Vicious circle
So, the Senate has apparently come up with a compromise that would allow all the people who broke America's immigration laws more than two years ago to stay in the United States and eventually become citizens.
The logic behind allowing this "earned amnesty" is that it would cripple our economy to round up the estimated 11 million illegal aliens undocumented workers (not to mention an impossible manuever to pull off) and ship them back to their home countries.
President Bush, some Republicans and most Democrats tell us that these immigrants are doing jobs that Americans just won't do. [Won't do at wages certain businesses are offering.] But if this is true, then the last thing we want to do is allow these people to become citizens...
...because then they would stop doing the jobs they've been doing because Americans won't do those jobs...
...so then businesses would need more, new "undocumented workers" to come in and take the newly vacated jobs.
It's a vicious circle.
Speaking of "jobs Americans won't do," does anyone out there watch the cable TV show "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery channel? I've occasionally caught a few snippets of the show -- I really don't have the stomach to watch the entire thing -- and it seems to me that most of the jobs featured there would be Exhibit A in the jobs-Americans-just-won't-do list. Yet, when I've watched the show (and I know you can't always tell), I've never seen a stereotypical "undocumented worker." Have I just missed the episodes where he's working alongside a bunch of Spanish- or Chinese-speaking immigrants?
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My understanding of the current immigration restrictions is that they were based on legislation passed in the 1920's (the idea, not the numbers themselves). If someone were to do a reasonably credible study touting the economic benefits of that original 1920's legislation to the native populace, then I'd agree about the vicious cycle nature of illegal immigration.
Then again, considering what happened to the economy a few years after that 1920's legislation got passed, I'm not expecting such a "reasonably credible" survey anytime soon.