Okay, how many Americans do you know who have gone underground to avoid paying a traffic ticket? The penalty for the crime of illegal entry is far less than for many traffic citations. And it is only prosecutable if you are observed illegally entering the US.
This leaves only the civil offense of non-citizen residency in the US. That is not a criminal offense. So criminality only enters the picture for other things, like ID theft. Having a false ID has only been a crime for a few years now. Before you had to take a living person’s ID and commit fraud with it.
Which means that calling illegal aliens “criminals” is just plain not true in the first place. Criminals are those who break felony laws, or maybe commit serious misdemeanor offenses.
All of this goes back to my original argument. If Mexicans living in the US are acting like good citizens, we should encourage them to become real citizens, making it easy for them to continue being good citizens.
They shouldn’t have to leave the US to do it. It shouldn’t bust up their family or ruin their business to do it. It should help them pay any due taxes and continue to pay taxes.
It should be a civil solution to a civil problem. Abusing the hell out of otherwise good people is not a good idea.
And the flip side, which I also pointed out, is if they are NOT good people, they should be kicked out with no delay, and banned from reentry.
Because that is the one, serious, and I mean very serious, immigration offense. Reentry after you have been barred from reentry can get you 20 years in prison. And I am fine with this, if they are real criminal scum, who come to the US to victimize people, belong to gangs, and take money and services from our government while giving nothing in return.
Mexicans in the US are either good or bad. And that is how they should be treated. Blanket solutions affecting both groups are just dumb.
“Mexicans in the US are either good or bad”
Once again, the word illegal escapes you. You cannot be an illegal immigrant and not break additional laws, like identity theft, and credit identity theft.
If legal immigrants to the United States support en masse your proposal for amnesty for those on the contrary who did not obey US immigration law, then I might consider it. Shall we poll them on their thoughts of allowing people to “jump the immigration line” just because they are “good people”? I would be curious about the legal immigrants’ take on this.
Who decides that when, we know nothing about these people. That only makes this highly dangerous for the security of our country.
Regardless of whether you think their *crimes* are serious enough to upset their lives here, don’t you think there’s a moral issue? A right way to act? A proper way to go about your life?
Just because they were allow to stay in the first place, doesn’t mean their day won’t come.