Comment & Debate
Demetrios Papademetriou, PhD, Co-Founder and President of Migration Policy Institute (MPI): “we should ask unauthorized immigrants to earn their new legal status. Unauthorized immigrants could begin the regularization process by registering with immigration officials and then be given, say, three years in which to qualify. The criteria for regularization should be forward-looking, easily proven, and consistent with what we as a society consider important. Steady employment, paying taxes, speaking English capably and having a clean criminal record are a good start. And the process should a pay for itself by collecting a substantial but reasonable fee from the immigrants who are regularized.”[1] The difficult conditions of this path to citizenship, which gives illegal aliens no advantages over legal aliens, provides no incentive for illegal immigration over legal immigration.