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AZ, ur doing it rong
Now I am clearly in a minority among my friends; I don't believe that we should just turn a blind eye to law-breaking. Illegals shouldn't get "amnesty" just because they're already here; even if we are going to set aside their past crimes, at the very least the ones who came here of their own free will should go to the back of the line, behind everyone who's following the process, and it's not wrong to make them wait at home. Impractical, maybe, but not wrong. (Also impractical is any large-scale hunt for them; catch them where you find them and by all means look at large, suspect employers, but leave it at that.) I have sympathy for people who came here illegally in their parents' arms, and I don't know what to do about that.
And I believe that if a police officer who stops you for a traffic violation can give you a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, a local misdemeanor, then how much the moreso should it be perfectly legal to check for felony-level violations of federal law. And I also believe that "anchor babies" born to illegals should not confer citizenship, though they are unambiguously citizens themselves per the Constitution.
But. Arizona, you're gone off the deep end and you're making it harder for your law-respecting allies to hold any traction in this debate. Stop it. You're giving ammo to the other side.
Certain things are the domain of federal law, and you should butt out. Don't make your local police officers, who often have to rely on the good will of communities they work in, into the enemy. And for heaven's sake, what on earth possessed you to go up against the US Constitution? That can only end badly. (You should maybe try reading it sometime.) If Congress passes legislation granting automatic citizenship to illegals who come here to have their kids, those us us who have a problem with that will hold you directly responsible.
The immigration reform I want to see goes something like this:
- Eliminate quotas. Anyone who wants to come here legally is welcome and a path to citizenship should exist as it does now. Entry should be expedited for anyone with a credible need for asylum.
- (Edit based on comments:) Streamline and simplify the application process.
- Government-funded support is only for citizens. We can't afford, nor should we be on the hook, to support all the world's needy.
- Punish those who employ illegals along with the illegals. If this means that consumer prices go up because the people "who will do the dirty jobs Americans won't do" are replaced by others at a higher price, I really don't have a problem with that. I'd rather not be part of a system of exploitation and I realize that's not free.
- Citizen children should be treated the same way they would be if, instead of being deported, mom and dad were doing jail time for a different crime. We don't forgive armed robbery or murder just because there are kids; why should we do something different in this case? (The children can always leave with the parents, of course. Many things in life are not fair; parents' bad decisions, and just plain dumb luck, can have effects on kids. And these wouldn't be the first kids who are uprooted from their friends and community because the parents have to move.)
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The cases are not quite parallel for several reasons. A parent in prison is usually eligible for release -- often at some point reasonably proximate temporally. Deported parents are not. The family is permanently severed. Children of parents in prison often have family who can serve as parent or guardian. Usually not the case here. finally, where the state must assume guardianship of the child of a prisoner, the state jurisdiction is clear. That is less true in cases of children separated from parents by deportation. Which jurisdiction is responsible for such children? The jurisdiction in which the illegally present parents are apprehended? The jurisdiction in which the child is resident?
This last is exceedingly important because of cost. States with high illegal immigrant populations will assume a disproportionate cost of fostering and caring for citizen children of illegal immigrants.
Morally, the situation is the same, but the scale is ridiculous. We are already dealing with this in "three strikes" states where voters simply did not consider the cost of scaling the existing system.
Mind, I should confess to a bias for open citizenship and amnesty even independent of my utilitarian concerns. I consider all who come to this country looking for a better life to share the same dream that drew my own ancestors here. I recognize the "my ancestors came legally -- some even died because they couldn't come legally" moral claim.
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I consider all who come to this country looking for a better life to share the same dream that drew my own ancestors here.
Yes. Among people whose ancestors weren't here from the very beginning, "I got here first so you don't get to come in" is not a sound argument.
Open immigration and publicly-funded services (education, health care, welfare, etc) don't mix. How would you balance the two?
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True, since immigrants are more often renters (at least initially), there is a disproportionate stress on public schools (which are funded almost exclusively by property tax and federal money). On the flip side, however, this does increase the value of rental property, so we could just have better assessment of rental property for tax purposes. Alternatively, we could impose a special tax on international money transfers. These are disproportionately made by immigrants to families abroad, so a surcharge imposed on such transfers (say a 5% surcharge) would generate revenue almost exclusively from the immigrant population that could be used to make up any additional public cost.
But as I say, I'm skeptical of the premise.