by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: November 30, 2009

The term "illegal alien" could be softened to something that does not label individuals who are in a country illegally as "alien". They are human beings and they should be treated as such. But entering and refusing to leave any country without having met the requirements for staying on a legal basis is a crime and is nothing less than a serious crime that has been proven to cause some serious or devastating consequences.

There are three ways in which an illegal resident of a country should be allowed to stay and to work their way toward a long term residency or citizenship: essential skills that assure steady employment at jobs that citizens will not or cannot do; requests for asylum; a guarantee of steady and acceptable work; or satisfactory military service that achieves veteran status and gives a fast track to citizenship. The "anchor baby" laws should be rescinded to stop encouraging people from having children in order to stay in a country.

If children are born in the country, then the individual should be allowed to stay, be required to gain training and employment, and the foreign aid to the country of origin should be reduced by the amount of public cost that the individual incurs while dependent on government programs. But "anchor baby" provisions should be eliminated in order to discourage manipulating of the system

The rest should be detained and deported. The bad news is that many of the rest can be so violent and dangerous that they cannot be released from prison. They are too likely to be released and allowed to return and to continue to be a harm to society. Some borders are so porous that multiple returns by dangerous criminals occurs. In those cases, the foreign aid to the country of origin should be reduced by the amount that it costs to arrest, prosecute, defend, and imprison violent or recidivist criminal illegal residents.

One dirty little secret in America is that the problem of dealing with illegal immigrants is simply too large and intractable to handle. Violent and well financed drug cartel activity has gained a foothold in whole communities that overwhelm the capacities of law enforcement.

Illegal immigration from all over the planet is not the benign and delightful infusion of fresh people that it once was considered to be. There has been an arrogant, criminal and destructive combination of government dependency, organized and gang related crime, organized terrorism, religious extremism, drug cartel dominance, and corruption of the immigration process at the institutional level. Illegal immigrants who have committed serious and violent crimes are not even eligible for deportation, as they would just be released at their home of origin, to make their way back into another country and do more harm.

Any nation with controllable immigration has a three stage process: identification and confirmation, initial support, and eventual assimilation as productive, loyal, and contributing citizens. When the system is so overwhelmed and corrupted, or the economy is so compromised that legal and legitimate applicants for residency are pushed aside by the sheer numbers of incoming and needy people, an arrogance arises in those who realize that they do not need to accept the values and norms of the new nation, who hate the new nation, or who want to replace existing society with their own. This creates political and social instability that, along with economic crisis and decline, causes turmoil and further instability.

In summary, a humane, intelligent, non racist, uncorrupted and effective immigration process needs to be restored and implemented in the United States, if it is not already too late.

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