What to do?

Yesterday, the Pew Hispanic Center released a report on Mexican migration (immigration) to/from the United States. The authors found that the annual number of Mexicans coming into the USA had declined from > 1,026,000 in 2006-07 to 636,000 in 2008-09. During the same periods, an average of 420,000 Mexicans returned to Mexico. The two most interesting parts of the study, in my opinion, are (1) that it found 11,500,000 Mexicans lived in the USA in 2009, and (2) the US Border Patrol apprehended 662,000 Mexicans in 2008, which is 30,000 more people than got into the country! (Granted of the 662,000 detentions, some of them are bound to be people trying to enter the country more than once, maybe many more times.) The Pew Hispanic Center's report also estimates that ~85% of Mexican immigrants living in the USA are undocumented/illegal (meaning they did not apply for an expensive and nearly impossible to get visa from a U.S. Consulate office).

So a question I have this morning is: what to do? Maintain the status quo? Offer blanket amnesty to those in the country illegally? Ask them all to leave? Increase measures that close off options for undocumented (i.e., inability to get driver license, apply for bank loans, etc?)

I've posted about this many times before, and I want to again reprint the poem written by Emma Lazarus, which is engraved on a tablet on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Her words are powerful! What are your thoughts?

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"