On Amnesty

Many on the right are very concerned about "amnesty" in regards to illegal aliens. Although at first it sounds simply mean in a lot of ways, it is a principled position in the end, based on conservative reluctance to reward law-breaking. Fair enough.

 But when you separate the idea of foreign worker status and immigrant status (entry with the intent of remaining; permanently relocating; citizenship), it makes no sense to insist that Mexican migrant laborers that are already here first leave the country and re-enter legally. Migrant workers have no desire to ultimately remain here, so just legalize them already. No harm, no foul.

I agree with the anti-amnesty crowd insofar as I don't think we should tell illegals that we're going to make them citizens. But that doesn't mean that we can't instead convert them to a rational legal process without penalizing them. We should simply offer illegals the right to live and work wherever they want in the US for two years for five hundred dollars a head. Hell, let them apply for it over the internet and make it renewable into perpetuity. If we do this, we'll no longer have illegals. We'll have a list of foreign laborers we can test for TB and keep track of.

As far as immigration goes, we can take this opportunity to make the process more rational. We should require Mexicans to first apply for citizenship, and then purchase five work visas to establish a total of ten years of uninterupted residency as a prerequisite, during which the applicant must be either in school or employed for 80% of that time. Note that I'm not saying that purchasing five work visas in a row automatically makes a foreign worker a citizen, I saying that it's a requirement of the citizenship process.

Just a thought, anway.