First, to allow qualified applicants to legally enter the United States for as long as needed by the United States.
Second, is to make it as easy as possible to eject uneducated, lazy, welfare consuming and criminal Mexicans as quickly and permanently as possible.
Second, is to make life so unbearable for all illegals, who disregarded our laws by breaking into the United States, that returning to their own country will be a better option for them.
In truth, they are already at least half-American at this point, and better citizens than many who are fully American.
They are not half American and they certainly aren't 'citizens'.
It is not so black and white. I know several families whose grandparents are illegal, some of their children are legal and some are illegal, and their grandchildren are all legal.
Often, the children were born in Mexico, but were brought here when they were so young that they only know America, and have never been to Mexico. The grandparents speak only a little English, but the grandchildren speak only a little Spanish.
By current law, the grandparents and some of the children would be deported, costing them the family business, their home, and leaving the remaining children and grandchildren dependent on welfare to get by.
It would take the grandparents and their adult children on or about a decade or more living outside the US to get citizenship, and the adult children would be in a foreign country where they didn’t know anyone, and were unemployed.
In other words, this would ruin a successful, integrating family of hard working entrepreneurs, impoverish all of them, and cost the taxpayers a huge amount of money to support those born in the US for many years to come.
And this would accomplish what, again? I am hard pressed to see any value at all to such ruination, for a misdemeanor offense committed many years ago, and a *civil* offense of residing in the US.
If I am missing something here other than “I hate Mexicans”, please let me know.