Big labor supports the idea of a legal path to citizenship for illegals already here.
Maybe that's why the law barring employment of illegals can be so broadly ignored.
If caught, illegals have to assume their home country won't come to their rescue.
Mr Bush favours cracking down on illegals but also letting more people in legally.
Around 3m of these illegals are believed to be scratching a living in the capital.
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Jean-Claude Chenais, a leading French demographer, guesses that Germany has 1m and France up to 500, 000 illegals.
Thus, if conservatives support the legalization and naturalization of illegals, their compassion would be rewarded with electoral defeats.
The difference: Mitt Romney stood up and vetoed in-state tuition for illegal aliens, opposed driver's licenses for illegals.
By some estimates, there were 75, 000 "other-than-Mexican" illegals among those who sneaked into the United States last year.
Illegals thrive on vigorous, open labour markets in societies with few internal checks.
Some 28, 000 illegals, most from ex-Soviet states, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, China or Somalia, were caught on the Czech-German border in 1998.
The same would apply for illegals who had ostensibly been agricultural workers here in the past, but who have gone home.
White House spokesmen, fresh from championing the "reset" in relations with Moscow, carefully played down the illegals' arrests as a minor irritant.
If they don't and are later found to have hired illegals, they could lose their licenses to operate, a corporate death sentence.
Its priority has been to deport the few illegals that get caught.
Even blatant employers of illegals are rarely punished and almost never jailed.
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At the same time we have, willy-nilly, allowed 8 or 11 million mostly unskilled illegals to venture in, we slam the door on engineers.
Then in 15 or 20 years Republicans can enjoy debating what to do with another 11 million illegals who want a path to citizenship.
If we didn't allow illegals to report crimes, a lot of criminals would have gone free because they're the ones who had the information.
But even islands will never catch all those with no right to be there: most illegals are visitors who overstay their tourist or student visas.
It has also explicitly stated that it does not intend to deport at least one category of illegals: those brought to the United States as children.
Unlike the countries of northern Europe, Spain does not penalise employers for using illegal workers: moreover, many illegals who find stable work end up with Spanish citizenship.
Although there are surely some illegals about, as there are in most parts of America, there is no visible community of outsiders or labour-intensive industries to lure them.
Not reporting themselves, though, could cause illegals even more trouble.
About 300, 000, half the estimated number of illegals, have left.
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When the local police find and detain the illegals they contact the Border Patrol and then the Border Patrol refuses to return to the scene because it was lunchtime.
The most virulent opposition to reform came from Republican House members who were obsessed with cracking down on illegals and building a 700-mile (1, 125km) fence along the border with Mexico.
And so without there being a legal vehicle by which to work, and with employers knowing that they cannot employ illegals, that's really going to set a whole new dynamic.
Instituting a guest worker program--in which people would come for specific jobs for a specific period of time and then go home--would help enormously in alleviating a future influx of illegals.
Thailand, too, has withdrawn its implicit welcome for illegals.
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