Here's an assignment: submit immigration questions for Doris Meissner, formerly INS commissioner and now with the Migration Policy Institute. She'll be answering questions in a live chat tomorrow, Monday May 3, 2010 at 11 Eastern. The related WaPo article was already discussed here. I don't know the permalink for the chat, but perhaps this page will have a link tomorrow.

You can submit questions at that page now or during the chat, and I've submitted a few. Please either come up with better questions, or submit variants of these three (not word-for-word duplicates). If, as I suspect, the WaPo only chooses puffball questions for her, please re-submit your questions during the chat. And, if she doesn't answer these questions during the chat, please go to one of her personal appearances and ask them of her on video, then upload her response to video sharing sites.

Here are the three questions:

1. (Note: this is a variant of one of the immigration questions for Republicans):

I have a question about the Mexican government having political power inside the U.S. Do you agree that because millions of their citizens live here, because that government has direct (ACLU) or indirect (SPLC) links to various non-profit organizations, and because of their direct lobbying of local, state, and federal officials that the Mexican government has political power inside the U.S.? If so, what if anything do you propose we do about it?

2.

Most large non-profit organizations involved in politics (ACLU, SPLC, NCLR, MALDEF, etc.) oppose in one way or another most forms of immigration enforcement, such as through lawsuits. (If you disagree, please provide examples of those groups supporting specific types of enforcement). At the same time, those groups support comprehensive immigration reform ("CIR"), something that has as one of its components heightened enforcement. Can you offer us a solid, believable guarantee that the same groups who oppose most immigration enforcement now won't simply keep opposing most enforcement if CIR passes? That is, if CIR passes, won't they oppose most of its enforcement provisions? If you don't think that's the case, what solid, believable guarantee can you offer us?

3.

In the first "Myth" you discussed, you couldn't present any sort of even moderate financial benefit to the average American as a result of massive immigration. At the same time, you didn't discuss any of the non-fiscal costs associated with massive immigration or comprehensive immigration reform, such as giving foreign governments more power inside the U.S., decreasing respect for our laws, rewarding rather than punishing companies that have continuously broken our laws, rewarding rather than punishing politicians who've supported or enabled massive illegal activity rather than fighting against it, and so on. Would you agree that those and others are non-fiscal costs? If so, would you agree that they need to be part of the equation used when making decisions? If so, how do you intend to put a dollar amount or other valuation on those costs and ensure that they're part of the equation?

UPDATE: I don't need to tell anyone that they didn't ask one of my questions (link). While a few of those are good - and one even called her on failing to secure the border as she promised - she was like a true amnestibot: always spinning in order to support her position.