<p>It is the right of all people to immigrate and emigrate as they choose. It is not wrong to cross an imaginary border than one group of people drew on a map. It is, however, wrong to kill. To kill natives of a land newly found, and claim that land as your own, forbidding others from entering. To kill the people of your neighboring country, to seize land that they claim, and then persecute the people of that country for entering the land that was once of their own. It is heartless to ignore poverty in other areas of the globe, yet persecute the poor of those countries for coming to a place that styles itself “the land of opportunity.” If people of this country don’t want poorer countries emptying into it, maybe they should start caring about the well being of others.</p>
<p>“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”</p>
<p>^So every “illegal” immigrant could simply walk into an immigration office and be allowed into the country? Or perhaps the United States is less open than it once was.</p>
<p>First, stop the illegals from coming in further. One solution is to open up legal immigration more and make it easier, so that there’s less incentive for people to illegally come in. In addition, we should build up fences, add more patrolmen, etc, and to further stop them from coming in, we should go to the second point</p>
<p>Second: Actively deport illegal immigrants found in this country. Once we start doing that, illegals will have less incentive to come in. A lot of problems will be solved. However, it may be costly and expensive to deport them if they’ve traveled far, so we can offer them to either pay for a fraction of their travel cost back or choose another option: jail.</p>
<p>The last option mentioned can be a further deterrent from illegal immigration. If potential immigrants know they can be jailed if caught, they are less likely to try to come illegally, especially if legal immigration is made easier.</p>
<p>However, in states like Arizona and Texas, it shouldn’t cost much to just drive the illegals back to the border where they came from.</p>
<p>The problem isn’t that the illegal immigrants are taking jobs in America. The problem is that they are here in the first place, when all the other immigrants came here legally. They are taking away opportunities that legal immigrants could be taking advantage of. One of the big reasons legal immigration is so slow is that the US is trying to process illegal immigrants who shouldn’t be here in the first place. If we enforce laws regarding immigration more, illegal immigration won’t happen as much.</p>
<p>^You want to round up 12 million people and send them out of the country? Oh, and how do you know where each one came from? It would be a shame to send a Guatemalan to Mexico.</p>
<p>They can self report where they come from when they’re caught, or show papers. It is their choice where they go. If they don’t report a place, they’re essentially choosing jail. We can increase the “costs” of transporting to a country like Canada if we believe very few illegal immigrants actually come from there, to discourage them from reporting that they came from there.</p>
<p>I understand this can cause a lot of problems with the surrounding nations, but it’ll be very hard for nations like Canada or Mexico to deny them when 12 million people come knocking from the US, some with documentations.</p>
<p>^So make it illegal to be in “the land of opportunity” they were promised, then force them to give up the money they were trying to earn to feed their impoverished families, jail them if they don’t, then send them to whatever country they say (South Americans might shoot for Mexico, to have a better shot at getting back into the US, thus we would violate Mexico’s laws by dropping them there), unless it’s a country that we think it too good for them, in which case, we charge them a lot more money, because we really like money, and really want them to go to poor countries?</p>
<p>To be honest, the solution that’s fairest for the other nations would probably be jail, but it’ll be too expensive to jail that many people for prolonged periods of time.</p>
<p>They were also not promised to be here. Only a visa or documents that guarentee legal passage can promise them passage here.</p>
<p>However, the big exception for all this would be the case of having children on US soil. If illegal immigrants have children on US soil, then we cannot ethically separate the parents from the child. The child is a US citizen, and he/she has full rights to be with his or her parents in his or her homeland, which is the US. In this case, the best solution would be to grant the parents legal documentation for staying in the US.</p>
<p>To be honest, I think it may be best if we ask the illegal immigrants themselves what they think the best solution is to this problem.
Most of them would want to stop further illegal immigration, so they might be able to offer creative solutions, given that they went through the process.</p>
<p>Is it right to jail someone for seeking out the conditions most conducive for life? If not entering the US would entail starvation, it could be a “crime” of self-defense. Put a starving family in the mix, and add “and the defense of others”. You can’t arrest all 12 million undocumented immigrants, and we most certainly cannot jail close to that many. But while we persecute them for being in this country, they are exploited by their law-breaking employers, who pay terrible wages in terrible conditions, and often even sexually exploit female workers, with the threat of calling federal agents who will do just as you want them to do hanging over their heads.</p>
<p>I’m sure there are legal documents that grant refugees ways of coming to the US. It’s better to go through that than to make a mess. And of course, you can make exceptions. If someone can prove that it’s self-defense, then we can try making it lenient for them by giving them some more time to recover. Either way, if they already got here to escape starvation, then they’ve already been rescued from it and it’s not likely that they’ll go back to starvation AND they cannot legally reimmigrate into the US after they’ve been deported.</p>
<p>What do you want done with the employers? We could be putting resources into hunting down employers and fining them, but wouldn’t that make conditions worse for the illegal immigrants? They will have even less employers that can provide them money if we keep hunting down employers for hiring illegal immigrants. I think the better solution is to reduce the illegal immigrants, and the amount of employment of illegal immigrants will naturally decrease. Eventually their wages might be able to rise to around that of minimum wage through this process, before they all get taken care of.</p>
<p>Or, we could recognize that all people have legal rights, especially in the country we have control over, and allow those immigrants to be documented, so we can properly enforce their rights (labor laws and criminal laws, so they’re not afraid to call the police).</p>
<p>They could do that themselves if they voluntarily go through the deportation process and come back afterwards.</p>
<p>I understand bureaucracy is a mess right now. However, legalizing illegal immigrants won’t solve the problems. We have to try to improve the immigration bureaucracy and policies so that it can be easier and faster for immigrants to settle. Every illegal immigrant we issue documents for uses resources we could’ve used to print and process documents for another legal immigrant.</p>
<p>If it’s possible for these immigrants to enter the country legally, why not just allow them to stay and legalize them while they’re here? Seems like it would be easier for all involved (except perhaps those employers exploiting undocumented labor), and would put much less strain on the system than rounding them up, deporting them, THEN doing a process to take them back. Or maybe you’re wrong and the system is messed up, where they have no “legal” options.</p>
<p>America has become to dependent on foreigners to do there work. We depend on illegals to do manual labor and children in sweet shops in China to do our factory work. This is sad, really. We have become so capitalist that we want everything cheap, to make the most money. If we send all the illegal immigrants back home, prices of good will skyrocket and many children who are citizens will lose their parents. We need to make becoming a citizen easier. Because we must always remember, America was built by immigrants.</p>
<p>You know what? It’s a tragedy that Mexico has so many problems in their country. Ooh, I have an idea! Maybe the damn government should go and try fixing the dozens of drug farms in the country and stop the dozens of multimillionaire crime syndicates throughout the country. Actually, no. Mexico’s problems are obviously America’s responsibility. </p>
<p>Oh, and just because their lives suck does not give them a right to come to America illegally. It’s a pity, it really is that the people there have miserable lives. That doesn’t mean that America is the international scapegoat for every poor soul to come and live in.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Anecdotes are weak. Weak anecdotes are weaker. How do you know his family didn’t get rich through the drug trade? Hell, most drug lords in Mexico are rich. Also, you mentioned that it took him 10 years to get citizenship to the United States. Most immigrants never get immediate citizenship. You need a visa, followed by a Green Card, which is followed by 5 years of residency in the States, which thus leads to citizenship. </p>
<p>Personally, I immigrated with my family 10 years ago from India. I still don’t have citizenship. Hell, I got my Green Card 2 years ago (incidentally, it takes a minimum of 5 years after getting Permanent Resident status to qualify for citizenship). This means that it’ll take my family 15 years to obtain citizenship. 10 - 15 years to obtain citizenship is the norm - it doesn’t mean that the DHS is picking on Mexico.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have a question. How do you pay taxes and not pay taxes at the same time? Besides, the increase in labor and decrease in unemployment would more than make up for the increased price in goods.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re so right. Let’s use Mexican workers for drug patrol. Americans are far too stupid to do that themselves. And the illegal immigrants are the real criminals - what part of illegal do you not get?</p>
<p>Why reward people for breaking our laws? And why punish those who immigrated here legally and followed our rules by basically stating that their years and years of hard, legal work essentially don’t matter?</p>
<p>BillyMc, if we do that, they would essentially be cutting the line in front of legal immigrants. And there would be little deterrant for illegal immigration.</p>
<p>That’s like asking why don’t we just let all the criminals in jail loose? It’ll be cheaper for us, and it’ll give them an easier time too.</p>
<p>We’re trying to insert human rights into a subject in which US laws at current have been broken. These rights have limits, and these illegal immigrants have gone beyond these limits.</p>