So everyone knows that the US has a goofy immigration policy. For centuries, people have been coming here from other parts of the world, because we have stood as an emblem of opportunity. People have said to themselves, “If I can get to America, I have a better chance of __________” – fill in the blank.

The slogan of the statue of liberty says “Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses…” America has always welcomed immigrants with open arms, recognizing that most of its residents came from once immigrant families. My own grandfather immigrated from Norway at the end of the 19th century, my mom’s sister has traced their mother’s lineage back to a German immigrant named George Rausch who came before the revolutionary war.

With the exception of the First American population, all of us are the descendants of immigrants, and if you go back far enough, the First Americans immigrated from Asia – so none of us are really “natives”.

I suppose, immigration policy was less of an issue back in the day. Before we had good documentation of birth or death records, before we had any infrastructure – America was a great place to come and get lost. This was not a problem, before we were a nation, and colonized by European nations – they were happy to have their problems exported over here. Religious zealots who despise the despotic rulers of Europe and the Church. Entrepreneurs and Pioneers and folks with more guts than common sense all came over to get a piece of the action. The “New World” was where the action was in the 1500’s -1700’s. Then all of a sudden, the new world grew a set and told the old world to get stuffed.

Even after the formation of the United States of America, we had a small government mentality, the less government we have, the less tyranny we will endure. Given that, and the lack of any seeming end to the opportunity – just keep pushing west to the frontier. In reality, that government did very little except mint currency, try to keep the former colonizers from re-colonizing and acquire more territory.

Fast forward 200 years or so, and we have all kind of government benefits, regulations, and other inconveniences. Some of it is designed to “level the playing field” – to maintain a sense of equal opportunity. The fact is, we only care because we have started to realize that opportunity is not completely unlimited. We have pushed west to the other side of the new world. We have “mostly” populated all the territory in between. We have grown in population to the point where we have created something that feels to many like a “zero sum game”, where anything I get, is because I have taken it away from someone else. This is the mistake of the Occupy Movement, and many liberals, to characterize the opportunity seized by the wealthy as some how taking opportunity from the poor.

We also hear the same rhetoric about illegal immigrants – that every job they take is one less job available for “us citizens”. I think in large part this is a bunch of Hooey – because if citizens were willing to work that hard for such low wages, the illegals wouldn’t have such a foot hold. They are here in part because we won’t touch those jobs for those wages, period. In fact, if the appropriate wages that US citizens were paid the products and services sold would be significantly more expensive, and our effective standard of living would be lower. Very much the same as if we stopped buying low cost products from Asian markets, First Japan, then Korea, now China.

So after all this blather, what is the problem? Once concern is that many of these people are men or women here working and pulling money out of this economy to send home to support families. Another is that we spend a crap-ton of money on immigration enforcement, but are not effective because the other laws make it easy for them to find work. Last, our citizenship policy creates “anchor babies” and we split families when we deport illegal parents of children. We have many conflicting laws regarding illegal aliens:

1) Employers are not required to validate identification for job applicants – effectively allowing illegals to use fraudulent documents to gain employment.
2) All children physically born in the US states and territories are automatically citizens simply because of the location of their birth.
3) Illegal kids can go to schools, but illegals cannot claim any other government benefits like medicare/medicaid, social security, welfare, unemployment etc.

So many illegals are working with fraudulent papers, paying taxes but not filing returns because of the fear of being deported (government gets the unclaimed refunds). Many more are working in the “cash economy” paying no taxes, other than sales tax, and contributing to property taxes via rent, etc. Their kids go to our public schools, because a law from 1982 Plyer vs. Doe says they can.

So would we be better or worse off, if we:

a) gave all the current illegals amnesty?
b) sent them all back to where they came from?
c) changed the citizenship policy so that you at least had to be here legally for your child to be a citizen?
d) made all employers prove validity of workers identity effectively reducing one of the incentives for illegals to come and stay?

Here is another challenge from a logic perspective:

1) These folks broke the law when they crossed the border, and they continue to break laws when they defraud employers, etc.
2) They were not ignorant of the fact when they crossed the border. They took certain risks in coming, fully aware of the consequences.
3) This knowledge of the consequences motivates all kinds of behavior which ultimately is harmful to themselves and to us all.
4) They brought or had children while in this situation, with full knowledge of the consequences.

This is not unlike any other law breaking – there are consequences. One cannot really believe that they were somehow ignorant of these consequences, so being aware, they took these risks, and should not complain about the consequences. It is this claim that “it” is somehow unfair that aggravates me the most. Tragic? Perhaps, in some cases. Unfortunate? Definitely! Unexpected? Absolutely not!

So we have to balance the “greater good of our nation” against “what is legally expected in these case” against “what is our moral obligation towards these individuals”. There is no simple solution, because:

1) I believe that eliminating illegal immigrants actually hurts our economy.
2) I believe that our own policy conflicts and desire to look the other way makes things more tragic, rather than less.
3) I believe that the children of these are the ones that suffer the most, and they did not have a choice.

Here is my recommendation:

1) change the citizenship policy to make it less appealing for people to have their kids born here – so kids of illegals are also illegal.
2) tighten up the employer verification policy to reduce the number of opportunities – without making it onerous for the employers (a government service).
3) make other changes that effectively reduce the opportunity for illegals, without dramatically increasing the cost of enforcement.
4) reduce the amount we spend on less effective enforcement methods.

By reducing the opportunity, and the tragedy of splitting families, we can do a better job of controlling the influx, and effectively manage our borders better. If we gave amnesty to the millions who are already here, it wouldn’t hurt our economy – but we have to reduce the opportunity for those behind, to slow down the influx.