....one bite at a time.
The same way the Highway Patrol deals with mass speeding. If 10,000 people are all doing 25MPH over the limit, you pull one over and write a ticket. Then another, and another, and another. As drivers see others pulled over getting tickets, they slow down. You don't throw up your hands and say "I can't ticket them all so I won't ticket any, I'll just make speeding legal". Until recently the Border Patrol conducted a lot of inland raids which made illegals less secure with their employment. We have stopped that almost completely. The border patrol must catch them at or near the border or they are scott free. Enforce todays laws any time and everytime you can. We don't catch 80% of bank robbers today. Amazing eh. BUT, people are still reluctant to do it because if you do get caught the law is gonna crush you. In neighborhoods near my store many illegals own homes and cars. If one is picked up, jailed, hit with the maximum fines as per the laws on the books NOW, requiring the seizing of his home and car, then deported, it will have a big impact on his neighbors. Once you pick up 3 or 4 they become very insecure. And criminals need to feel insecure. They need to feel the heat. Every knock on their door should cause their heart to jump. We need to make them feel like the criminals that they are. We now make them secure enough to take our a mortgage!! We don't need to catch 20 million people, we need to catch and hammer 1 million illegals and most of the rest will get the hell out of Dodge. And if that fails (it wouldn't if it was enforced) then this nation as a homoginous english speaking principled christian and free land, is lost. We might as well go down with a fight.
Chip
Whatever we think (and we tend to agree on most points) your rhetoric about criminals fearing the night is not the right way to think about this.
A lot of the illegal are just looking for a better life and trying to provide for their family and they came to this country (yes illegally but its not the same as murder...lets face it, there are levels of crimes)...
I am all for the rule of law but state of fear you propose is not going to work. This is coming from a republican conservative BTW. I respect other peoples opinions but I really think it will not work.
Let me give you an example. Out of the million you propose we "capture" for lack of a better word ...just based on percentages, you will probably round up a few who are legal. As soon as one lawsuit is presented , there will be more.
Our justice system would grind to a halt under the weight of the actual million illegals that are hauled away with people challenging the laws of this country. It is not as easy as some make it seem. To barge into someone's house , or ask them for papers or ID etc. you have to have an enormity of evidence and or due process (its the laws of the country we love) because it is set up that way, the cost, time and work associated with it is disproportionate to the end result. All this enormous amount of energy you propose we spend on kicking people out can be better spent on preventing any more from getting in.
Deport the criminals immediately, no questions asked (approximately 300,000)
Grant citizenship to any head of house hold who holds a job.
Tax them as we tax everyone else. (maybe even hand out a fine to the business that employed them!)
Build a massive wall and guard it with the tax money collected doing the funding of the process.
I am saying the same thing over and over and so are you...probably the truth is in the middle of both of us. Not as strong as your opinion and not as lax as mine :thumbsup