My father once told me that you could often gauge the potential success of a great idea by how many people it infuriates at first blush. In that context, I believe authorizing states to sell green cards to a group of sponsored illegal immigrants for $10,000 apiece over the next few years is a potentially great idea.
If one million green cards were sold in California alone this coming year $10 billion dollars (which equals half California's current budget deficit) could be raised just in my home state. Confirming Dad's point, I can already hear the far right bellowing about rewarding this sneaky group of illegal immigrants who snuck into America in the middle of the night and took countless jobs from the hard working white people of America. But while one group might call our illegal immigrants sneaky, another group (myself included), calls them resourceful. So resourceful, in fact, that in the State of California it's estimated that a significant portion of the $13 billion dollars in 2008 wired from here to Mexico came from these hard working "sneaky" people. Others will no doubt say that they suspect much of this money comes from illicit means like insidious gang or drug activity. I'd ask these people to walk down to their local Western Union office on the second Friday of every month and check out these nefarious impostors so convincingly masquerading as nannies, farm workers and various day laborers.
It is time to take the fear out of our dealings with those undocumented immigrants who in fact work hard and keep prices low for all of us. It is estimated that the undocumented immigrants contribute tens of billions of dollars to California's economy... and billions more throughout the U.S. Since it is true that immigrants use social safety nets and infrastructure how about having a significant portion of that group actually paying both federal and state income taxes and contributing to the cost of the services they are already receiving?
As one of the many safeguards against abuse of the cash for green cards system, we must of course insist on strict verifiable criteria. Each applicant must secure three US citizens in good standing as sponsors on their behalf. Like their respective backers, each applicant must have no criminal record (besides previous deportation proceedings) and a verifiable source of income that they and their employer are now willing to put on the books.
Additionally (as a friend of mine currently sitting on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental affairs smartly recommended), even though already here, each sponsored individual must pass the scrutiny standards of all foreign visitors, including the terrorist watch list, and a plethora of various criminal database record checks.
Getting Federal buy-in to a program like this is undoubtedly a key hurdle for anything close to this happening on a state level. Immigration status is a federal issue and legally falls under their regulation. However the states and their governments bear the brunt of the burden of caring for the millions of illegals in their local schools, social service agencies and medical facilities. By allowing states to reap the windfall and work to legitimize this huge group of stealth residents already inhabiting their social services system, taxes will suddenly inure to all governments local, state and federal. California has led the nation on auto emission, environmental and drug issues that are also "federal" issues. This might well be yet another West Coast social innovation whose logical time has come.
If one were looking for a common sense and or legal argument as to why we should reward this group of people who live and work here without proper documentation I would make the point that the idea of deporting some ten million people already very much embedded into the fabric of society is both impractical and ridiculous. The argument for taking that approach should simply be abandoned. If we apply an approach like I'm suggesting to the entire 20+ million illegal immigrants in the U.S. we could possibly generate $200 billion dollars in real revenue for our state governments. It is quite conceivable that the vast majority of the hardworking and most desirable illegals currently here would be able to find a way to work toward legalizing their status and contribute to the support of the social systems they already use.
In my opinion, the tacit acceptance of these millions of people living and working in America is tantamount to a prescriptive easement which arises if someone uses part of "your" property with your permission. State law, which varies by state, defines the time period required for such a view to be taken and I would argue that three years of living in our state earning a living while the great majority of us turn our heads in silent acceptance neatly fits into this category for those seeking legal refuge. For some to make this 'greenback to green card' approach palatable they may need to see the program as the payment of back taxes or as a penalty based revenue stream. In reality, I couldn't care less what label is applied to the plan so long as the result means expediting the transition to citizenship for the millions of people it would effect, and allow our governments to collect the revenues long overdue and so desperately needed right now.
It has been said that the sight of the gallows tends to focus the mind. The budget deficit in California is the closest we have been to the steps of the gallows I've seen in the twenty years I've lived in California. This crisis, like all others, will simultaneously create great opportunity. Our catastrophic budget hole has produced a potentially magical moment that should force all sides to consider smart, pragmatic, capital raising approaches like the marketing of green cards to qualified, worthy, sponsored applicants. The time has come to embrace this group of people while at the same time helping steady the precarious state of the state in which we now find ourselves. A crisis is a terrible opportunity to waste!