Reply #22: Prohibition made alcohol illegal...

[primavera]

... was everyone who took a nip now and then a villainous scoundrel? Or was it just a stupid law? South Dakota just passed a law virtually outlawing abortion, in direct, willful defiance of existing law. Will those South Dakota women who choose to have abortions anyway be breaking the law? Most assuredly. But how many of us here would blame them?

Alright, these people are breaking the law and that is not to be commended, but I think the fact that we have such a fucked-up immigration law needs to take its fair share of the blame. Most of the immigrants who are here illegally would love to be here legally rather than illegally. Moreover, most of them could qualify for existing visa categories established under US law. So why aren't they getting visas legally? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Congress only authorizes a tiny number of visas each year for qualified aliens, so the wait for an available visa number may be as much as 20 years. My point is that the only thing separating "legal immigrants" from "illegal immigrants" is the poor planning of conservative lawmakers - the same guys who brought you the Patriot Act and other such great laws - in authorizing visas for only a miniscule portion of those immigrants they themselves have determined to be "qualified" and eligible for the visas they're withholding. It's not a very workable system as it stands, and I think that should be born in mind, if only as a mitigating factor, in how harshly we judge illegal immigrants.