"But shipping out some guy who's been here and has been working for years and hasn't done anything wrong but sneak over the border is both bad for our economy and morally wrong."
1. Being here illegally is morally wrong.
2. It is not "bad for the economy". It would be bad for the employers who rely on cheap, illegal labor, but the economy would improve in countless ways.
Keep living in your dream world.
Yes, kinda. But it's also morally wrong to, say, not pay full sales tax on a used car, but I don't want to throw everybody in the can who does it. The disease isn't worth the price of the cure.
2. It is not "bad for the economy". It would be bad for the employers who rely on cheap, illegal labor, but the economy would improve in countless ways.
You are right in one way and totally wrong in another.
Yes, in the long run, if they had never come here, the economy would be better off, I'll grant you.
However, the cost of uprooting 10 million people, lets say 5 million of whom have jobs (not couting kids, say at home moms, slackers etc) would FAR outweigh any benifit. It would create economic chaos in some areas, and hurt everywhere.
And that's not even to mention the amount of money it would cost for the manpower to find and deport them, and also says nothing of the human cost of spending police time hunting down illegals who are otherwise law abiding instead of murderers/rapist/drug dealers/whatever.
Pray for W and Our Troops