The Heritage Foundations plan for illegal immigration. This is not the complete plan, but the meat of the plan. You can read all of it here:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/bg1858.cfm

What We Need

What is required is a comprehensive strategy that reverses decades of ignoring, indeed encourag*ing, the disregard of requirements for legally enter*ing and lawfully residing in this country. An appropriate strategy would:

Require and provide resources to enforce laws within the United States, including prosecuting benefits fraud, identity theft, tax evasion, and immigration violations.[6]
Engage the cooperation of federal, state, and local governments and non-governmental organizations.
Work with other nations to enforce laws, to educate their citizens, and to develop more desirable legal alternatives for undocumented workers, such as allowing temporary workers to receive credit in their home countries’ retire*ment systems.[7]
Encourage other nations to adopt sound gov*ernance and economic policies that will pro*mote growth in their economies and negate the need for citizens to take low-paying jobs in the United States.[8]
Enable the private sector by allowing employers to identify lawful workers quickly and easily at a reasonable cost and in a manner that respects individuals’ rights and privacy.[9]
Create alternatives to cumbersome, bureau*cratic, government-run programs by leveraging the capacity of the private sector to develop innovative and effective solutions for bringing temporary workers to the United States and managing them.
Improve the infrastructure at the points of entry and vastly enhance customer service for immigration and non-immigration support programs—such as visa issuance and monitor*ing and screening people and cargo—so that they speed rather than inhibit the legitimate flow of goods, people, and services across America’s borders.[10]
When the legal means of entry into the United States are perceived as more safe and advantageous for them, workers will have every incentive to respect the rule of law.

The Amnesty Problem

A comprehensive system to encourage legal entry has little prospect for success unless the United States can reduce a thriving and prospering population of undocumented workers and benefit recipients. To address this issue, several policymak*ers have discussed the idea of a new “temporary worker program” that, among other things, would grant potentially millions of individuals who cur*rently are unlawfully present in the United States the right to work legally in this country provided that U.S. employers could not find suitable Ameri*can workers for the positions.[11]

In recent months, proposals to this effect have been introduced in Congress.[12] At issue in all of these proposals is the question of “amnesty.” While most discussions oppose amnesty in general, con*sistent with long-standing principles of law and recent immigrant reform experience, there is no consensus on the exact meaning of the term.

Some define “amnesty” as the granting of Ameri*can citizenship and stress that the reform proposals would not affect existing nationalization proce*dures. President Bush, for instance, has said: “I oppose amnesty, placing undocumented workers on the automatic path to citizenship.”[13]

This use of the term is atypical. With respect to immigration, amnesty is most commonly defined as granting legal status to individuals unlawfully present in the United States, which all of the pro*posals certainly would do.[14] It does not get around the amnesty problem to assert that an undocumented worker would not gain an unfair advantage in applications for citizenship or per*manent worker (green card) status over those for*eigners who followed the law and applied for such status without working illegally in the United States.

While each of these proposals may have some merits, they are still fatally flawed in this respect: Regardless of the penalties imposed, any program that grants individuals who are unlawfully present legal permission to remain here rewards illegal behavior and will only encourage others to emu*late them. As President Bush has also said, “Grant*ing amnesty encourages violation of our laws, and perpetuates illegal immigration.”

Any reform of U.S. immigration policies must adhere to the core set of principles that have gov*erned laws in this area for decades.[15] Programs that allow unlawfully present persons to remain in the country legally fail on at least three counts.

Considerations of national security require the federal government to control entry and exit across U.S. borders. Any measure that would increase illegal entry would violate this princi*ple. These programs would likely increase rather than ameliorate the problem and are thus unacceptable.
Any changes in immigration policies should respect the sentiments of the American people. The fact that most Americans would not consent to special considerations for those who have willfully violated U.S. immigration laws should weigh heavily in congressional deliberations.
The rule of law requires the fair, firm, and equi*table enforcement of immigration policies. Rewarding unlawful behavior while disadvan*taging those who have chosen to “play by the rules” violates the principal of fairness.
In short, any program that does not require law*breakers to leave the United States and reenter through legal means if they wish to reside here will never satisfy the tenets of good immigration law and sound security practices.

Past Experience

There is, in fact, already ample evidence to sug*gest that these approaches will not work. In 1986, Congress enacted the Immigration Reform and Con*trol Act,[16] which contained an extensive if complex amnesty program that provided for temporary legal status in the United States, with few impediments against obtaining green card status for illegal aliens involved in agricultural work or who could show that they had been living in the United States for four years since 1982. Its drafters vastly underestimated the number of aliens who would seek to legalize their status. The overwhelmed authorities could jus*tify denying only a small percentage of the claimants despite the widespread submission of fraudulent applications. Enforcement of the new provisions sanctioning employers who continued to hire undocumented workers was minimal.[17]

In the three months following the announcement of the Administration’s willingness to permit foreign*ers already working inside the United States to partic*ipate in its temporary worker program, the number of illegal aliens apprehended along the southwestern border soared 25 percent over the same period dur*ing the previous year.[18] More generally, immigration generally promotes further immigration since new arrivals bring with them a network of familial and other ties. These connections in turn weigh favorably in nonresidents’ decisions about whether or not to take up residence in the new country.[19]

Nor is the American experience unique. For instance, Malaysian officials have concluded that, despite extensive enforcement measures, their recent amnesty program for undocumented foreign workers has not helped to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in their country.[20]

Another case in point is a recent initiative in Spain. Aware of the problems that typically plague such amnesty programs, members of the European Union (EU) roundly denounced the Spanish gov*ernment when it decided earlier this year to offer amnesty and one-year residence and work permits to illegal immigrants who could prove that they had lived in Spain for at least six months, had no criminal record, and had a firm offer of employ*ment in Spain for at least six months. EU members fear that the Spanish program, which ended in early May 2005, will encourage foreigners seeking work in Europe to enter Spain first and then, exploiting the right of residents of one European state to live and work anywhere in the EU, to settle in other European countries.[21]

An Alternative Proposal

For any package of immigration reforms to be considered credible, it must address the significant population of persons unlawfully present in the United States. As an encouragement for illegal res*idents to gain legal status and as a deterrent to potential future lawbreakers, U.S. law must insist that individuals currently in the country who have violated immigration statutes must leave and apply for admission through legal means. Combined with the consistent enforcement of immigration laws within the United States and the enhancement of the legal alternatives for entering and residing in the country, this requirement will serve as a power*ful disincentive to most, other than perhaps terror*ists and transnational criminals, from attempting to cross America’s borders illicitly.

The challenge is to create policies that can be fairly and practically implemented. It is unrealistic to assume that millions of undocumented workers will simply leave, just as it would be practically impossible to force each of them to return to their countries of origin.

The responsible course of action is to establish return programs that, except for repeat offenders and felony-criminal offenses, are voluntary in nature. These must be supported by humanitarian initiatives that protect the safety and legal rights of individuals, regardless of immigration status. At a minimum, reforms should:

Require the Administration to enter into com*pacts with key nations to facilitate the return of their citizens and reward nations that develop robust programs that assist in significantly reduc*ing the unlawful population in the United States.
Engage non-governmental organizations and stakeholders in establishing humanitarian sup*port programs to assist undocumented workers in returning to their host countries.
Establish that unlawfully present individuals who voluntarily leave the United States, have no criminal record, and register with authori*ties before leaving through the US-VISIT pro*gram can apply for legal entry to the United States without prejudice.
Create a national trust fund based on voluntary contributions to assist in covering the expenses of returning undocumented workers to their host countries.
Conclusion

Immigration reform should be a matter of national priority. To be successful, reforms must include a comprehensive package of measures to reduce illegal entry into the United States as well as to reduce the current population of unlawfully present persons. The cornerstone of any such initiative must be a fair and practical program for repatriating foreign per*sons who are illegally present in the United States.