lando, I've just spent the weekend with a friend and we had some really intelligent convesation (although admittedly that declined on the Saturday night after the alcohol consumtion began), and then I come back to this drivel! You make a statement about immigrants being the cause of the high prison population in the US, then back that up with one case, and a graph from wikipedia about where US residents were born. How does that support your statement? Before you spout off your bigotted ideas do some serious research. Did you even go to the website that the map comes from? It redirected me to another site that has taken over and their latest data excludes detainees that are not covered by criminal prison administrations. Even if there were 50,000 included in the figures as you claim (where does this figure come from?), based on their 2007 numbers the US would still be in the 500+ prisoners per 100,000 population category!

Grow a brain, stop looking for scapegoats and/or easy solutions and be prepared for hard work if you actually want to do something about the problem.