Name:   copperline - Subject:   What's going on here? Date:   9/23/2016 10:17:13 AM

Sorry, I didn't understand your question earlier.  Yes, there are legal methods for immigrating into this country.   Those procedures definitely need to be reviewed, updated, & refined to include a better way to track individuals who enter until they complete the immigration process.    In recent years, the review & refinement of the immigration system has been held up by partisan conflicts within Congress and between Conservatives in Congress & President Obama.

The legal immigration process needs to be reformed.  Both sides agree with that.

Now, estimates are that there are 11.1 million immigrants living in the US who have an uncertain immigration status... many of them have been here for years, established families, taken jobs and tried their best to integrate into US communities.   Requiring all of those people to return to their home countries, reapply for entry Visas and return to the US is an impractical idea.   Many people who are here cannot return to their home countries because they cannot afford to do so.   Consequently, they will hide from authorities and resist deportation.   Many of them have children who were born here and by right of birth have US citizenship, further complicating the idea that these families should just pack up & leave.  

It's important to note that many of these illegals came here to escape conditions in their home countries that aren't just unhappy, but dangerous.   For instance, the Salvadoran painting crew I wrote about some months ago felt it was simply too dangerous to return to the gangs & violence they fled.   Plus, too, the financial cost of making the trip back home, staying there with no job or way to support themselves while waiting for a visa application to be completed... well, it was just a barrier they would logically try to avoid.   As far as these guys were concerned, there was no home to go back to.

To be honest, many immigrants might decide that living in an internment camp here in the US is better, safer and affords a better standard of living than they could have if they return to their country of origin... whether it be Salvador, Honduras, Somalia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Iraq or Syria.

Better to deal with these people in place, offering a path to citizenship to those that qualify, coming up with a reasonable way for us to deal with them without rejecting our traditional values of being a nation that welcomes immigrants.   Isn't the inscription on the Statue of Liberty that says "give me your poor, your tired & huddled masses... yearning to be free"?   

It's just impractical to do what Trump says.   And probably dangerous, too.