If those people you describe, over stayed visas, etc. are here illegally, then those are the exact folks I'm talking about.
Yes that's of course who we are all talking about and yes of course they are here illegally. However the U.S., meaning government policy and U.S. citizens, individuals, small and large employers were complicit. It isn't a case where these illegals were hiding from the law and we were trying to track them down. Instead, they assimilated themselves into society, because we allowed them to. U.S. employers welcomed them. Had that not happened, very few of them would have stayed.
I firmly believe in even handed application of the laws, and it is illegal to hire undocumented workers. So I'm all for deporting every last one of these immigrant "scoundrels" so long as we deport their co-criminal, employer scoundrels right along with them. We know that's not going to happen!
You may not agree with me, but I think you can at least appreciate my point of view. I believe that when these now illegal members of our society finally become legal, our country will be strengthened by the presence of these hard working, loyal, law abiding,* soon to be citizens. On the other hand, our country is about to be torn apart in civil strife if we irrationally start breaking up families and deporting a younger generation who have known no other home than the U.S. while offering their a-few-years-younger, brother and sister citizens the right to remain. That makes no sense at all, regardless of what the law says.
One does not have to rely on compassion, one only has to rely on common sense, to understand the insanity of deporting all these undocumented people who have made homes here, and been here for years.
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*There is data to show that if one uses the estimates of the undocumented immigrant population as a base, the rate of criminal offenses committed by them is lower than for the citizen population.
