Why legalize people who entered illegally? Why have rules and quotas then?

The rules exist so that certain people have a pool of “off the books” informants / assets that they can leverage. If you allow them in, then you lose the stick. If you can’t grant citizenship, then you lose the carrot.

This is disingenuous. What the term illegal is referring to is unvetted. We could make all illegal immigrants legal at the stroke of a pen, but that's completely missing the point. We want immigration to be in service to the existing population. Giving a path to citizenship to anyone who has made it here no matter the means is just to torpedo the idea that immigration should be in service to the needs of the existing citizens.

that's not my interpretation, the opposition party votes as a bloc against everything until they aren't the opposition party any more. democrats do that too. neither party can pass a filibuster in the senate so it doesn't matter, it isn't about any party position.

republicans support setting H1B visas at the same standard it was created for in 1991.

I support that. I support linking the standards of minimum compensation to inflation or some automatically moving metric. we already have several higher criteria work visas, H1B's is just the most popular.

republicans support our education visas turning into residency or work visas more seamlessly.

I support that.

the party doesn't support the empathy arguments for people that are here without a visa. I think something more holistic should be considered than mass deportation.

Its important to add nuance. We have many categories of immigration and many populations. As well as a porous mismanaged border.

That’s wrong on its face, since some legislation does get passed. They don’t oppose everything, they are selective. It’s strictly for political points.

If Republican voters supported more immigration, it could happen. They just don’t. And calling people brought here as children by their parents criminals is ridiculous.

As someone who isn't American, the dialogue around immigration in the US seems so odd.

I've lived in six different countries (including the US) and in every other country there is no discussion around illegal immigrants - they are deported. It's not even a political issue. Having secure borders is a norm.

Then I get to the US and there is this weird political debate around it. For someone reason it's "bad" to refer to people who enter illegally as "illegal immigrants". People argue that people who entered illegally should be legalized.

I find it really odd.

It's because the US has historically promulgated a nudge-nudge wink-wink attitude that could be summed up as "You can't come here legally, but if you get through our defenses, there will be plenty of work waiting for you."

Many of us have sympathy for people who came in under this system who generally just want to work their asses off doing jobs no American wants to do.

We're also talking about kids brought here as toddlers. Many of us think deporting these people is particularly cruel, as their home country is completely foreign to them.

> It's because the US has historically promulgated a nudge-nudge wink-wink attitude that could be summed up as "You can't come here legally, but if you get through our defenses, there will be plenty of work waiting for you."

Do you mean official US government policy? Do you have a source for that claim?

Does nudge-nudge wink-wink imply official policy to you?

How about undocumented immigrants openly hanging outside of Home Depot waiting for work, while everyone looks the other way because contractors rely on them? That feels like unofficial policy to me.

So what you're saying is you know it's true, but there isn't any evidence?

The fact that the US has a bad track record on enforcing immigration law isn't proof of a "wink wink" policy, especially if you considering huge proportion of Congress doesn't want immigration laws enforced.

Not wanting immigration laws enforced is exactly what I'm talking about with nudge-nudge wink-wink. An unenforced law isn't really a law.

Also you're crazy if you think most Republicans in Congress actually want immigration laws enforced. They like the cheap labor. They just want to use it as a wedge issue every 2-4 years.

> Not wanting immigration laws enforced is exactly what I'm talking about with nudge-nudge wink-wink.

But there are lots of explanations beyond "wink-wink" for not enforcing immigration policies. The Democrats want more immigration, even if it's illegal, so where they have the power (say SF) they don't enforce them.

That doesn't mean the Democrats are happy with the status quo of a large illegal immigrant working popoulation.

> Also you're crazy if you think most Republicans in Congress actually want immigration laws enforced.

Really? So place like Texas that are trying to stop illegal immigration at the border but being blocked really want illegal immigration? I don't think so.

The words “give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are engraved on the Statue of Liberty. We were all taught about immigrants trying to escape poverty, war and hardship by coming to America and starting a new life for themselves and their families. So it’s got a bit of a romanticism to it, and it’s hard to blame anyone for doing whatever it takes to get their families into the country like we saw the immigrants in our history books do.

Same dialog and divide exists here in Sweden. What some call illegal immigrants, others call paperless. So it is not a US-exclusive thing, and also here, the government have a hard time to execute deportions.

I don't really know much about India but they seem to have more illegal immigration than the US does and per https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50670393 seem like they have discussions about amnesty there too. My assumption would be that any regional economic power with long borders will struggle with illegal immigration.

Did those countries have millions of people trying to go there?

Yes. Look at Europe. The UK's policy was "hostile environment", which was basically make staying illegally so hostile that people wouldn't come.

Canada loved to mock the US's treatment of illegal aliens (for political gain) until they started pouring into Canada. Even with those seeking asylum, Canada was pushing the "third country" agreement that people need to seek asylum in the first country they enter, not pass through the US and come to Canada. For illegal aliens, Canada is deporting record numbers,[2] but Canadians are pretty united in "you can't enter Canada illegally".

I lived in Asia and it was similar. Very strict tracking of legal immigrants and a robust process for removing people staying illegally.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Office_hostile_environmen...

[2]https://www.newcanadianmedia.ca/alarming-number-of-deportati...

So our immigration policy is you can either do all the work migrate legally or you can sneak in and we will legalize you. Congress should make that our official immigration policy?