They'll Gladly Go Home

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich explained on Sunday that his policies would require up to 9 million undocumented immigrants to return to their home nations — and he predicted that they would do it voluntarily

  Raw Story

Meaning there must be a terrible incentive.

For those that have come here illegally, they might have a transition time to allow them to set [their] affairs in order, and then go back home and get in line with everybody else,” [presidential campaigner Mitt] Romney told supporters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa earlier this month. “They start in the back of the line, not at the front of the line.”

I had to forgive my elder son for making a similar comment…but Romney must know better. In my son’s case, he claimed to be all for legal immigration, but – and we are talking Mexicans here – would not abide illegals. If they would just come here legally, he insisted, there would be no problem.

When I was in Mexico, I talked to numerous Mexicans who had tried to come here legally and were all denied visas. Unless you are a wealthy Mexican with lots of reason to stay in Mexico, it’s almost impossible (particularly since 9/11) to get a visa. A small percentage are permitted entry to work in agriculture and other manual labor, but those seats are taken by Mexicans who have a connection to people already working in those jobs. Even a young man I knew in a small central Mexico town who had a steady job with the city government and worked for the presidential campaign of Santiago Creel during the last elections was denied a visa to enter the U.S. And his parents and family live in Southern California – his father having gotten his U.S. citizenship many years ago.