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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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There is a misconception about the severity of the law. Entering the U.S. without being "admitted and inspected" is, indeed, a crime. But what type of crime? The maximum penalty for this crime is a maximum of 6 months in jail and a $200 fine. That's it. It equates to a class B misdemeanor in Utah (I use Utah as an example simply because I know the equivalency there). If you've ever driven your car for a month or two after the registration expired or for a time after your license expired for after your insurance expired, you've committed a crime of the exact same
magnitude. Furthermore, a lot of the immigrants who are here actually entered legally and just overstayed their visas. That IS NOT a crime. There is no criminal penalty associated with it.
Also, the "crime" in question is not the mere fact of their "presence" here. The crime is committed when you cross the border and ends the moment you enter the U.S. It is not, as has been suggested, an "on going" crime. From the law's perspective, after you are here you begin to accrue "illegal presence" which can (and almost always does) prejudice your immigration prospects, but be clear...being here illegally is NOT a crime. It's the act of crossing the border illegally that is the crime.
Also, it's a bit silly to talk about immigrants, especially those from Latino countries, "getting in line." The fact is that for the vast majority of those people there is no line. They simply won't qualify for a visa of any sort under the current laws. Also, for those who can get in the line, the wait time for most of them is interminable. For example, the current wait time for the unmarried son or daughter of U.S. citizen from Mexico is 18-years. And that's just the "legal" wait time. The actual wait time is closer to 50 years. So, if a U.S. citizen petitions for son or daughter who lives in Mexico, at a minimum it will be 18-years before that child can join them, legally,
in the U.S.
Even if you are married to a U.S. citizen and have several U.S. citizen children, and even if you've never broken a single law in the U.S., your chances of getting legal can be slim, especially if your family is healthy and intact. You see, if an alien has been in
the country illegally for more than one year, then when his or her wife or husband petitions for him or her, that alien will eventually have to return to their home country for their visa interview (the act is called "consular processing"). However, they go their interview knowing that their visa will be denied. It's an absolute fact. Once the visa is denied, they must then pay almost $700 for the opportunity to apply for a "waiver" which waives their illegal presence and allows them to enter legally. However, to qualify for the waiver you must demonstrate that failure to allow you to re-enter the country will result in "extreme hardship" to your U.S. citizen spouse (the kids don't really count under the law except insofar as their hardship impacts your spouse). Extreme hardship is defined as a hardship far beyond that which would normally be experienced by a spouse in that situation. In other words, the fact that your wife will lose the house and be cast on the street and destitute if you aren't there doesn't count because the government assumes that such hardships are the "norm" and not extreme. Thus, unless you wife, or some child, suffers from a serious physical or mental ailment, you likely won't be admitted. In that case, you can either sneak back illegally, and if you that then you are barred for life, or your wife and children can experience a de facto deportation and move to Mexico to be with you.
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(Wikipedia says about 45% of illegals are visa overstays, by the way, which leaves 55% for illegal entry and/or fraud. I didn't follow the footnotes on that.)
I do think we need to make it easier for people to come here legally (there's another comment thread on that). It's crazy to make people wait 10 or 20 years. We shouldn't have quotas and long lines; anyone who passes a criminal background check should be allowed in, with the provision that taxpayer support won't be available (we can't feed, house, and care for the world) so you'd better be able to get a job.
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My source is a lawyer friend who works in immigration law. He's actually the one I hired when my dad has some issues a couple years ago and was at risk of being deported. (He took care of it so the issue wasn't something that could affect my father's immigration status. Oh how I wish my father would just become a U.S. citizen. It would make life so much easier. The man has been here almost 50 years. I mean, at some point it just become ridiculous, you know?) So I don't have a written source to appeal to. I actually had pretty much the same assumptions you did, and he clued me in, which is the only reason I know any of that.
I agree with you that we need to make it easier for people to come here legally. Our current system is very much NOT WORKING and immigration is very much a good thing.
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I did not know that "illegal" and "against the law" were not the same thing technically, despite apparent plain-English meanings of those words. What'll our legislators think of next? :-)
I'd like to see some fine associated with the deportation; without it, there's no cost to the person who's never going to try to become legal anyway. He gets caught and they send him home? Big deal; that's where he would have been if he hadn't entered illegally to begin with.
I'm glad your father's lawyer got his case straightened out.Do you know why he doesn't want to become a citizen?
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I'm not really certain why my dad doesn't want to become a citizen. He used to say it was because he's schizophrenic and so it just wasn't allowed. However, I eventually looked it up, and mental illness doesn't disqualify you from becoming a U.S. citizen. I showed that to him and offered (and begged) to pay the fees for the application and everything, but he still wasn't interested. He won't say why. He just doesn't want to. Somewhere in his mind it probably makes sense.