So there's a new proposal to...

give illegal immigrants a path to a legal status.  Still undefined if it is a path to permanent residency or citizenship, although the practical differences between the two aren't really that great.  Legal is legal.  It means driver's licenses, it means social security taxes paid don't go to waste and so on.

Now if the U.S. were a monarchy and I were King, I'd be sorely tempted to not go with this proposal and just round up and deport all of the 11 million illegals.  Yes, there is an argument to be made that they broke this law in order to get a better life, and therefore the ends justify the means.  However, that's a slippery slope of an argument we don't want to go sliding down.  If the ends justify the means in that area, then should a starving mother who shoplifts food to feed her children also be excused from following the law?  The law is the law, at least in my book.  And when I drive 5 miles an hour over the speed limit, I recognize I am in violation of the law and if I get pulled over I'm prepared to accept the consequence of my action.  Maybe if that happened once or twice I'd stop.  But the absence of consequence makes it much easier to just do what I want, rather than what is right.

What sways me to go along with this proposal and support it is that in spite of the emotional tug that deporting all illegals has, because it would be the legal and proper thing to do; is that it would be a bad business decision.  The economy is too dependent upon the labor performed by these people.  It would seriously harm major segments of our already too fragile economic system.  So this proposal is good.

Provided we make one change.  I have no problem with finding a path to a legal status for the illegals here.  But as part of this change in how the government handles illegal immigration, we have to close the door behind this last group to receive some form of amnesty.  Otherwise, ten years from now, we'll have another ten or 11 million illegals once again and the same outcry to give them a path to a legal status.  We have immigration laws, quotas, lotteries and the like in order to not overburnden already overburdened social systems and infrastructure.  We can't just throw open the borders and let all comers enter.  We don't have the resources.

So pass this proposal and provide that path to a legal status.  But establish a firm cutoff date, beyond which anyone who enters illegally gets deported unless they qualify for asylum.