Some 12 million illegals reside in the United States. The problems that they have brought with them, intentionally or not, has turned our country and our Congress on its head. Most of our solutions have been misguided in their approach, and have put the cart before the horse. We have failed to follow through on the steps that must first be taken before immigration can be properly addressed: securing our border, and enforcing legislation already written on the matter. Since neither of those things are going to happen overnight though, let me instead explain the background behind the baggage that immigration carries with it, and why illegals should face the same obstacles that legal immigrants do when tasked with becoming an American citizen.
The purpose of this is to not only provide more opportunities to newly legalized immigrants, but account for the crimes that they have committed as well. Obama's proposed plan is to make the illegals pay a fine and work over the 10 years to create a pathway to citizenship. Before the first, and supposed one-time only, amnesty in 1986, amnesty was only granted on a case by case basis. The 1986 reform required candidates to demonstrate that they "possessed minimal knowledge about U.S. history, government, and the English language" but I assure you that this won't suffice for today's America. The other problem with this plan is that it ignores all of the victims that have been negatively effected by the illegal immigrants, and the other crimes that they have committed as well. About 75% of illegals have fake or stolen IDs, the majority of which have committed social security fraud; children are the prime targets. In Utah, 1,626 companies were found to be paying salaries to the Social Security Numbers of children under the age of 13. Were we to simply grant amnesty to all of these people, we would be ignoring all of the victims that have been created in the process.