Obill writes
Quote:This is the part I don't get. Why leave and come back? How do poor people pay for that? Who puts the bread on the table in the mean time? After turning the blind eye for as long as we have; is it not reasonable that millions of people took advantage
especially after millions of people had? Failure to say no is akin to saying yes, yes? Why is that so different now? After all this time is it so all-important to make this point, NOW?
Why not offer an amnesty that anyone who can show gainful employment, lack of criminal behavior, ability to sustain themselves and their families and perhaps get their current employer to sign off as sponsor/monitor for a probationary period leading to legal status? Who would be hurt by that?
Much earlier in the thread I posted quite a bit of information on amnesty programs during the Carter and Reagan administrations and the effects of these. It seemed the logical humane thing to do, and was to be followed by strict enforcement of immigration laws from that point on and the employers were required to ensure that all their workers were legal.
Compared to now, there were only a fraction of known illegals in the country at that time.
Making the employers responsible for enforcement became obviously untenable almost from the beginning. Those who had the luxury to take applications, wait for documentation and background checks, etc. had no problem. Those who needed to hire somebody to start that afternoon did, and that was a lot of employers. Plus a lucrative cottage industry producing phony documents sprang up immediately and producing the requisite three proofs of residency and citizenship was no problem at all for the illegals.
The net effect was to erect a huge symbolic flashing neon sign on America. Ya'll come and if you are just a little careful at first and manage to stay awhile, the Americans will make it possible for you to stay permanently. And the floodgates opened with thousands arriving every week, by some estimates every day. It is naive I think to assume that still another amnesty program will not have the same effect.
And as Joe Nation explained, there are many many others who are obeying the law and jumping through all the necessary hoops to be admitted legally, either to work or for permanent status. It is a grueling and lengthy process, and it is an injustice to these people to allow people who intentionally broke the law to cut in front of them. Both my husband and I have immigrant ancestors from Ireland and Scotland who came here legally, and they didn't have a really easy time of it but we're all solid Americans now. The older members of the Mexican and Italian branches of my family also came legally in the 1940's or more recently, and they also have been naturalized and are proud and productive Americans.
So doing it legally without still another amnesty in my opinion is the only way to go to be fair to everybody and to ensure that those who come do respect the law and do understand their responsibilities to the country they wish to live and work in. So let those who do return to their home country and let their employers bring them right back legally with a signed contract laying out the rules and expectations. And thiose unwilling to do that within a reasonable time allowed for getting it done, will remain illegal and subject to the full force of law.
It couldn't be any more disruptive for people to get home and come back legally than it is for them to take a day off here and there to protest against the United States.
