How about some sensible, cohesive immigration reform, huh? How about passing some of the stalled immigration bills in the Senate? How about creating a pathway for DACA immigrants to gain citizenship? Those protected under DACA are possibly the most responsible people living in this country. They are all either working at a legal job or in school gaining degrees in engineering, education, medicine, etc. They pay taxes, yes that's true, the people protected under DACA pay FICA taxes and yet they cannot be part of those programs as far as benefits go. They all obey the law and report to their jurisdictions regularly as ordered. They're possibly the most law-abiding and responsible people in this country and those are exactly the type of people we want in this country. They should have had a pathway to citizenship a decade ago.
The Congressional Research Service has identified 50 bills on immigration in the 116th Congress. Of those, two have been signed into law and one has been voted on in at least one chamber of Congress.
Bills About Immigration | Represent | ProPublica
The right of fellow human beings to seek a better life is one of the most basic parts of human ethics. These are people who feel that uprooting themselves or uprooting their entire family is a necessity to get out of the cycle of poverty. They are effectively refugees.
The biggest "defenders of illegal immigration" are actually in the range of 1% and tend to be Republicans. These are people that want cheap labor but no right to vote. Xenophobia to the degree of denying rights yet not to the degree to actually reducing immigration by any real measurable amount is their goal. Illegal immigration is, in other words, pro-business. I don’t know of anybody who supports illegal immigration.
At one end of the spectrum there are some people who regard them has criminals who should just be arrested and deported, no matter how long they have been here, or whether they have family members who are U.S. citizens, or whether they are productive members of their communities.
At the other end of the spectrum are people like me, who know that most illegal immigrants have come here to make better lives for themselves and their families, and some have fled to escape danger. Some are married to U.S. citizens or people who are here legally. Many have children born in the U.S. Most of them have jobs, in many cases jobs that American citizens do not want. We do not think the solution is to regard all these people as criminals and indiscriminately round them up and deport them. Probably the more illegal immigrants you know personally, the more you move toward this second end of the spectrum.
