What happens if they cheated the system and were in a gay relationship. One person was a legal and the other illegal. For the sake of argument lets say they tried to immigrate legally and could not and for reasons that may involve the person of the illegals origin and economically it made sense for themt to stay here. Is your answer the same in this instance.

Just some general observations:

The assumption that people can afford to migrate here and have the time to wait for the process which can take years whilst their family is going hungry is just dumbfounding to me. The issue of they should fix their own country (which no-one said to my ancestors when they came here from Europe btw) is a long term answer to a very real and immediate problem. Where is our compassion??? World poverty is a direct result of multi-nationals and the greed of the first world, that would include you and me btw. Poverty leads these people to commit the civil misdemeanour known as illegal presence...we create the poverty globally by virtue of our own greed.

We limit the amount of well educated people who come to this country and import unskilled labor to supplement, the thoughts behind the policy being its better to educate our own people and have others do unskilled labor. The people who perform unskilled labor may not actually be able to afford to pay the high fees and waste the time involved in coming here, is this right?? No but maybe its our laws that are wrong as opposed to people who come here looking for a better life. Its very easy when you already have that better life to attack and marginalize others.

Fact is there are at least 12 million people in this country and we have no idea who they are. Those who would be willing to come forward for a licence would be those with nothing to hide in a criminal sense, they are not criminals in other words. Illegall presence is NOT criminal but a civil law. Anything that brings people out of the shadows and lowers the cost of insurance..my current car insuance is close to $6000 a year. The cost is due to all the uninsured people in CA many of whom are illegal. Is good IMO. It is not a State Govt reponsibility to enforce Federal laws, the State should do what is best for it with regards to good and responsbile government. Knowing who people are is both good and responsbile government.

The do nothing which is what current policy is more or less has allowed inurance rates in States with a high illegal population to be out of control. Current policy also ensures that illegals are marginalized and victims of un-reported crimes which some may think is OK they deserve it but do we really want criminals attacking the weakest (politically) members of our society?? The greatness of a society is measured not by its wealth but treatment of the poorest members and like it or not these people are part of our society.