It would keep families together but still hold those who have violated immigration laws accountable.
.. For the Left, the solution is to create a path to citizenship. Many arguments are made to support it. Undocumented workers pay their taxes, though in many cases because it may help them gain legal status.
.. Many rightly note that parked on America’s doorstep is a sign that reads “Keep Out” on one side and, on the other, “Help Wanted.”
.. One estimate pegs the cost of deporting 11 million people at over $400 billion.
.. A more pragmatic solution would be to offer a path to legalization that stops short of citizenship. That would meet the humanitarian imperative to keep families together. But it would also hold those who have violated immigration laws accountable for their actions. This would apply only to undocumented workers who were of legal age when they entered the United States; those who were not of legal age should be given a citizenship path identical to the one that is available to legal immigrants.
.. A path short of citizenship would assuage Republican concerns that immigration reform would hurt the GOP. Many undocumented workers hail from Latin America, and Latinos have long favored Democrats over Republicans.
Some Republicans worry that granting these workers a path to citizenship would tip the future balance of political power. That may sound petty, and it is. But it is also a political reality.