[UPDATE: They've narrowed down the choices to 21, from which tea partiers have to choose 10. None of them have anything to do with immigration.]

The group "Tea Party Patriots" is crowd-sourcing an agenda for their movement called the "Contract From America" (contractfromamerica.com): users can submit proposed planks and others can vote them up or down. In other words, this is a perfect storm of the issues that the tea parties have, combined with the issues inherent in popular voting systems. Please see both links for a discussion of those issues.

The current top five proposals in the immigration category are impractical, and supporting them would not only not solve issues with massive/illegal immigration but would give their opponents yet more ammunition to use against them. These are drunk-in-a-bar ideas, not serious proposals. And, none of them provide a step-by-step implementation plan or even hint at how they could be implemented. Saying "wouldn't it be great if..." is one thing, actually figuring out how to make it happen and what to do as things go wrong is almost always much more complex. Serious proposals would address that; because these aren't serious they don't:

1. "An Official Language of the United States" (616 Votes. Rating: 2888) could be a satire, considering the errors made in the proposal:

The official Language of the United States ought to be English. in the early 1900s, my great-grandparents had to have learned the English Language within 4 years. Today, us giving this amnesty has disrespected my ancestors and everybody else that came here the right way, and worked for their citizenship. Every immigrant should do the same. This would also slow-down immigration, which what both parties wanted to enact immigration reform.

English-only is a very popular position, much more popular than concerns over the massive political corruption associated with illegal immigration. However, it's also a very contentious area and not one that could be easily addressed in the current situation.

2. "Birth-Right Citizenship" (393 Votes. Rating: 1823). The only way this would succeed was after a decade or two of highly contentious court challenges. That doesn't mean that ending it for the children of two illegal aliens wouldn't be a bad thing, it just means that proposing this would be almost meaningless.

3. "Enforce Existing Immigration Law" (290 Votes. Rating: 1414). This is all it says:

Immigration law doesn't need costly reform, it just needs enforcement!!

That's true, but the poster forgot the important part about how to actually do that. Implementation is not exactly their forte.

4. "Immigration Reform" (102 Votes. Rating: 477):

We call for several areas of reform:

1) A national fence to protect the US borders with a fence or other barrier, and to guard and defend with deadly force that barrier against illegal entry.

2) Establish a national and reliable card check system to confirm citizenship prior to offering a job to an individual. Failure to comply will result in stiff fines and jail time to the owners or officers of those companies who knowingly hire non-citizens. Individuals and their families will not be extradited from this Country – they simply will not be able to earn a living and will hopefully leave on their own.

3) If an illegal immigrant commits a crime of any type in the US, they are to be kicked out of this Country after serving jail time.

4) Make so-called sanctuary cities illegal.

This too could be a satire, with the "zinger" hidden in the first. The idea that we'd shoot non-violent crossers is morally reprehensible and would cause international outcry. The second proposes a national ID card. Those two together are a bit North Korean. The third is what we already do. The fourth is something that could be done, but once again no details are provided on how to do things like, for instance, overcoming the power that illegal immigration-supporting mayors have.

5. "CIVIL RIGHTS RESERVED TO CITIZENS AND LEGAL RESIDENTS" (87 Votes. Rating: 414): "No person who is not a natural born or naturalized citizen of the United States of America or a legal resident alien shall be entitled to any civil rights afforded by the U.S. Constitution and shall be subject to immediate deportation with no right to a hearing." The problem, of course, is that even illegal aliens are granted rights under the Constitution, and changing that would require a multi-year, highly contentious process.

All of these seem almost like they were designed to keep American Civil Liberties Union lawyers employed. Around here, we do things differently from the tea parties: rather than trying to give the ACLU more ammunition and more work, we try to discredit them in order to reduce their power.

The way to resolve these issues is to discredit political and media sources who mislead about these issues and to question authority. Obviously, actually doing work and doing it in a smart and effective way is too difficult for the tea partiers.