[tw]

Originally Posted by queequeger

However, it would be a kinder solution to simply give them citizenship. All the sudden they're no harder or easier to track than you or me.

And so you have defined why we have a problem. For example, EE Times of 27 Aug 2007 describes even a reverse brain drain because our draconian laws are based in the mindset you see in Yesman065's post; a solution that ignores the problem.

By the end of fiscal year 2006, half a million foreign nationals living in the States were waiting in line of employment-based green cards ... If spouses and offspring are included in the tally, the number exceeds 1 million. ...
The number of available green cards in the three categories totals approximately 120,000. "If there are over a million persons in line for 120,000 visas a year, then we have already mortgaged almost nine year's worth of employment visas" ...

The series then continues to explain how desperate America is for these illegal workers in high tech jobs.

Research released Wednesday shows that foreign nationals were listed as inventors or co-inventors in 25.6 percent of patent applications in the US ... The US government is among those that benefit from foreign nationals' brainpower. Some 41 percent of its patent applications list foreign nationals as inventors or co-inventors.

The report uses examples to demonstrate people who want to start businesses in America and cannot for 4 or up to 13 years. So they leave.

US companies bring in many highly skilled foreigners on temporary visas and train them in US business practices. ... Those workers are then forced to leave, and "they become our competitors. That is how stupid as it gets"

... a senior strategic projects manager who has an engineer background and is working for a Fortune 100 company has been waiting 13 years for his green card, Arumbakkam said.
That manager, also Indian, applied for permanent residency in Canada at the same time he applied for it in the States. After 18 months, Canada offered it to him and his family. His wife and children moved to Vancouver BC

Notice how some blindly see unenforced laws as the problem. They don't even see why the laws are not enforceable. They just know enforcement - classic 'big dic' thinking - will solve everything.

We need 1.8 million immigrants to harvest the crops. We offer only 29,000 visas. So we should enforce laws upon those other 1,710,000 workers only because only those laws are righteous? We even ignore the purpose of those laws? No wonder Martin Luther King was so evil. Meanwhile look at the numbers even for workers that America most desperately needs. Millions are needed. Only 0.12 million visas are available.

America even created 2 million Iraqi refugees. We only permitted a few hundred to come to America. The laws are never wrong. It must be all those evil Iraqis. Laws do not create problems? Well, yes. Problem are the foolish who support those laws; who ignore the problem - those laws.

They are here illegally because we need them, because they need the work, and because so many want to enforce laws that are not enforceable. Since we are into enforcing stupid laws, then bring back prohibition. Notice all the drunk drivers who would not longer exist if we just enforce that law also.