I understand your point, but I'm not worried about an illegal immigrant taking my Sys Admin job. And that's the general argument that I try to support.

"They're taking our jobs"

Correction, they're taking the jobs Americans are often too lazy or too elitist to apply for, when out of work. Manual labor isn't beneath anyone, present company included-but statements along the lines of immigrants taking jobs seems to indicate that's how people really think.

I mean, I think it's a crazy mentality seeing as most of the people who think it have parents or relatives who were immigrants (and we're almost all immigrants if you go back far enough).

Many of the people you assume are foreigners were probably born and/or raised in this country. A bunch of them probably had parents that were born or raised in this country.

Don't confuse ethnicity with citizenship.

It's not that unlikely that a randomly chosen person you see in California actually will be foreign-born, though, since about 1 in 4 people in the state were born outside the country.

There's a big difference between "hardly see any" and "75%".

i may not be distributed accros the state like the statistic :)

i'm not confusing. I'm using it in the same meaning it was thrown into the previous discussion.

I would pass as a "local" by ethnics preconcept standards btw. Even though i'm around for much less time then the others that get the full "immigrant treatment".