State won't join federal program for checking immigration status of people under arrest

Breaking any law does not make you a criminal. Violating a criminal statute makes you a criminal. There are plenty of laws that are not criminal. I cited several of them in my original post.

as it now stands, entering the country without valid visa is a crime, but it is not a crime to enter on a valid visa and then overstay, which is how many illegal aliens get here. Congress could choose to make that a crime but has not done so.

Immigration policy is a Federal matter, so Massachusetts laws have nothing to do with the question.

I didn't say its not illegal to be an illegal, I said it's not criminal. You do understand that an awful lot of things prohibited by the law are illegal but not criminal, don't you?

Being pulled over while driving a car is very different from being stopped for questioning while walking down the street. Driving is a special case: There's no legally recognized right to operate a car on the public roads, so the state is entirely within its rights to demand your license, check your registration, etc., which they would not be within their rights to do if they just stopped you while you were not driving.

Once again: please go read the laws before making up your own interpretations: Sneaking into the country is criminal. Overstaying a visa is against the law but is not criminal.

It's been documented about how xenophobic and right wing racists groups have been toning down their rhetoric and broadening their attacks to try to co-op the far right of the Republican party. As far as I can tell, they've been succeeding.

And you're gonna sit there and tell me the attacks on his citizenship, otherness,, and crap like this isn't based in Racism?

Jigga Please.

Really?

We have two options, deport them or jail them.

If we jail them taxpayers are on the hook, as we always are. If we deport them, we'll never see the money since they're now under the jurisdiction of another nation.

So this is where you're supposed to suggest we kill them, right?

I doubt that most illegal immigrants have all that much money to begin with. Besides, it would be a perverse incentive, encouraging the police to prioritize arresting people from whom they could get money, rather than, say, people who have committed major or dangerous crimes. I'd rather that police resources were spent on murderers, on drunk drivers, on white collar criminals that steal millions of dollars or more, rather than on checking the papers of dishwashers and gardeners. Especially if the illegal immigrants are -- other than how they got here -- law abiding people.

Altogether doubtful, really.

Voting fraud by the means of actually submitting fraudulent votes at the polling place is pointless and probably very unlikely to happen in real life. It requires too many people for too little gain. Conspiracies work better the fewer people are involved, and tend to be cheaper too.

Real voting fraud is probably going to happen inside the organizations that are responsible for elections. Electronic voting machines can be hacked (there have been plenty of demonstrations of this), or simply rigged (IIRC there were some convictions for this in KY a few years ago). Votes can be 'lost' or 'found' as the people counting them need.

Then there are ways that a party in control of a legislature can manipulate or change the rules to favor themselves. Large swathes of voters can be locked out of the system by passing laws to disenfranchise felons, then cracking down disproportionately on certain groups that you feel are likely to vote against you. This can be enhanced by sweeping up other people when you purge names from the voting rolls. Gerrymandering voting districts is also a popular tactic to kneecap democracy. And as you note, it's possible to intimidate voters from even going to the polls, e.g. by setting up police roadblocks along the way to check for people who may have broken the law, but nevertheless still have at that time every right to vote.

You're right that there will probably always be some fraud, but it wastes resources to look only in one direction, and should one group of voters associate a rival group with persons suspected of voting more than once, or voting unlawfully, it seems like a way to simply stir up conflicts falsely.