by Saurabh Pal

Created on: July 12, 2007

If undocumented and illegal immigrants get a roadmap to US citizenship then that would be the end of rule of law. Then there would be no meaning left in being law abiding citizens. In essence what the US Government would be saying is.. yes, come on in, dodge the law, ignore it and be here as illegals and then we will give you citizenship. Simply because we are dependent on you! There are far simpler ways of doing this than according legal status to illegal immigrants.

One such way is to simplify visa issue rules. Let the INS classify the category of skills that are most needed in the country and then provide realistic quotas for people to comein and work. This would be similar to H1B visas where highly skilled technical folks can come in legally to work here for 3years + 3 years. But the main drawback of the H1B visa regime is that the limit is vastly underestimated. For example this years limit was 65,000 and there were 150,000 applicants. This shows the nature of demand and difference between supply and demand.

The other way is a bit long term. This would be to increase the quality of life in the country of the immigrants so that they will no longer want to immigrate to US. For example inspite of hardships and difficulties, lot of people choose to return to their countries after spending a couple of years in the US. But there are others also who choose to settle down here because they find the quality of life to be much better than what it is in their country. Such people find more earning potential here than in their countries. So if more opportunities come up in their countries which help them to earn more then they would never want to undertake the hassle of coming into the country through illegal means.

But if US were to legalise this then it would open the floodgates to more illegal immigrants which will lead to a huge deluge.

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