For me, the whole immigration imbroglio boils down to three simple questions:

(1) how many people should be allowed to immigrate to the United States,
(2) what methods should be used to control immigration, and
(3) what should be done about immigrants who have already arrived here illegally.

Immigration has become a hot topic because it seems that we’ve had no official answers to these questions; because we’ve done basically nothing about those who came here illegally and have taken only the most rudimentary steps to control immigration, our de facto position on how many people should be allowed to immigrate is the combination of how many we are willing to allow in plus how many immigrants are willing to take whatever steps they have to in order to get inside the United States.

Now we can have a nice rational discussion about how many people should be admitted based on such factors as what that means to wages, what that means for demographics, what that means for social services, what that means for the countries the immigrants are coming from, how well immigrants are assimilating and the like. What that also means is that slogans such as “America is a nation of immigrants” don’t provide any meaningful insight. Hard data on the factors I’ve raised would be far more helpful than mass rallies or man in the street interviews by the press.

Once we’ve decided how the numbers compare between how many people we are willing to admit and how many are trying to get here, the proper control methods can be decided on. A big fence with regular patrols would be overkill if there is only a slight imbalance but may be the right solution if the imbalance is large. While its wrong to keep citizens from emigrating to a country of their choice and is willing to take them, there is nothing wrong in keeping out immigrants if the nation is unwilling to take them in.

The question about what to do about those who are already here is somewhat unrelated to the other two, although certainly we’ve experienced that lax enforcement leads only to greater numbers of people willing to flout the law to enter the US illegally. Should we simply round people up and expel them back over the border or should be they be punished before they are expelled? How many resources should be devoted to looking for illegals? Should employers be sanctioned for hiring illegals, and should it punishment apply or be greater if they employer does so deliberately and not accidentally?

The reason these issues have become front burner is that immigration has been large enough long enough that it has affected most every American in some way.