Here’s how our immigration laws actually encourage illegal immigration

*How “go to the back of the line” is an anachronism and mired in confusing immigration red tape. VL

By Tina Griego, The Washington Post

The debate over President Obama’s executive action on immigration once again reveals a deep disconnect in the understanding of how legal and illegal immigration are linked. “Just enforce the law,” demand frustrated critics. To a great extent, we have.

But the law is part of the problem. Tens of thousands of regulations sit atop a creaky, aged legal architecture that has failed to keep pace with the economic needs of the country and betrayed the goal of unifying families.

Ours is a system of many legal detours, cul-de-sacs and dead-ends. A straight path is hard to come by. What is true for the immigrant who illegally overstayed on a visa is not automatically true for the immigrant who illegally crossed the border. Given the law’s complexity, it’s not surprising that misconceptions about what it does and doesn’t do are rampant. It remains a popular belief, for example, that those who came here illegally were presented with the choice of applying for a visa – the vaunted line — but, for whatever reason, chose not to.

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[Photo by lcars/Flickr]

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