What is the difference between an illegal immigrant and a legal one?
An approved application.
We currently restrict immigration to a fixed number of people per country. Why? The first Europeans and many others who come to America didn't have that kind restriction.
So to solve the problem of immigration, why don't we lift the restriction on the number of immigrants who can come into America. Doesn't that solve the problem? No?
The reason it doesn't solve the problem is because the problem is not about them being here illegally. The debate by anti-immigration people is often accompanied with "I don't have a problem with those who came here legally, they haven't broken the law!" as they try to make themselves out to not be anti-immigration.
Illegal immigrants have broken a law, but not a criminal law. They have broken a civil law. Just like the last time you sped on the freeway but didn't get caught -- you broke a civil law. You are not a criminal, and neither are they for entering the country without waiting for that lottery opportunity and paying for the privilege. So what is the real opposition?
A brief look a the history of immigration law reforms helps shed some light on the matter. Generally, most of the reforms are related to either xenophobia, or the workers coming in and depressing the local wages because they are willing to work for less. None of those immigration policies really stopped the flood of low wage workers. What happened is that US citizens had to make their own businesses, or become more educated to compete, gaining skills that the immigrants did not have and thus also increasing wages. Where it used to be possible to get a decent paying job without having completed high school, now we have to obtain a college level education. Is that not a good thing? Now the college education really isn't enough. We are losing our edge in the world because other countries are becoming more technologically skilled and better educated, some surpassing us. So what should we do? How about...get smarter, work harder? No, I guess that's not the easy way out. The easy way is to sit back and complain about how these foreigners are all taking our jobs instead. We are becoming lazy, becoming too used to government solving our problems.
Remember the last part of the inscription on the statue of Liberty? "Send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door." Those don't sound like the cream of the crop. Those sound like the unsavory, worst people that no other country else wants. And those unsavory people became our heritage of strong people who had to fight for everything they had. Why did that change? When did the golden door require payment to pass through? These foreigners want the same opportunity that your ancestors were granted. Why do you deny them?
By keeping them undocumented, we make them more apt to become criminals. Hit-and-run? Because he was illegal. High speed chase? He was illegal. Witnessed a crime but didn't come forth? Because he was illegal. Had to steal someone's identity so he could work? Because he was illegal. Because of their status as an illegal, they are more likely to do more illegal stuff. They have a fear of police, and a fear of being caught and deported. That doesn't help. You change that one piece of paper, and you change all of that behavior.
A problem comes from the burden on our system. This is because we've gone away from our heritage of providing everyone with opportunity (everybody starts on the same footing, with nothing but the stuff they brought), and instead have embraced that of providing everybody with equal results at the expense of others (need a government handout? Now there' books detailing how many different handouts you qualify for). This push toward a government-provides-for-all is not good for us.
I know there is a huge push for a nationalized language. It is more efficient for the government and businesses to operate in one single language. So from a financial perspective, it makes sense. And it is from that alone that I think we should require government to provide services in English only, with exclusion for those services where the majority do not speak English (such as immigration services), or teaching ESL, or anywhere that it can be proven that it is more efficient to provide the service in additional languages. Although, it is far more beneficial to do away with many of these government services altogether anyway.
Illegals come and get paid a wage free of taxes because they are undocumented. They get abused with below minimum and even nonpayment of wages and can't report it. Employer's don't have to pay the social security and medicare on those illegals, which makes it appealing to employers. But there are few employers that actually do that. Some illegals end up having to fake a SSN so that they can work. An experience I had at work involved helping a company verify the social security numbers of its workers. Nearly every number failed the verification system, and most were latino names. All had given him SSNs. So let's look at the impact on the system. Those Latinos were having taxes withheld, and social security and medicare withheld. It was under a false number, a number the social security administration knew was illegal. Did the SSA reject the money sent to them saying they cannot properly credit an invalid account? No, of course not.
The laws are written such that you cannot terminate employment on somebody for not providing an SSN. The SSA has stated that a no-match letter is not grounds for terminating employment.
Why would that be? Well, let's look at the end result. Lots of money coming in for social security and medicare, which would not be able to be claimed when those Latinos retired because they were invalid numbers. No tax return can be filed, so all taxes withheld stay in the treasury.
Hmmm, from the viewpoint of a money manager in government, that would sound like a sweet deal. They would just need to make sure that employers who hired illegal workers could demonstrate that they had made a reasonable attempt to obtain the number and had withheld all applicable taxes. Because if they didn't withhold the taxes, then obviously the employer knew the worker was illegal...and more importantly, the government did not get the excess taxes. See what the government's interest is in all of this?
This is what I think we should do. Citizenship for the US should be easy to get, but come with a major string attached -- No more of this dual citizenship stuff. If you are a dual citizen of, say, the US and Canada, then you need to choose one. Your loyalty can only be to one of the two countries, especially if we were at war. Figure out which one it is and have the other citizenship removed. If you give up your US citizenship, you give up all government perks associated with it. Citizenship in the US means you would be willing to die protecting your country, even if it is in a war against the country you emigrated from.
But if you want to come to the US to work and send something back home but not be a US citizen, I propose that a visa (the right to work card, not the credit card) be granted for anyone who wants to work here. No more limitation on the number of cards, only on specific people (like known criminals) you want to keep out of the country. Opponents of the visas say that the cheap labor coming in and stealing American jobs is bad for us. So the visas are limited and what happens instead? Those companies hire illegals who are still taking American jobs and now there is no contribution to the government. Or those companies outsource or relocate outside of the country and send the dollars there instead. If your job is at threat of being taken by somebody else with equal skill who will do it for less, then you have to make yourself more valuable to compete, and that's better for everyone. I think that's one of the reasons America progressed so quickly in the world. We had to advance (and did not have the restrictions other countries had) in order to survive. Plato said that Necessity was the mother of all invention, and if we are challenged as Americans we will rise to the challenge just as in times past...or we will take our place in the footnote of history.
What about our borders? Secure the borders? Absolutely. Those who want to bring harm to our country are able to do so more easily through unsecured borders. By allowing people to enter the country legally (and therefore subject themselves to being documented) we can focus on keeping the bad elements out, such as those wanting to import illegal drugs (also a topic for another day) or those who have been deported due to criminal activity. Do we have to secure the borders first? That is something the conservative talk show hosts like to push, but I don't think that's necessary. There really isn't as much need if you aren't trying to keep out desperate people who just want a chance to make a living. So it could be done at the same time, or even after passing good immigration reform.
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