"This is not about racism - it's about being fair to taxpayers and those who are waiting to be legal immigrants themselves."
Exactly. I'm not entirely unsympathetic to these people, but what kind of message do we send to legitimate potential immigrants if we give these people any sort of amnesty or preference for return? "You just wait in line while our creaky immigration system processes your applications. Or, if you can sneak in and stay and work illegally for a few years we'll let you stay." The only real shame is that we haven't been rounding up and kicking out people who overstayed their student or tourist visas all along while the Liberals were in power. We basically implied to these people that they could come here and stay illegally, since we were so lax in enforcement.