Obama Will Seek Citizenship Path in One Fast Push

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16. Uh oh, are right wing groups paying people to storm the nytimes.com comments?

Normally NYTimes.com and NPR.org comment sections are a breath of fresh air from comments sections on other news sites. However, in the "readers' picks" section, the most-liked comment sounds like it's from someone paid by a RW think tank:

I am a registered Democrat, and a naturalized citizen, and am against this bill. It rewards people who break the law - both the illegal immigrants as well as their employers. It is a slap in the face to those who a) wait patiently to do it legally, or b)don't venture here at all because they don't want to do it illegally.

Most of all, this is unfair to American citizens who work in the same jobs as the illegal immigrants. Seems to me, Pres. Obama and the Democrats do not care about this.

This move is nothing but pandering to the lobby, while ignoring the views of citizens. This is wrong.

For starters this will put a tremendous burden on our social programs...

As in 1986, all the lip service to enforcement notwithstanding, the Democrats will ignore the enforcement provisions and the flow of illegals will continue unabated. Indeed, this move will encourage more illegals to come, knowing that it is always a matter of time before there is one more amnesty...

Join NumbersUSA and open a direct line to your lawmakers if you want to resist this move.

--Most NYT commenters will use a name and city, but this commenter = "qwer (from "here&quot "

The second-most-liked comment ended with:

In truth, illegal aliens have invaded our nation, leaving America vulnerable to undetected crime, terrorism, disease, and financial devastation at the hands of people with no legal or moral justification for being here.

And the third-most-liked comment is basically "I voted for Obama but am disappointed that he's pandering to the illegals". Again sounds like an organized RW operation:

In the last election, I voted for Barack Obama based on his pledge to improve the well-being of AMERICAN middle-class families. Where is the jobs program? Where is increased funding for education? How is granting citizenship to 11,000,000 illegal aliens -- most of whom don't speak English and do not even have a high school diploma -- going to help AMERICAN middle-class families? The last presidential election was decided by way less than 11,000,000 votes. Why should we give the power to elect an AMERICAN president to ex-pats from Mexico? In what universe is this not amnesty? Why did we build that fence?

At least the "NYT picks" section has more rational commenters, who at least included actual names/cities. First from a Tim McCoy from NYC:

I know this is too much to ask for, but might this Administration please try and avoid the kind of "resolution" to illegal immigration that the Reagan Administration came up with almost a generation and a half ago?

Otherwise, the joke will be how long the next wave of illegal immigrants will have to wait for another "resolution."

Even reopening Ellis Island would be better.

And then...

I have British friends who came here legally and jumped through all the hoops to become U.S. citizens. It took them 10 years. As long as the president's plan includes all the hurdles for those who came illegally, I have no problem. But if they're allowed to jump the line or if getting in line is automatic, I think it's a flawed plan.

The third:

This has already been a long and drawn out process to date. It is time to end that and resolve all the issues. It would be inhumane not to provide a path to citizenship. We are a nation of immigrants. My grandfather was deported twice but eventually he gained citizenship. If you look at the recent influx of immigrants, it became pronounced the last time, during the Bush Administration, when there was an economic boom, a need for cheap labor, so on and so on. To believe that we are not responsible as a nation for the conditions of the immigrants today, we would have to be totally oblivious to reality. The fact that this is not the first time we have had a need to do this in the last 30 or so years, speaks volumes about our abuse of immigrants and our failure to have a humane and functional policy.