we prohibited the consumption of alcohol and then thought better of it and made it legal again, and we have passed civil rights legislation that would have made any 18th or 19th century white citizen of this country absolutely apoplectic.

And yet we changed those laws.

So I agree with you and everyone else that the law is wrong and we need to change the law. So change it. My point has been all along that "the law" in general - at all levels - is in danger of becoming a quaint joke if our attitude is that we can continue to violate any law we find unjust as long as we do it in large enough numbers or that the heartstrings get plucked when we see the consequences of punishing the guilty.

I've made the argument here and in other threads that I am aware of no other effort to suggest that a law can continue to be violated despite it still being a legitimately enforceable law on the books, and then blame those who enforce it for doing their job. Has anyone ever offered me a similar circumstance? American citizens who are also parents are in jail for drug violations, DWI, child support violations, and a long list of others crimes, but we haven't made the argument that they should be absolved of their guilt to keep their family from being torn apart.

I'm so blown away by the hostility towards me on this thread because ultimately I'm on your side - I want the law changed as you do. But until we change it, it's still a law. And I only ask that we put the cart before the horse and realize that if this country has the audacity to be promoting 'representative democracy' around the world by using the largest military force ever assembled to do it, we had better get our act together and actually start using the one we have.

We must change the law first, then guys like me have no argument left. I will be the first to celebrate if that were to happen. I'm not a racist, I'm simply trying to salvage the idea that logic and reason should still have a place at the table beside emotion and passion.

But if we can't change the law, it's still a law, and it perverts the whole idea of government, jurisprudence, and justice to drive this thing backwards.

If that makes me a troll, then I proudly take my lumps and I'll even go quietly if asked.