Immigration Reform debates tend to be couched in rhetoric favoring the extremes, and both sides tend to make absolutist claims.
One side of the debate declares that it is ridiculous to "felonize" at least 12 million undocumented immigrants, as it would be impossible to round them up and deport them all. Somehow an unspoken assumption has crept into the discussion, the assumption that if a compromise Immigration Reform bill strongly conforming to H.R. 4377 were signed into law, we would see a massive ramp-up in the agencies of immigration law-enforcement, resulting in a police state and destabilization and either anarchy or tyranny as a result.
The other side of the debate rightly states, that a failure to take very significant steps to curtail ongoing massive illegal immigration, can only result in a collapse of Rule of Law, leading inevitably to anarchy or tyranny.
As both sides state their theses, those are both true. Clearly it's time to reconcile the extremes with a sensible and effective centrist approach.
Deportation of "felonized" illegal aliens need not be massive and it need not require a massive mobilization of law-enforcement. A two-pronged approach to a defense-in-depth strategy will mandate that employers will accept, and will verify before employment, only documents conformant to the Real ID Act passed last year. This is no more Orwellian than the long-accepted practice of sending the names of new employees to agencies guaranteeing child-support garnishment. This also guarantees that no employer can claim they did not know they were hiring an illegal alien. Violators can be easily and successfully prosecuted both for hiring an illegal alien, or for failing to verify employee documentation. This is Verification.
The second prong will be Attrition. Without overloading any law-enforcement agencies, nor creating new ones, we can simply deport every single illegal alien encountered in the course of normal law-enforcement procedure. We don't need to take steps to hunt down every last illegal alien, in the present day, police officers are forced day after day to release known illegal aliens because ICE generally can't spare the time or money to come and get them. Federal law already mandated reimbursement of costs of incarceration to the States and local governments; all that will happen is that illegal aliens, as encountered, will be held until such time as they can be deported. There's no need for some ridiculous massive round-up.
If illegal aliens cannot make money in the USA, they will not illegally come here without the sort of motivation one expects from dedicated terrorists. If illegal aliens already here find it impossible to work, and further understand that they will be arrested and removed the first time they have any contact with any agency of any level of government, they will probably begin to make plans to leave the US as soon as possible.
Every candidate for every elected office in the USA needs to understand that the average citizen perfectly well understands that Verification and Attrition are commonsense and workable. The candidates also need to understand that so long as they prate from one ridiculous extreme or the other, they insult both the intelligence and the resolve of the American citizens who alone can return them to office.
We, the People of the United States, demand that once and for all this issue be resolved, with no giveaways, no handouts, no amnesty, and no more risable double-talk that panders to the extremes and ignores the truly vast center of mainstream American sentiment on this issue. Incumbents, if you like your jobs, you will do as your constituents demand: legislate Verification and Attrition, and do it with sufficent votes to pre-emptively override a Presidential Veto.