Reply #5: The people in line would not necessarily be disadvantaged

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

It would be unfair for people who broke the rules to benefit more than the people waiting in line, but that doesn't mean the people in line are any worse off than they were before. (Unless someone proposed slowing that process as part of a reform plan, which I don't think anyone is.)

I understand that issue on a gut level... that it seems wrong for anyone to benefit (in relative terms) by doing wrong. But in practical and constitutional terms, the US is not requireed to be fair to non-residents. We already discriminate based on skills, country of origin, etc., so it's not "first come, first served."

And immigrants from bordering countries always have a practical leg up, in all countries. Just the way it works.

So though I agree that fairness is desirable, the US has no obligation to be fair if that fairness prevents us from solving pressing problems within the US. "Amnesties" (an unpopular word) are never fair. They are reconciliation efforts to solve practical problems and heal practical divisions. (Amnesty for Vietnam era draft dodgers is not fair to people who were drafted and got killed in Vietnam, but as a practical matter it was a sound idea as a reconciliation measure)

At the heart of this is the fact that the constitution is not fair. As a nation of immigrants, we devised a system where everyone standing on US soil is guaranteed equal protection of the laws, no matter how they came to be here. People not standing on US soil are not.

I am all for being more fair than the constitution requires, but not if it prevents solutions to a very real problem. "Fair" immigration solutions are impossible because the practical bottom line is that we cannot deport 13 million people. Not only is it practically impossible, but we would be condemned by every nation on Earth if we tried. It would be seen, correctly, as "ethnic cleansing."

If Serbia had said, "we are only rounding up this ethnic group for relocation because their papers are not in order" the world would not have stood for it. Samr goes for Darfur or Iraq or anyplace ethnic cleansing is going on. The world community objects to all large-scale relocations of ethnic minorities for any reason. That kind of process has a bad history.