Reply #21: I don't think children should have to pay for parents' indiscretions but they often do.

[Lasher]

The US government is not morally obliged to solve everyone's problems in the world. Children go hungry every night and there is nothing we can do to stop this but we help as much as we reasonably can. And so it is with our immigration policy.

As of 2006, the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined. The number of foreign nationals who became legal permanent residents (LPRs) of the U.S. in 2009 as a result of family reunification (66%) outpaced those who became LPRs on the basis of employment skills (13%) and humanitarian reasons (17%). Nearly eight million immigrants came to the United States from 2000 to 2005, more than in any other five-year period in the nation's history. Almost half entered illegally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States

A 2009 survey by Gallup found roughly 700 million adults would like to migrate to another country permanently if they had the chance. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, named the United States as their desired future residence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration

Just as we cannot solve world hunger, we can't accommodate every immigrant who wants to come here. Therefore, we must control the number of immigrants that we welcome, by enforcement of policies that we fairly develop and consistently enforce. But with nearly half of our immigrants coming here without permission, we are not doing enough to enforce our policies. That is unfair, particularly to those who follow our rules when coming here. We can and should do much better.

The best solution is to require every employer to verify that everyone they hire is legally in the country with permission to work. This would be manageable, using a system such as E-Verify. The biggest single incentive for illegal aliens to come here would be thereby curtailed, resulting in a significant reduction in new unauthorized residents. Further, a substantial number of our current 11 million illegal aliens would return to their country of origin.

My position on higher education follows this same philosophy. Allowing illegal aliens to attend our institutions of higher learning sends a message to others, that they will be rewarded if they smuggle their children in. Even worse, what you suggest is to corrupt our immigration policy to accommodate an adult foreign national who is here without permission. All policies are unfair if they are inconsistently administered.

I am a member of the Democratic Party of the United States. As such, I strongly support the US working class. While I sympathize with everyone who is disadvantaged, my first priority is the interests of US legal residents. Is yours?