We disagree on that. I think we encourage them to come illegally as long as there is no legal way to do so.
That's an argument for a guest-worker program that people in other countries can take advantage of. It's not an argument for making the program available to illegals here. That does nothing to stem the tide of illegal entry, and the mere proposing of it does plenty to encourage it.
We could build a fence along the entire Mexican border, and it would do no good. Boats can land on any of our coasts. And people could come here with tourist or student visas, and just never go home (a lot of people from other countries do just that. The 9/11 terrorists did.)
It's a question of numbers. If we closed off the entire land border to unauthorized crossing, the number of illegal entrants would go way down. There's just nothing that can compete with a long, unsecured border when it comes to entering a country illegally.
If you really think that securing the land border would be ineffective at doing anything about the problem, does this mean you'd favor eliminating the Border Patrol altogether?
Having a way for people to come here legally does do a lot to stop illegal entry. How could you possibly argue otherwise?
And isn't it important to find out who the current illegals are, and to do something about them? How do you propose we do that?
If you really think that securing the land border would be ineffective at doing anything about the problem, does this mean you'd favor eliminating the Border Patrol altogether?
That's silly. Just as it is silly to think that our only border problem is the land border between the US and Mexico. We have the Canadian border, all of our coasts, and the problem of people overstaying their visas.
I wonder if you're only concerned about Mexicans, who mostly come here to work, instead of illegal immigrants who come here to either do harm to us, or to take advantage of our welfare system.