To legalize or not to legalize

I had refrained from blogging on this topic since I do not believe I understand all the issues at stake in this debate. Most people that I have talked with have a very myopic view of the situation and more often than not have a kneejerk reaction one way or the other. However, after reading Jacek's post and the subsequent comments, I decided to try to put down some of my thoughts. Some of my ideas might come across as half-baked but I guess that is part of understanding the problem. The more I talk about it, the more I hear other people's opinions, the more I'll learn.

So what is the issue here? The issue is illegal immigration. It is important to distinguish between illegal immigration and legal immigration. Ostensibly no one is saying they have a problem with legal immigration. It is the illegal aliens and thier status in this country that is up for debate. The reason I bring up the legal/illegal thing is that I have found unfortunately, that that line gets blurred sometimes and people club those two categories together.

Now, I think we can all agree that illegal immigrants *are* necessary for this country's economy. Or put another way, the jobs done by these illegal immigrants are jobs that your average American citizen is not going to be willing to do. Manual labor, housemaids, landscaping, serving in restaurants are just some jobs that come to mind. You will not find a lot of Americans willing to work for 6 dollars an hour to do that kind of work. You might find some school/college kids but that's about it. Also, if you divert some of the workforce towards these kind of jobs, there are fewer people available to do mid-level jobs in the workforce. There is lesser R&D. The country's growth might be affected (?).

Having said all that, I absolutely do not believe in granting illegal immigrants citizenship. That just wouldn't be fair to the hundreds of thousands of people going the legal route, paying taxes, paying their dues, contributing to this economy and waiting patiently for 5-10-15 years to become citizens. If every illegal alien who had lived in this country for 5 years automatically became eligible for citizenship, that would place an unimaginable burden on the INS which would be completely unfair to the legal immigrants. This is the first reaction that came to my mind given my own status and the situation that a lot of people I know are in or have been in i.e. legal immigrants on an F1 or H1 visa. However, on thinking about it a little more, I realize that to just consider my situation would be extremely myopic. This is a much bigger problem.

Another sticking poing is that people can’t just break the law and then demand certain rights. That just doesn’t sound right. That seems to imply that they should not be held accountable for their actions. But we can’t keep ignoring these people. They have families and kids. They have risked their lives to try to live the American dream. They are trying their best to build a better future for themselves. Purely from a humanitarian standpoint, they should be able to use the resources of this great country. Most times these are law abiding citizens who will be more than willing to contribute to society. Surely a country built by immigrants will find some place for them?

So the country does need a lot of these illegal immigrants, but we can't ignore the fact that they *are* illegal which means we shouldn’t just grant them citizenship. So what's the solution? A temporary worker program. Get them into the system but don't promise them citizenship. Make them go through the regular route if they want to be legalized citizens of this country. That way, you have addressed the security concerns, the humanitarian issues, the job scenario AND you have more taxable income. These people will even have to contribute to Social Security even though they won't get any benefit out of it (as is the case with legal immigrants).

To conclude, I must add that I haven’t really read a lot about this topic and won’t pretend to understand all the intricacies of the issues at stake. These are just my views from an average layman’s perspective.