envelope's Journal: illegals

Remember Jessica Santillan, the mexican immigrant girl who had the botched heart transplant? She had another transplant a week later but died anyway.

Anyway, she and her family snuck into the US several years ago. They actually paid somebody to smuggle them in. So they are illegals. This is fact.

So, she's in the news for a month or so earlier this year. Then she dies, and its all over the news about how her family wants to bury her back home in Mexico but they're scared they won't be allowed back in the country if they go to Mexico to bury her.

Well, now her father's been arrested for beating her mother. Her mother says that she didn't mean for him to be arrested, it was a "language barrier".

2 things:
1) How long do we let the illegals stay in this country? Do our immigration laws mean anything at all?

2) Why is it that this woman, Jessica's mother, has been in this country for years, and yet she can't speak English? What the hell is wrong with people that they move to a country and don't bother to learn the language?