All too often conservatives are demonized as having ethnocentric (even racist) views when it comes to the heated issue of immigration. Many people just cannot understand why conservatives feel so strongly about stemming the rising swell of legal and illegal immigrants.

In one of his December 2007 columns -- Can Diversity Destroy Us? -- Patrick Buchanan points out that diversity hasn't always provided societal improvements. In fact, it is the American ideal of unity which has been this nation's strength, not its diversity -- hence the phrase E Pluribus Unum ("Out of many, one"), which is emblazoned on our currency. Buchanan offers perhaps the best example of conservative reasoning on the issue of immigration, a line of reasoning difficult to debate.

No one faults foreign citizens for wanting to better their lives, especially when they live in deplorable conditions. Let's face it, most of these folks wouldn't want to leave their homes if they had clean water to drink, plenty of food to eat and decent roofs over their heads.

So instead of weakening US borders and spending millions of dollars to enrich the lives of US immigrants, perhaps the solution to America's immigration problem is to put those same dollars to work beyond our borders, by way of social and economic initiatives, and weaken the need for potential immigrants to leave their homes in the first place.