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It gains nothing, but allowing the workers to become citizens and bring in their families will solve that problem...

Allowing? Is there anything that prevents someone from applying to become a citizen, aside from their present illegal actions? Nearly a million immigrants a year become US citizens. Out of the six million who were eligible for Reagan's amnesty, less than half took advantage of it. More than half of them, for less than the cost of a monthly car payment, or three months of insurance, or a quarter of the average mortgage, couldn't be bothered to apply for citizenship.

Does that not explicitly demonstrate that there is a huge population here, of no less than three million, who have lived here since Reagan gave them amnesty, who have zero interest in becoming citizens?

Your solution has been proved to be ineffective in converting even a majority to seek citizenship. What will we get out of this round? A forty percent conversion rate? While millions around the world who want to come here legally and become citizens are denied because our system is choked processing applications from those who are only in the system from a criminal act of their own making?

The only net gain I see here is from government employment - we'd have to hire the equivalent of a the workers hired for the census simply to process the applications and perform even the most basic background checks.

As for taxes we do have a war on our hands.

Fine, excuse 140 billion of the federal budget for each of the last five years. That total is 700 billion. Over the last four years, the national debt has increased by 1.4 trillion dollars, double the amount for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and completely discounting any debt from 2001 and 2002, as one could make the argument that economic changes during those years to compensate for the end of the dot com boom and the terrorist attacks accounts for any deficit for those years.

We're 700 billion in the hole with all this grand infusion of low cost workers, the equivalent of waging another pair of wars of the scale of those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Educating the children of illegals, themselves mostly legal citizens by virtue of their parents illegal actions, meanwhile, has cost 243 billion over the past five years just for primary education. To offer one in a hundred of them the opportunity to go to college will require the building of twelve new universities, 48 state colleges, and a 162 community colleges. But gosh, cleaning tables in restaurants is sure cheaper.

Out of the six million who were eligible for Reagan's amnesty, less than half took advantage of it.

I suspect the factor there is simple fear on their part that the program is a trick to get them deported.

And are you kidding me here? Your objection is that they don't want to be citizens? If you're right then a simple solution is a guest worker as a form of earned citizenship. That is, only those planning to become citizens need to apply. Although you couldn't be more wrong on this one.

Fine, excuse 140 billion of the federal budget for each of the last five years.

You're ignoring the exploding entitlements.

Educating the children of illegals...

Wait, so according to you we don't need to provide opportunities for next generation of workers. Just keep em poor or deport? Who's going to pay the Medicare bills and Social Security checks 20 years down the road then?