Here's what I think is the problem here.
There are TWO problems that everyone seems to lump as one.
Problem one are the ten plus million illegal aliens already in the country.
Problem two is the remaining millions that will come in if we let them.
Let's address problem one as it relates to Tancredo's proposal.
Imagine that your name is Pedro, and that you and your wife Elvira arrived in the US from El Salvador back in 1986, and decided to overstay your visa and set roots in beautiful Hialeah (blue collar immigrant city in NW Miami-Dade County).
You went out in the immigrant underground (yes, there is quite an extensive one here) and bought a couple of great sets of papers for yourself and Elvira, then you got a job at La Suave Shoe factory doing plant maintenance, and Elvira cleaning rooms at the Ramada Inn by the highway.
Eighteen years later, you have made it to maintenance supervisor at La Suave, and 'Vira now has a house cleaning business that employs half a dozen newly arrived immigrant women. Your kids, Luisito ;-), Silvia, and Anna are attending school, and Luisito wants to study architecture.
Along comes Tom Tancredo who tells you that you now need to give up your house, your job, your things, and your kid's future...everything you've built in the last eighteen years, and go back to El Salvador to apply for a possible limited legal re-entry and take a job ten steps back down the ladder IF you get back in, and IF someone will hire you...La Suave can't wait to see if you will come back.
If you don't go back voluntarily, you run the risk of getting caught and being deported, losing your house, your job, your things, and any possibility of a good future for your kids.
Would you volunteer to leave, or would you wait until they caught you?
IF you got caught.
Mark my words...we are either going to have to legalize a ton of the illegal aliens already here, or round them up and remove them by force...no half measures here.
Now, the border is a different issue altogether, and subject for another night.
You should have been a lawyer. Hard cases make bad policy. This family might qualify to enter legally under some visa as a rich enterpriser who "will" create jobs. Plus, I think this family would have qualified under previous amnesty programs. Were they asleep at the switch? I am open to certain exceptions, particulary if your hypo is of a tax paying Cuban American family, who may have voted for Bush illegally. :) But my real fear is to create a tsunami. When it comes to that, just mark me down as a no-nothing Tancredoite. Oh the horror!
Your post is very good. It helps to clarify the situation. I think a fence and border guards are not the right answer. We have to eliminate the draw of easy jobs and welfare. The first step is to use biometric indentification and no longer use documents of any kind. Then make it both mandatory and very easy for employers to determine if an applicant is legal (using biometrics). Finally when you find a business employing illegals, shut them down and confiscate the business or take away the contractors license. Eventually the jobs for illegals will simply dry up. Once the volume of illegals drops, it will be more practical to carefully scrutinize every person crossing the border for terrorist ties. Illegals who are here and have been here for 5 or 10 years will lose their jobs and go home. Finally we need to change our constitution to agree with 95% of other countries and no longer give citizenship to children born to citizens of another country on our soil.