The fact is, if my family member had to go through the process of becoming a legal permanent resident alien (aka green card holder) again today, it would cost us $3500+ in fees alone from start to finish (not including immigration attorney costs, or duplicating costs for paperwork, or doctor's fees for shots or photo fees, etc).
An illegal immigrant pays none of that, unless of course s/he was in the country before 1986. Then s/he can pay $1400+ and become a permanent resident alien. If the illegal immigrant entered the country after 1986, it becomes far more complicated, expensive, and fraught to gain legal residency (and it's not necessarily possible). If said illegal immigrant has American children, they could possibly petition for residency on the basis of those children.
Anyhow, I am going into the big, tall weeds of the U.S. government's rules & regulations, and I don't want to do that. I just want to point out that just because someone has a good *reason* for doing something (like entering this country illegally), does not make it *right* for them to do so, morally or legally. And said person should be prepared to pay the consequences for that wrong action, whenever the bill (as it were) may come due. It really doesn't matter if that person has spent years being a good productive citizen since that wrong action. It doesn't matter if they have bought a house, been a community volunteer, paid their bills on time, not gotten into trouble with the law, raised decent upstanding kids. That person is still accountable for breaking the law.
It reminds me of those news stories you hear about with some grandma who was part of some crazy '70s heist or crime, and who went underground and remained hidden for three decades. She got married, had kids & grandkids, was a model citizen. And then the proverbial knock at the door, and she is arrested for that criminal action she did three decades before. I don't hear people saying, "Oh, she's been good since then...they should just let her go." The prevailing conversation you hear is, "Well, she knew she did wrong," or "She did something wrong and she still needs to pay her debt to society." Likewise Roman Polansky doesn't get a pass on his crime of decades ago--the feds still want to see him in court just as much now as they ever did.
So I want to ask you, how is it any different if someone entered this country illegally? They committed a crime. It doesn't matter how long ago they did so. In the intervening years they have benefited from this country's opportunities and infrastructure. Maybe they helped pay for it through taxes (even payroll taxes, if they used a fraudulent Social Security number...another crime, btw), or maybe they didn't. But the fact remains that they broke our laws to get here, they benefited from opportunities that arguably could otherwise have been open to American citizens or legal immigrants. Shouldn't they have to pay for that crime? At a minimum, if they are caught, shouldn't they be forced to return to their home country? How is it okay to send a grandma back to jail, with hope of parole in 2-3 years with good behavior, for a bank robbery committed thirty years ago, but it's not okay to at a minimum send people home who came here illegally thirty years ago (ok, 23 years ago, given the '86 amnesty)? I don't understand the logic.
I don't want to hear a bunch of B.S. about "well Americans didn't want those jobs". How do we know that? If those illegal immigrants weren't here, if the borders were enforced and people who still managed to sneak in were sent home as soon as they were found, I bet any deficiencies in the work force that would require more legal immigration would be remedied pretty quickly. But at the end of the day, we cannot allow folks to flaunt our laws. Where does it end? It's okay with immigration, but not okay for bank robbery suspects...oh and murderers, or identity thieves...unless they were using a Social Security number to be here on payrolls as illegals, then that's okay? You see the problem? How do you differentiate? And folks, we can't take them all. We just don't have the resources. Ask the folks in Arizona how expensive it is to offer services to folks who don't pay for them with taxes (hello AZ immigration law!). You see why people are demanding the federal government enforce its own laws regarding immigration?
And frankly, as someone who jumped through all the expensive, tedious, and maddening hoops with legal immigration, I'm tired of hearing about how the illegal immigrants "deserve" a break. I don't get a free pass from breaking the law, any law--and neither should anybody else. The End.
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