Why shouldn’t you give them a chance? It’s obvious that they want to be in the U.S., so put them through a broadly permissive immigration system, rather than kicking them out. Nobody wants to be a part of the immigration system that currently exists (skilled workers excepted), because it’s deliberately very difficult to succeed at going through it. It’s expensive, it’s time-consuming and it’s designed in such a way that if you screw up with a deadline or a payment, you can be kicked to the back of the line, setting you back up to a decade. So they cheat their way in, hoping to avoid a system in which they rightfully have little faith. They’re not criminals in the same way that rapists and theives are criminals—their crime is neither against person, nor property, nor public order. Their crimes are against the state, and of all entities, the state is in the best position to offer them a way to improve their lives, rather than just eject them reflexively.
You know all of those jobs that get shipped overseas, because American workers want too much money for the task (or because their employers want to pay too little)? Let the immigrants ease their way into those roles. That’s not far from what’s been happening in Canada for decades—as one group of immigrants establishes modest prosperity after perhaps a generation of relatively low-brow jobs, another group tends to fill the roles vacated by the upwardly mobile. Contrast this with what America, where all too often, the minorities get trapped in the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum, often for generations at a time. (These are trends, and don’t reflect every situation in these countries—but all the same, the contrast is worth noting.)
If America were overpopulated, or utopian, or otherwise unsuited to taking on more residents, I could see a restrictive immigration policy being useful. As it stands, though, perhaps the largest reason that America gets away with restricting immigration as much as it does is the high birth rate (as compared to all other industrialized nations).
Too easy. By your definition, by travelling at 61 mph on a road marked for 60 is makes the driver of the vehicle a criminal. Should we deport him? Or, if he’s from America, should we imprison him?
If not, why not? The answer, of course, is that there’s a wide variety of crime available to be committed. The supposition here is that being an illegal immigrant is hardly a big deal—it’s like speeding, more than it’s like murder. And so, the response should take into account more than just the fact that it’s a crime; like speeding, it may be necessary to tolerate some amount of it, if it’s impractical to write a law that accords violators a little flexibility. For the majority of immigrants (the peaceful, harmless ones), that flexibility should come in the form of the opportunity to contribute to American society, while simultaneously contributing to their own improvement. That is far more humane a solution than sending them back in a prisoners’ bus.
In parts of the developing world, communication in English serves as a means to rise out of poverty, through relations with the developed, English-speaking nations. In the developed world, it has become a language of commerce, because of its ubiquity. But note that few countries have adopted English to the exclusion of their native languages—in fact, you really ought to be arguing that the U.S. adopt Spanish or Mandarin, because those languages serve the same purpose in America as English does in India—facilitating communications with trading partners.
