Immigration Lines of Defense

An illegal immigrant could be a good person, or a criminal, or worse - an enemy.

Good people generally are willing to jump through the legal hoops to enter the country but sometimes the red tape takes too long and they really need to escape whatever situation they're in so they enter illegally. But even then I think they can ask for asylum if their trouble is political and then they'll be allowed to stay. 

A criminal typically crosses the border to escape the authorities in another country or to smuggle things into this country. I don't think anyone has a moral problem with catching and deporting criminals who are here illegally.

An enemy typically crosses the border in order to attack the United States. Some of our enemies have entered legally in the past so that's frustrating but some of them have entered illegally. I don't think anyone has a moral problem with catching enemies of the United States.  No one can agree on what to do with them once they are caught, though.  Should they be imprisoned? Deported? Executed? 

If we can agree that we should at least try to catch illegal immigrants so we can decide what to do with them, instead of letting them run free and possibly causing havoc in our country...

Then our first line of defense is the national border. The international terminal at some airports is part of our national border. 

Our second line of defense is business. Businesses that check the identity of their customers restrict the movement of illegal immigrants.

I'm not saying that every business must check the identity of its customers.  I am saying that checking the identity of customers has benefits. 

And I think it's ridiculous that California has a law that prohibits landlords from checking the immigration status of their tenants (or applicants).  Is the point of that law to prevent discrimination?  Oops!  

That law actually provides freedom to illegal immigrants while restricting the freedom of citizens. In California, an illegal immigrant could actually use the legal system to sue a landlord and win.  Do you understand what I'm saying?  They don't get deported!  Our government allows them to be here and to participate! 

Of course we still have the famous Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that selectively applies the immigration laws.  Well, they claim they apply the immigration laws uniformly but obviously there is a huge discord in our intentions when other branches or levels of government ignore the same laws.  

I think that if the United States has a law, then it must be integrated into everything we do. If only certain people are allowed to be here, and that's a federal law, then citizens ought to be allowed to ask each other for identification. I'm not saying to require it, as that would be a burden on those who don't care. And I'm not saying to require reporting it, although that could be another law. 

A little analogy. We have a law that minors are not allowed to drink alcohol -- what if the government prohibited people from asking each other's age before serving alcohol, and created a government agency specifically for the purpose of preventing under-age drinking, which frequents elementary schools and churches but ignores the rest of the country??