It makes sense to deport criminals who are in the country illegally.
But the million or so Illegal aliens who are not otherwise criminals, but who are working and paying taxes, often under assumed SS#'s who will never reap the benefits of paying it, are already part of this Nation.
I hope my republican congressmen and senators read this but I doubt my breath matters anymore with such diluted representation levels.... but here goes nothing.
Smart immigration policy would be to make the Green Card a commodity.
Increase the number of green cards to cover the existing illegal aliens who can pass a criminal background test but also increase the fees associated with becoming legal, and shorten the time it takes for them to get a Green Card.
Currently the waiting period for an immigrant from Mexico is 8 years. This is too long. The waiting period drives even good people to the smugglers to get here illegally because they know jobs are waiting for them here. As I've often said before, Mexicans do the jobs that keep companies profitable in the competitive markets they are in. Namely agriculture and hospitality.
Puerto Rico once had a thriving agricultural economy but the farmers there have to pay a federally mandated minimum wage, putting them at a disadvantage to other states and nations for exporting their products. Now today, tons of acres in P.R. stand fallow because of simple economics. Their Agricultural workforce has been reduced to just 3% of their population and just 0.8% of its GDP comes from food production, and ironically importing most of its food as a result.
Mexicans in the United States, work plow shares, and hotels, and the most demeaning jobs that our citizenry do not want to do unless they are paid enough to put the company out of business
This is because of the competitive nature of the businesses that hire them; as we almost saw happen to General Motors because of overpaid unions and what actually happened to Puerto Rico’s farms and industries can't compete while being required to pay the Federal Minimum Wage to its pickers.
But we do need to keep the criminals out.
The deadly Central American and Mexican gangs have infiltrated California and we need to get them out or put them in prison.
So here is my plan to get the Mexicans (not the Mexican government), to pay for improving border protection; by increasing the number of green cards to cover the existing backlog, raise the application fee to $17.5k and reduce the wait time to 18mo.
This raises $17.5 billion in first 18 months on the first million, doubling the revenue if it’s allowed to be financed at 7% over 7 years±. This would clean up the Mexican Back Log. Exclude the Criminals and put the Coyotes out of business.
Mexicans pay for policing the border to keep the criminals gangs and enterprises out!
The problem with the Border is not immigration. The problem is the government does not offer enough green cards to good people who qualify.
If the U.S. Raised is green card fees and charged the same rates as the smugglers charge and do extensive background checks this would guarantee only decent people get here.
Doing this would put the smugglers out of business and keep the gangs from coming here.
Border protection would get a lot easier at that point.
Sources:
I'ts hard to argue with cold hard facts!