More on Immigration

Unless you've been living under rock over the last week, you're probably aware of the new immigration bill that will be debated on senate floor over the coming weeks.  Although I feel that we are moving in the right direction when it comes to immigration reform, this bill is not enough.  I could sit here and list out everything that I think is wrong with the bill, but every media outlet has already covered that part since the announcement of the bill last week.  This bill is not enough because the bill fails to address why people come to the U.S. and why they stay.   Before Congress passes any sort of immigration reform, the president should ask congress to commission a nationwide study/survey on immigration, preferably by an organization with no political agenda but I would settle for a bi-partisan committee. Before the survey is conducted, its design (and including the questions) should be scrutinized by 10 randomly chosen research universities of top 100, of which no more than 5 should be private institutes and no more than 3 should be ivy league schools (No offense to ivy league school but they have the reputation of being too liberal).  This would be give more credibility and it will be withstand more criticism after the results have come out.   The survey should aim to provide answers to the following questions: 

1. What are the reasons why people come to the U.S.?  2. 
2. How do immigrants, both illegal and legal, get here?
3. How do immigrants gain employment?
4. What are illegal immigrants' wages compared to U.S. citizens?
5. What is the cost of an U.S. Citizen worker compared to a illegal immigrant worker?
6. What are industries that attract the most illegal immigrants?
7. What are the reason why these industries are attracting so more immigrants?
8. What is the percentage of illegal immigrants that use public services?
9. What is the percentage of illegal immigrants that pay taxes?
10. What is the percentage of illegal immigrants that would want to reside here permanently? (if they could travel more freely back to country of origin)

Based on the result of the survey, congress should then pass laws that would address the situation accordingly.  The laws should be passed and implemented gradually. For example, if the survey/study shows that a guest work program is necessary, we should pass a law to introduce one, get it up and running (well as well as anything in the fed gov can get up and running), before passing another law.  The gov is having problems enforcing the laws on the books as it is, passing new laws will not not make the immigration problem disappear.

This plan of mine seems a bit unrealistic and would take a while to implement, but we have to start thinking of immigration the same way we think of terrorism.  It's always going to be around all we can do is curtail it.  Short term and reactionary thinking is not the way to go.