re: #35 Decatur Deb

The deserts, the Atlantic and the Pacific weren’t so much barriers as filters. Until the age of cheap flight, they assured that we tended to construct ourselves from the bravest, craziest, strongest, most desperate and determined. Add a leavening of criminals. That takes a lot of the mystery out of our armed-outlaw romanticism.

Yes, we always had illegal immigration, but not mass illegal immigration.