Personal Encounters?

12. In your community, what are the types of jobs that undocumented immigrants tend to hold--e.g., farm workers, heavy manual labor, gardeners, cleaning and maid services, restaurant bus boys and dishwashers, nannies, etc.?

13. What has been your experience in dealing with these workers?

14. Do you think there are enough Americans to fill the need for and who want to work in these low-paying, low-skilled, and physically demanding jobs, if we didn't have the immigrants doing this kind of work?

Deeply Embedded In The Fabric Of Society

15. Did you know there are about 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.? (Jeffrey S. Passel, "Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the US," Pew Hispanic Center, March 7, 2006, at http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php? ReportID=61.)

16. These 12 million undocumented immigrants are deeply embedded in the fabric of families and communities in the U.S.

17. Undocumented immigrants typically live in close-knit extended family situations in which there are mixtures of native-born Americans, naturalized citizens, and permanent residents. (Arian Compo-Flores, "Immigration," Newsweek, April 10, 2006, pp. 30-31, hereafter referred to as "Compo-Flores.")

Mass Deportation Not A Realistic Option

18. How would we identify, apprehend, and deport an estimated 12 million people, when they are deeply embedded within a protective and supportive family and community network of legal residents?

19. Are you willing to devote the resources necessary to create an enormous INS paramilitary police force to investigate, arrest, temporarily incarcerate 12 million people pending deportation, and then arrange for their deportation and transportation to their country of origin?

20. Are you willing to spend the enormous amount of money required to do this when we are struggling under the burden of large unbalanced national budgets, a huge national debt, and the costs of the Iraq War-- now nearly $460 billion as of October 2007, and growing? (See the continuing update of Iraq War costs at http://www.nationalpriorities. org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html.)

21. Are you willing to spend this enormous amount of money when we need to find the monies to fix the projected bankruptcy of our Social Security and Medicare systems?