Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Crime & Punishment Illegal Immigration and Appropriate Penalties

I don't think anyone here has suggested that the borders (all of them) be opened completely, although I may have missed that.

I do think everyone agrees that
1) what's happening now isn't working, and
2) that employers as much a part of the problem, if not more, than any of the illegals they hire

On the issue of deportation, I think we can agree that
1) Deporting all illegal immigrants to the border would cause serious problems with Canada and Mexico, and is not an option
2) Deporting them all to their homes would be very expensive, and probably not a practical solution (if only because it would be an administrative nightmare), and
3) Removing them all from their jobs and NOT deporting them would give us 12,000,000 new homeless people - also not acceptable.

It seems to me that if a person is in this country and working steadily, then we can come up with an immigration visa specifically for that purpose - for work. It should expire after a certain amount of time if not renewed, and renewal should require proof of steady employment. And yes, I think there should be a path to citizenship - a difficult one, perhaps, for those who entered illegally - but for those who really want to become Americans, for those who are hardworking and for whom illegal entry is their only crime, there should be a way.

I have no idea how to control the greedy employers; the government, so far, has been on their side and that's pretty much all they need. We can elect whoever we like (in theory) and pass whatever laws we like; if the government is sympathetic to the employers, nothing will change.

Currently, or at least last time I looked, in order to get a work visa your prospective employer had to file the paperwork for you and prove they need YOU, specifically, rather than an American citizen. Clearly this isn't happening for labor and factory workers, nor is it going to. It's a difficult and expensive process.

I think the only solution is a temporary worker visa. The workers are here, they are working, they are certainly contributing to the economy. Let's reduce the huge advantages businesses get from hiring illegals, and make sure they have a reason to obey the law. It has to be cheaper to follow the law than to break it.

In order to make a new system work, it has to benefit business somehow; otherwise it's not going to happen. But we can't just recreate the sweatshops of the early 20th century and call it legal, either.