Politics: What to do about illegal immigration?

It is a tough issue.

I suppose I'm just being a dabbler with my comments here.

The usual answers are build a fence and sanction the employers who hire illegals.

A fence is going to cost some money. We will have to decide how much we are willing to spend on that and where to put it. We simply share too many miles of border to be building that much fence!

How about getting after the employers who hire illegals?

Sounds easy?

Turns out it isn't so easy as described in this WaPo article. Excerpts:

The Bush administration, which is vowing to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal workers, virtually abandoned such employer sanctions before it began pushing to overhaul U.S. immigration laws last year, government statistics show.

Between 1999 and 2003, work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. The number of employers prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants dropped from 182 in 1999 to four in 2003, and fines collected declined from $3.6 million to $212,000, according to federal statistics.
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The government's steady retreat from workplace enforcement in the 20 years since it became illegal to hire undocumented workers is the result of fierce political pressure from business lobbies, immigrant rights groups and members of Congress, according to law enforcement veterans.
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Company officials who knowingly employ illegal workers can be fined and, if they continue, face jail time. Housing or harboring illegal workers or laundering money can carry long prison sentences. But the easy availability of fraudulent documents frustrates investigators, as does a law that protects businesses as long as a worker's document "appears on its face to be genuine."

As a descendant of immigrants, I have great sympathy for immigrants. As an American of Chinese ancestry, I'm aware that Chinese people came and have come to America in both legal and illegal fashions. However, it has to be acknowledged that the Pacific Ocean was and is in effect a pretty large fence!

If the earth had a different geographical layout and China with its 1 billion plus people shared a border with the USA, what would happen?

How would we feel about a fence in that scenario?

Thus, I think some limited fencing is reasonable.

As for going after employers, if fraudulent documents are that easy to obtain and common, I'm not sure it is worth the effort to prosecute until we have a more "foolproof" system of documentation.

A blanket amnesty doesn't seem fair. You have people who have done it "by the book" and those who haven't. To just give away citizenship would reward rule breaking. Nonetheless, illegals are here and are working and are part of the fabric of our communities. A path to citizenship should be devised so those who are here illegally can get back onto a legal track if they so choose. I suppose some benefits should be tied to citizenship thus giving an incentive for illegals to opt for the legal track. Some will opt out of legalizing and as such they should be denied those benefits.