I'm going to disappoint here because I'm starting off easy by setting out my ideas for immigration reform. I'm going to try and follow a pattern here to lay things out in stages so that the basis for my ideas is clear before I get to the idea.
1) Immigration is one of the best thing the United States of America has going for it. People flock to this country for a number of reasons, but mostly for the opportunity to make something better of their lives and for the freedoms afforded to our citizens. These are the people who renew the spirit of America, informing our spirit about who we are when we take for granted the great opportunities available to us.
2) We are meant to be a country of laws. The law treats all people equally. You can argue that only the rich have access or that they have all the advantages, but that is the result of people. The law does not, and never did, recognize differences based upon race, class, religion. Murder is murder, theft is theft, personal injury is personal injury. And immigration should be immigration. One class of people should not be disadvantaged by having to undergo the processes set in place for immigration to integrate to society while others do not.
3) Immigration should not be an overly burdensome process nor should it be prohibitively expensive. Remember, we are talking about immigration, not naturalization (becoming a citizen). Immigration should be streamlined so that we can adequately account for (and tax) those persons wishing to live and work in the United States, whether on a permanent or periodic basis. This serves not only to provide for those who wish to come, but it would reduce the expense of allowing them in and, hopefully, policing the illegal immigrants as they would become fewer due to the ease of entering.
4) Immigration being the law, those who abet its breaking should be prosecuted. There are sanctuary cities in the United States which refuse to enforce immigration laws by handing illegals over to ICE. One of the most famous of these is San Francisco which flaunts its refusal to enforce the law with its city council openly defying the law. Federal prosecution should be initiated against those who would aid and abet illegal immigrants.
5) In sum, simplify immigration so that more legal immigrants are accepted and accounted for, enforce laws against illegal immigration consistently, including the prosecution of those who aid and abet illegal immigration.
So there's Part I. Feel free to comment.
There should also be a process to allow illegal immigrants to become legal. I think people don't generally want to break the laws when they come into the country and overstay their visa or something; they may want to be integrated to the society, and work and be taxed.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise this makes sense.
If it is sufficiently easy to enter the US legally, there should be very few illegals here.
ReplyDeleteBut you may be talking about the conversion process, where there are quite a few illegals here at the present time as opposed to when we have more lenient immigration laws.