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Originally Posted by jspchief
The thing that people don't realize is a lot of these people are perfectly content working illegally, and not having to pay taxes on their wages. There are a lot of illegals that are in no hurry to be legalized.
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I think many people realize this exact thing, and that is at the heart of the emotionalism this debate evokes.
For the record, I'm for getting the border under control first. Someone compared it to bailing the boat without fixing the hole, and I think that's an apt analogy. But to continue that analogy, you still have to bail the boat to get at the hole.
I'm also (I think) for some sort of streamlining of the legalization process. In my very preliminary research, I think we provide some 480,000 work visas. The way I understand it, most of those are essentially earmarked for relatives of people who are already here legally. We also issue some other types of visas for professionals, etc., but all told, with the others, we give out a total of 600K. I don't know if that's enough to satisfy the demand or not. On the surface, it seems not.
Getting back to the premise that many illegals are perfectly content to maintain the status quo, I think there should be some recompense for time they have spent here. I don't know what it is, I don't even have suggestions, but there should be something. There is something intrinsically wrong with being here and deriving benefits without giving back. In one of the most outrageous examples of things being out of kilter, my wife (a military spouse) does not qualify for in-state tuition where we are, but illegal immigrants do.
Finally, it strikes me as ironic that thousands of people are exercising one of the primary tenets of First Amendment rights on behalf of people who aren't even citizens.
In the end, we have a problem and we must deal with it realistically if we are to truly solve it. Out and out deportation of all illegals is not, in my mind, dealing with it realistically. But I think we have to get past the current rhetoric and emotionalism before we can find the right solution.