LOL. Yet that is what you offer as the choices we have: mass deportation or mass amnesty. If we enforce our laws, we will have self-deportation. We tried a "one-time" amnesty in 1986. It didn't work. We gave 2.7 million amnesty and now we have 12 to 20 million more illegals. When you reward illegal behavior, you get more of it. And then after this group gets amnesty, more illegals will enter expecting a third amnesty.
The problem with enforcing immigration law nationwide, is that illegals will go to where the law isn’t being enforced as strenuously. Just today there was an article in the Arizona Republic about illegals fleeing Arizona—and heading to New Mexico.
Though the vast majority are in California, it is the State least likely to do anything about it. And most likely to have ways to evade the system, such as a currently estimated 1m under the table jobs, both for illegals and citizens who don’t want to be part of the system.
eVerify did a lot to flush out illegals, but they just moved to other States, and eventually it was figured out that all it could do was to find out if an ID was legal, not the person using it. So it is losing steam.
And because of the drug wars south of the border, a lot of illegals are terrified of going back to Mexico, where entire northern cities are being emptied out, because they have to travel all the way to Mexico City to be out of the chaos. And any south of there also stinks. So they are motivated to stay in the US.
I suspect that the DREAM Act, as flawed as it is, will be about the only reform we will see, even with a Republican congress. It is very selective, just applies to minors, and has some pretty stiff requirements.