Immigration Policy

In another forum, I was discussing the topic of immigration policy.  Specifically, supporting legal immigration while not supporting illegal immigration.  The question arose of children of illegal aliens, brought here through no fault of their own.

In the case of these kids there are two options as I see it. First, either they are still kids in which case the only realistic thing to do with them is send them back with their parent(s). Second, if they are not still kids, then as an adult they chose to stay here illegally and that's on them.
 
The above options are for children brought here from out of country. In the case of children born here to illegal alien parents, there are two different options because of "birth citizenship." The first is that the parents may choose to retain their parental rights, in which case the child goes back with them (As far as I'm concerned amnesty followed by promises of future border enforcement is a non-starter.  "Fool me once....") but, as a citizen, may return on reaching adulthood. The second is that the parents may, at their option, give up their parental rights and allow the child to be taken into foster care and possibly adopted by an American family. In neither case do the illegal aliens remain in the US.

Now, while that would be the base policy I would also agitate for a bit of flexibility to deal with innocent mistakes, paperwork errors, or being misled in procedures that lead to someone through no intent of their own being here illegally. I've known people who've had that happen, My wife had that happen. (We filled out my wife's paperwork after our marriage. I sent it off. Only between the time when we received the paperwork and we sent it off the location to which it was supposed to go changed. After a period of no response, no response, no response, we ended up hiring an attorney who helped us resolve things.  And I checked.  Our copy of the forms said "send here".  Lawyer said, "No, send there". And the "there" is what finally got things straightened out.)

Oh, and I would bend. over. backward. to encourage people I think of as "Americans who just happen to be born elsewhere" to come here, people who could read the Constitution (the Bill of Rights in particular) and the Declaration of Independence, and basically say "Duh" (Or call it, oh, say, 85% or more agreement), people like Darryl Hadfield and Sarah A. Hoyt. I don't much care how they get here, so long as they do get here to counteract the "we're going to come to America and turn it into a replica of the place we just came from" folk.

And with that, I leave you with this musical interlude: