All this bickering about O'bomb'a and more McWAR...

Hi, thanks for the reply again. I realize the legal immigration process needs some work, and agree when you said we should take in more legal immigrants from developed countries(instead of taking in so many ones from poor countries who have little in the way of education or job skills I presume)not saying it doesn't. For one thing there is a huge backlog of applications(millions) and not enough staff to handle it, so that is one reason why there is a long wait. Ron Paul talked about the need to fix the legal immigration system, to make it more streamlined and easier. I don't know the exact details of what his plan was for fixing the legal immigration process, but I do agree it needs work.
I realize that there are some people who didn't cross a border illegally, but came on visa and overstayed their visa, sometime for what they felt were justified reasons, but many others came on visa with no intenet of ever leaving(another form of illegal immigration, overstaying your visa on purpose in the hopes you will get amnesty, just like people who sneak across the borders illegally in the hopes of getting amnesty too).
You said it was humiliating after your residency card was expired and you had to go before immigration officials who wanted to make sure you were actually married. Please understand, there is a huge problem with marriage fraud in our immigration system here in the U.S. A U.S. citizen will say that he/she married a citizen of another country, to make that person a U.S. citizen(often for a cash reward from the non-citizen). Sometimes they get caught using that scam, other times they don't. But please don't take it personally or get offended by it, the person was probably just doing their job, and had probably dealt with many other cases of marriage fraud where two people pretend to be married when they are not. They can be very convincing and adamant about it too, so it takes a very astute and aware person to be able to see through the fraud, even fraud that looks convincing.
You said: "Until we fix the laws to begin with we are gonna have only one kind of immigrant - the one that runs across the border..."
I'd have to disagree on that part, we have millions of legal immigrants in this country and we takein over a million legal immigrants per year. If the legal immigration system was as broken as you make it out to be, we would have far fewer legal immigrants and far more illegal immigrants.
But I do agree to some extent that if it was easier to legally immigrate to this country(but not too easy, some rules and regulations have to be followed and are there for good reasons), then less people would attempt to come here illegally, but that alone wouldn't solve the problem, even if it was made easier, and no more backlogs in the immigration system, people would still come illegally unless we removed the magnets I talked about.
You spoke of only 3 reasons to be able to get into the U.S. legally. There are 2 others that I am aware of. Marriage is one way, if a U.S. citizen marries a citizen of another country, they can become a citizen of the U.S.
You might say that falls under "sponsored by family", but some might assume sponsored by family means bringing in aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc. The other way is if a citizen of a foreign country comes here as an investor or a businessman who wants to open a business or improve an existing business, that is another way that people can come legally. Of course those last options are not available to all, only those who are well off financially can do that.
You said there is no more running across a border to have a baby to stay illegally. However, running across the border illegally and having a baby means their child is automatically considered a U.S. citizen(due to a mis-interpretation of the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment, the 14th amendment was never intended to give automatic citizenship to children of illegal aliens)and then that baby is eligible for all kinds of welfare benefits, which makes it easier for he illegal aliens who had the baby to stay in the U.S., and even if they are caught and deported, they can leave their baby behind with relatives or friends or let the state handle it, and then 18 years later, their child can bring them back into the country and they can become citizens. I'd call that a form of amnesty for parents who broke the law on purpose to take advantage of our laws. Already, millions have illegally taken advantage of that loophole and we need to put a stop to that.
Its true, if someone from england comes here on a visa, he has no right to stay for good just because he wants to. If he wants to, he should leave when his visa expires(or get a job with an employer with a green card before his visa runs out), and then work to become a citizen the legal way even though its easier and mre tempting to break the law, just like in that example I talked about previously, in a natural disaster situation where people in the U.S. are waiting in long lines all day long to get fresh water who are thirsty and hungry and tired, some may say its too hard to wait in line, that they need to cheat to get ahead to the front of the line, but cheating to get ahead makes those waiting in line behind angry and upset and they will want to make you get back in line or else its unfair to all the others who are patiently waiting and obeying the rules. Just as there is a finite amount of space in this country, each time an illegal alien comes here, that means less space for a legal immigrant who is obeying our laws and waiting to come legally, and one day in the not too distant future(decades perhaps, want to take a guess as to what U.S. poplation could be in the year 2100, which is only decades away?), the U.S. may be so overcrowded that we no longer want people to come here in any significant numbers any more due to crushing overpopulation and pollution problems like China is dealing with.
I believe it was Bill Clinton who put the Cuba policy into place, that if a cuban comes to the U.S. illegally and is caught at sea, they are deported, if they make it onto U.S. soil, then they get asylum and are allowed to stay. I think you can guess why cubans get asylum because the U.S. government sees Cuba as an oppresive communist dictatorship who throws people in prison for many years if they dare speak out against Cuba's policies. But I don't agree with that strange policy, deport them if caught at sea, let them stay if they set foot on U.S. soil. I think they should either always deport them or always let them stay, not some wishywashy policy that doesn't make much sense like it is now. In fact, I read an article which said that many Cubans are not bothering to try to cross the sea into the U.S. any more, they are heading straight for Mexico, and then travel through Mexico to get to the U.S. to get automatic asylum that way. I also heard that Castro figured out a way to send all his serious criminals and mental patients to get asylum, so he wouldn't have to deal with the cost of housing them in prisons or mental institutions. Some have theorized that thats part of the cause of why the crime rate has been high in Miami Florida.
You asked, what do we do with people who came to the U.S. legally but fell into legal status? Well, as I said before, many have come here legally, but had no intentions of ever leaving when they were supposed to, beaking the law and becoming illegal aliens with the hopes they'll get in on another amnesty. So we have to keep those millions of illegal aliens in mind, because we should not allow them to get amnesty. It really doesn't matter if they are working here illegally or paying taxes. They shouldn't get amnesty. On the other hand, I can understand someone who came here with good intentions, who planned to stay a limited time as the law allows, and then something happened like they got injured or sick or lost all their money somehow and can no longer leave and then overstay their visa and become illegal. I have sympathy for them. But how do you seperate the people who became illegal unintentionally, to those who became illegal intentionally? If you allow people who came on visa and overstayed and are now illegal to adjust their status, that opens the door to massive fraud, people wanting to become legal who make up a fake story to be allowed to stay, when in reality they could have been one of millions who came here legally for a limited time, but did not leave when they were required to and became illegal because they had no intentions of ever leaving in the hopes they would be able to lay low and avoid law enforcement until another amnesty was passed. If there were some way that massive fraud like that could be prevented, I might be sympathetic to the idea, but in the last big amnesty we had in 1986, there was massive fraud and a massive amount of people got amnesty who weren't eligible under the law. Even if you don't call it amnesty, and call it status adjustment to give people who came legally but became illegal somehow an extension, that gives people who purposely broke the law the chance to get extensions too, and the chance to remain in the country permanently, by the millions(this is what makes it so tough and hard to deal with, because we are talking about millions of people who could take advantage of this, if it was a much smaller number of people, then it wouldn't be such a big deal), unless you can figure out how to prevent massive fraud(people getting their status adjusted who intentionally became illegall, not just becoming illegal through no fault of their own).
Anyway, I hope you are having a good veteran's day too.