A Modest Solution for Illegal Immigration

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By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, October 25, 2007

Illegal immigration is one of our country’s most divisive, intractable issues. The Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986 was supposed to solve it, but illegal immigration has continued to increase. This year’s attempt to craft comprehensive immigration reform legislation blew up in Congress. Given the record of failure for effective comprehensive reform, perhaps it is time to address the problem in incremental, piecemeal proposals.


Twelve to twenty million immigrants are in the United States illegally. This is socially corrosive. Respect for the law withers when masses of people disobey the law with impunity and government seems impotent to enforce it. Somehow, we must drastically reduce the number of illegal aliens in our country. To achieve this, two different ways are often suggested: deporting them and then sealing our porous borders, or reclassifying them so that they are not illegal.


Most of those who favor deportation are motivated by love of country and the honorable belief that those who break our laws should not be allowed to get away with doing so. However, I don’t believe that mass deportation is going to happen. Its implementation would be a logistical nightmare, requiring armies of law-enforcement personnel and possibly military troops (perhaps “aidedâ€