The only people who benefit from American Immigration laws are politicians, lawyers, and Federal Employees.
The politicians live off the tax payers and so they write and support and dispute these strange and unreasonable laws and purposefully make the issues complex. The lawyers bill innocent and guilty alike for hours of time trying to follow the strange and unreasonable laws. And Federal employees from border guards and clerks to judges and prison officials earn their living from the taxpayer due to these nonsensical laws.
What is the benefit to the taxpayer? How much money would the tax payer save if the immigration laws made sense?
It is very easy to think of several ways to fix the system. The idea is to keep undesirables and huge numbers of people out of America, right? But the system we have now is not doing that. The system is broken and no one in government wants to fix it. The system won’t change because politicians, lawyers and federal employees profit from the complexity.
We need to regulate the people who come into this country, of course. But the system we have makes no sense in so many ways I would have to write a book to show its idiocy. For example, no one who entered the country illegally and stays more than a year (some say there are up to 20 million such people) can stay legally. They have to leave and wait ten years to come back, with no assurances they can come back even after waiting ten years. So we have this vast population that lives here for decades that has no chance of becoming “legal”.
No simple working system can be accepted because the One Percent in power, lawyers and politicians, profit from the complexity and the impossibility of the system. If they agreed they couldn’t justify their jobs. In essence, their job is to make sure the government stays broken.
You want a simple example of how to solve the huge problem of illegals? Fine the hell out of the illegals but give them a path to citizenship. If they could stay legally they would pay pretty much any amount of money. It isn’t amnesty if they pay their fine. The law that exists now does not allow up to ten percent of the population to be legal. If they could pay a fine, well, that isn’t amnesty unless you get amnesty when you pay a speeding ticket.
Most of us do not know that a border crossing infraction is punishable by a fine of $90-$250, like a traffic violation. But is it fair to call those who travel 56 in a 55 zone “illegal” drivers? Is it fair to say that a child of a lawbreaker is “illegal” due only to the country they live in? The word “undocumented” certainly is a better word in the case of Dreamers who never broke any immigration law.
Connecticut passed a law allowing students who graduated Connecticut High Schools in-state tuition in Connecticut colleges. This certainly would be a non-issue except that most people label these Connecticut students “illegals”. What we don’t know about immigration is staggering.
Tens of thousands of High School students in every state have no idea they are illegal immigrants. Typically they find out when they want to get a job or a driver’s license that they do not have a social security number. They cannot join the military and they have no recourse to become “legal” other than marriage with an American. And even that may not be an option for them if they arrived in this country “unexamined” or without a visa.
About half of all undocumented or “illegal” immigrants entered the country legally but overstayed their visas. 58% are Mexican nationals and the new border security has made it much more difficult for people to cross our Mexican border. Ironically that has increased the likelihood that an illegal resident will remain here undocumented rather than return to their home country knowing how difficult it will be to return.
Undocumented children, when they reach age 16 or so feel as American as I am, having gone through our school system. But they are not eligible for loans or grants for College or until now in-state tuition in Connecticut. All of them know a lot more about this country and the English language than the country and language of their citizenship. But here they can’t work or drive legally, or enter our military. College is usually out of the question as well unless they can pay full tuition in cash.
Most college age students are idealistic and many stand up and declare publicly they are “dreamers” because of their hope that The Dream Act, an immigration bill that passed Congress but not the Senate (mainly due to efforts from Senator John McCain) will one day allow them a path to citizenship. Declaring oneself a Dreamer is a courageous act, obviously, because their immigration status makes them “illegal” ostracizing them and putting their families in danger of deportation. But they probably have never broken any law, and certainly have broken no immigration law.
You probably think these people can now just “do it the right way” and apply for citizenship. Nope. According to US immigration law, the only way to become legal is to return to their country of citizenship, wait ten years and apply for a return visa. Many of them are illegal because they could not obtain a visa in the first place. Immigration should be difficult, but under present laws for 20 million US residents it is just impossible..
The laws affect the lives of the equivalent of the entire populations of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined. But we all know these laws are not likely to change. It is a huge industry and it is not in the best interest of those politicians, lawyers and federal employess who administer the nonsense to change the laws. The U.S. Congress is frozen, unmovable. And until the laws change there will be no change in the situation of these immigrants.
At least now Dreamers caught the same break as their classmates in Connecticut High Schools, though they will still have to pay cash.
Copyright 2012 Kent Johnson
