With regard to the undocumented, Mark suggests that all of us legal citizens get undocumented so we can have the same 'advantages' as the undocumented.
We need to regularize the situation of the 298 million non-undocumented residents of the United States. Right now, we get a lousy deal compared with the 15 million fine upstanding members of the Undocumented American community. I think the 298 million of us in the overdocumented segment of the population should get the chance to be undocumented. You know when President Bush talks about all those undocumented people "living in the shadows"? Doesn't that sound kinda nice? Living in the shadows, no government agencies harassing you for taxes and numbers and paperwork.
An obvious 'tongue in cheek' prespective but what the heck, why should the undocumented get all the benefits and not any of the grief? Another more sober observation is that there doesn't seem to be any advantage for the illegals to get legal especially if there is no criminality associated with being illegal
Of course, if one wants to get documented as a legal citizen, rather than go through the delays and hassle in the highly inefficient immigration service, one only has to find some enterprising person proficient in forging the required documentation. As Steyn writes:
In Michelle Malkin's book Invasion, she recounts the tale of two fellows who in August 2001 pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Va., in search of fake ID from the illegal-alien assistance network that hangs around there. Luis Martinez-Flores, who'd been living here illegally since 1994, took them along to the local DMV, supplied them with a fake address and falsely certified they lived there.
Think about that. From undocumented illegal alien in the 7-Eleven parking lot to lawful resident of the State of Virginia in just a couple of hours. Wow. Say what you like about Luis Martinez-Flores, but he runs one efficient operation.
By comparison, say you've got two kids under 5, and you'd like to bring over a nice English nanny to look after them. Name of Mary Poppins. Good references, impeccable character. If you apply now, there's a sporting chance the process may be completed before your children's children are in college
Given that the new immigration "compromise" bill retrospectively approves all the millions of people who've been through the super-efficient Luis Martinez-Flores immigration system but without doing anything to improve the sclerotic U.S. government immigration system, maybe it would be better just to subcontract the entire operation to Senor Martinez-Flores and his colleagues. It would certainly be cheaper. The extensive Undocumented American support network manages to run it out of the back of the car from a parking lot without a lot of air-conditioned offices full of lifetime employees on government pensions, and given that the net result is exactly the same people who'd be living here anyway, why not go with the lowball bid?.
Steyn gives other examples of an immigration bureaucracy that can't even manage its current levels of activity with any kind of intelligent efficiency much less be able to handle requests from millions of illegals wanting to cash in on amnesty. Congress can put forth all the immigration reform proposals imaginable but unless the governments immigration agencies are drastically modernized and otherwise reformed, the agencies will do just what they do today, leave the laws unenforced.
Read it all.