Immigrant species are bad – they have done great harm all over.
Safe rule of thumb – if people can (and do) eat the species, its ok. For example no fruit trees have become pests big time even though we import all kinds of food.

This is a comment made in response to Mark Davis‘ Sept 25 2009 article in  New Scientist, Immigrant Species Aren’t All Bad (thanks to Marco Antonio Castro Cosio for sending).

People I’ve been speaking with find it hard to believe that the rhetoric applied to both racism invasive species are symmetrical and mutually destructive. Often the language used to describe invasive animals and plants is thinly veiled xenophobia and racism; and conversely, racists deploy the hostile metaphors describing invasive species to do some of their dirty work.  This is a tiny excerpt from a forum at Bowfishing Country – filed under “politics” and completely devoted to illegal immigrant bashing.

GACarpMAN:
this is OUR country let em come LEGAL like. if they aint legal they aint got no rights. haha i guess you can say they are an invasive species and we as responsible sportsman must eradicate the invasive species

DWO:
CARPMAN, here is what goes on in my neighborhood
14 people live in a 900 square foot house
not enough toilets, so they have a camp toilet thAT plastic bags, they crap in that throw it over the fence in the alley cause they are to lazy to go out and open the garbage can, the smell is unreal. health dept come out every once in a while and warns em, that’s all, they have tested the feces and found hepatitis c, and other dieases
then there are 6 adult men who go off to work every day doing construction, still twice a week a van from the food bank brings boxes and boxes of free food to the house.
the men sit outside and play the radio and listen to that loud thumping /or mexican music , drinking beer until they pass out, and i have to sneak over and shut the dam radio off at 2 in the morning
they shoot their guns off in the air
they let their pit bulls roam the neighborhood, no shots, and having puppies right and left, then they put the puppies in a cardboard box, go down to a street corner and “try to sell em”
they spay grafitti all over their brick fences, they join gangs, the younger ones do.
they drive like the drunks they are, if they run over someones pet, they just keep driving.
they have no license or insurance
they hang their laundry all over the fences so that it looks like a peasant village in mexico, there are always clothes on the fence
they have 7 cars at the house most don’t run
they change their oil in the street gutter and let it run down the road
they walk up and down the allys making the dogs bark looking for things to steal
if you leave a lawn mower, a weed eater, a rake, shovel, hoe, any kind of a tool where it can be seen, it’s gone in “30 SECONDS”
they make me keep a shot gun at my kitchen door and living room door, a pistol on my wfe’s office desk, and a pistol by my bed, plus one in both our cars.
UNLESS you live among them you are clueless as to what they do to your daily life, no one would buy any houses on this block after they see what’s living there. So those who think i hate mexicans are dead wrong, if these were white people i would say the exact same or worse. i have decent hard working mexican neighbors who hate the ullegals because it makes them look bad to some.i have spent time watching the borders, and have seen the devestation they are doing to our national parks and more. if you think making them a citizen would be the answer, then you think “PETER PAN” ia a wash basin in a whore house, and you either work them, or you are not anywhere near them, they are a cancer, i hate CANCER, and illegals, yes Lightman, i said HATE, and if you can’t see why i do after this post, then your Blind.

WOULD THE LATE GREAT JESUS CHRIST
PLEASE COME BACK, WE NEED HELP DOWN HERE