I’m hard pressed to think of a case where, even under an amnesty, a person who has acquired something illegally gets to keep it. You can claim that fines and payments of back taxes make up for acquiring their US citizenship illegally until you are blue in the face, Ruben, but it’s still at a minimum an amnesty.
And the comprehensive immigration reform McCain and you support, is a stab in the back of the many who follow the rules and wait in the ungodly long lines to come here legally. Ungodly long lines made in part by our pols looking the other way at the problem of illegal immigration of which McCain was, in part, complicit, twice.
You may be right about the 1996 Act, but it does appear that individual States know how to make laws that work. You are probably right about the chest-thumping, which only goes to show that the Feds never intended to either create an effective law or see that it was enforced. All that means is we need new legislators, not give up on stopping illegal immigration, because if we don’t put a stop to it, then it will just be a crisis in another 10 years, no matter how many part-time, full time, or permanent visas slots you choose as a maximum.
Build the fence. Deport those here illegally. Enforce the rule that you only get to be a citizen by applying legally, before getting here. Then this won’t be a problem again and we can get to having honest, above board, and truly democratic discussions about legal immigration and work visa numbers.
