My plan on illegal immigration

There's not really much of a need for me to get into a big post about what I would do about illegal immigration when I would just be borrowing heavily from the work done before me by people much smarter than I am. Here's Mark Krikorian's (he's with the Center for Immigration Studies). Here's an excerpt:

2. No Hobson's choice. Comprehensive enforcement is a tactic; a candidate also needs to articulate a strategy for success. This entails rejecting the false choice between mass roundups and amnesty. Since everyone agrees that mass roundups like the ill-named Operation Wetback of the 1950s aren't going to occur, the anti-enforcement camp says that amnesty, and an unending stream of "temporary" workers, is the only alternative.

But a third way, and the only workable approach, is to use consistent, across-the-board enforcement as part of a strategy of attrition, causing fewer illegals to come and more of those already here to leave, so that the total illegal population declines from year to year, instead of continually rising. This is the same approach that worked so well with welfare reform, where the GOP rejected the Democratic vision of ever-growing welfare rolls, but didn't just throw all the recipients out on the street. A long-term, strictly enforced policy can stem the tide of immigration without resorting to mass roundups and without throwing in the towel with mass amnesty.

I recommend reading the whole link if you have the interest in it.

I'd also go a step further than what's described in Kirikorian's plan; I'd end birthright citizenship. Here's the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The key phrase is "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". It's not quite clear, but many people (including me) think this means that automatic citizenship given to the children born here of illegals can be changed just with an act of Congress, rather than a constitutional amendment. Others disagree. Here is an article from Free Republic describing this debate.

The reason to end birthright citizenship is that once one family member becomes a US citizen, our current laws favor "chain migration". If you don't know what that means, don't feel bad; it's the dirty little secret of our immigration policy: when one person becomes a citizenship, the rest of his family is first in line to come here legally. That means one US citizen can bring his nuclear family from Mexico, and then his cousins can even start to come. So yes, old people who don't work get to come here and leech off our welfare state (legally!), while high-skilled workers have to wait in line behind them. Yep, it's quite a gyp.

Anyway, ending birthright citizenship would be a huge step in slowing down chain migration, to say nothing of taking away the incentive for people to pour across the border and plop out their kids. That way we would also end the ridiculous spectacle of a convicted felon claiming sanctuary in a church because she had an anchor baby.