Now don't get all huffy. You do realize, don't you, that there was a time not so terribly long ago, when anyone could immigrate to this country? Then we placed significant restrictions on immigration. Today, mostly because of economic demand, we find those immigration laws being violated on a massive scale. The idea that we can make this problem go away by simply "enforcing the law" is exactly like claiming we could have stopped illegal drinking the same way. Note that I'm not saying we should do away with all immigration laws. I'm just saying that in contrast to Sowell's point, we are not obligated to deport all illegals nor to refrain from changing the law.
That is a lie. Exactly what period was this? What did the immigration laws in place actually say? Our nation has never embraced the kind of open borders policy for anyone and everyone throughout the world who wanted to come here. All sorts of restrictions have applied depending on the number of individuals and the country of origin. They didn't allow the same kind of mass scale immigration out of Asia that they allowed out of Europe during the time of Ellis Island for example. This pragmatic approach has its basis in the philosophy of our Founding Fathers. Even they realized that immigration needs to be undertaken with practical approach based on a combination of economic, social, and cultural factors that produces an ideal process of assimilation. They understood that balkanization was a very real danger and had to be avoided at all costs.
Employers are always crying for more workers. But they are simply looking for foreign born workers that simply do the same job for less money than their native born counterparts. This has served to displace our own qualified native born workforce.
Also, many of the industries would be far better off mechanizing/automating their approach to production rather than simply opening the floodgates and allowing more cheap labor to flood the workforce. Agriculture is a case in point. Aggribusinesses have always screamed that they need more and more migrants. But even now with all the migrant workers many of our growers have discovered that there are foreign countries that can produce the same produce for less money, -even with tariffs imposed on their exports to the U.S.. Brazil can sell oranges just as cheaply as our Florida growers can, and that is with a 20 % tariff slapped on their product. Florida growers now realize that their only recourse is to fully mechanize their approach to farming if they want to "remain in the game". We should have been forcing our agriculture industry to mechanize all along rather than allowing them to become complacent and rely on illegals to do everything.
Also, the issue of "economics" works both ways withregards ot immigration. With 6 billion plus people living on this planet and over 60 % of them living at are below the poverty line there will always be an economic impetus for individuals to try and migrate to this country even if it means doing it illegally and working for a lower wage than what an employer is paying his current employees.
All true, except that I am uncertain how that contrasts with Sowell's point. He says,Yet another insult to our intelligence is saying that, since we cannot find and deport 12 million people, the only choice left is to find some way to make them legal.. . . because what they already have is de facto amnesty; the US simply does not enforce its immigration law when it comes to poor Mexicans. Against Britons, yes - the government moved to deport the widow of one of the fallen in the WTC attack because she as a British citizen no longer had an American husband to justify her staying. And there was no talk that her American-born children were "anchor babies;" she could have left her children in America since they were American citizens by birth - but she, the INS insisted at the time, simply was no longer welcome under US law.There is probably no category of law-breakers -- from counterfeiters to burglars or from jay-walkers to murderers -- who can all be found and arrested. But no one suggests that we must therefore make what they have done legal.
She was too much like an American to be allowed to stay, whereas Mexicans are poor, downtrodden masses and it would be heartless to discriminate against them. Again, Elian Gonzales made it to the US but the provenance of his arrival was too anticommunist for him to be allowed to stay. He would have been raised by a bunch of Republicans!