Washington Post columnist George Will had a few suggestions for dealing with America’s immigration problem on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, but said before anything can be done to deal with the illegal immigrants residing in America, America’s borders must be secured.
“The first thing you have to do is secure the border,” Will said. “A secure border is not a weird aspiration – it’s an essential attribute out of national sovereignty. Once you’ve do that, and the American people think you’ve done it – they’re not xenophobic, they’re not anti-immigrant. They just say let’s establish order and then we’ll come to terms with this.” (Will: Iowa showdown hinges on Perry, Huntsman announcement ‘had a whiff of moral arrogance’)
One thing he said that wasn’t feasible was deporting the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants from the United States.
“Then you can tell them the following: Suppose there are 11 million – we don’t know within a million,” Will said. “Let’s suppose there’s 11 million illegal immigrants here. I did the arithmetic. To deport them would require not just police measures we’d never tolerate. The majority of them have been here five years or more. They’ve had children here. Their children are citizens. But to depart them would require a line of buses bumper-to-bumper extending from San Diego to Alaska. Not going to happen. And soon as people come to terms with that, then we get on to settling it.”
Later in the online “Green Room” segment, he explained something would have to be done if these immigrants were to remain in the country and suggested the DREAM Act might be the only solution.
“If we are going to import as we are doing, a portion of Mexico’s poverty, and if we’re going to avoid having a permanent submerged underclass, then we have to do something to put these people on the ladders of upper mobility in this country and the DREAM Act may be part of that,” he said. “What offends some people is they say it’s rewarding illegal behavior. Well they have to make a choice.”