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Amnesty

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The focus of US immigration reform should be bringing public policy in line with the pubilc good. Tighter enforcement of bad policy doesn't even constitute reform; it constitutes doing the same thing, and harder.

The US's ever-growing economy has created a demand for labor, signaled by relatively high wages and benefits. Of their own accord, immigrants would come-feeling it worthwhile to surmount the barrier-to-entry that is travel expenses-to meet that demand, and in the process grow the economy further through productive labor and, if not prevented from doing so, thorough continuation of the US's long tradition of immigrant entrepeneurship.

Contrary to the arguments of economically ignorant xenophobes, the economy is not a fixed-sized pie that is divided among residents, with each arrival making our slice smaller. Immigration is a response to a shortage, and like any such response, it makes us better off.

The Federal government, motivated by concerns other than the general welfare, has thrown a monkeywrench into the market's invisible gears. The mess began with 1921's "Emergency Quota Act", but our current dilemma stems more immediately from 1965's Immigration and Nationality Act which, with modifications to its quotas, governs our immigration and visa process. Instead of letting supply and demand determine who comes and how long they stay, the government created an alphabet soup of visas and arbitrary caps on the total per hemisphere and per country. From a thinking man's perspective, this makes as much sense as placing caps on the number of people who may open pizzerias each year. No government official or group of officials knows how to set such a number, nor would the nation's economists, if they all worked at it together; economic central planning does not work!

To top matters off, no visa class exists for unskilled workers! The invisible hand of the market still works nonetheless; immigrants who cannot get visas, most of whom cannot get them under any circumstances, nevertheless find very expensive and sometimes dangerous ways to come and stay; a meager life in the US's underground economy is better opportunity than life at home.

As a result, immigration has moved off the roads and to the deserts. A corps of smugglers, no better than gangsters, that would not exist were legal temporary and permanent immigration practically possible, has developed to help people come to the US illegally. Processes intended to keep dangerous criminals and people with untreated

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