Should the U.S. government give a really valuable reward to law-breakers for having more children?
Should our government's policy be to encourage the arrival of more such children even though they would, inevitably, be poor and many of them illegitimate?
That is exactly what would happen if one notion being pressed on the Obama administration were to become law (or practice.)
That suggestion, made by "aides to three senior Democratic senators" according to Saturday's New York Times, is that the White House "extend protections from deportation to undocumented immigrants who are parents of American citizens."
Any such program probably would be backward-looking in its original formulation, allowing for the non-deportation (i.e., legalization) of those who currently are the parents of one or more little U.S. citizens. That policy probably would have no provisions demanding that the parents work or that the children be legitimate.
But any such policy would, inevitably, lead others to migrate illegally in the future and then have a child or more in the United States. Such children would, of course, become instant U.S. citizens. And as time passed, there would be arguments that the deadline for such births be extended to some later date on the grounds of equitable treatment for parents of children who arrived a little later.
There would, similarly, be pressures "not to break up families" that consisted of the citizen child, the newly legalized parent or parents, and the siblings who were also illegals; the latter would, of course, need to be legalized, too.
Such a policy would lead in the long run to still more income inequality, as increasing the numbers of births to low-income, presumably lightly educated illegal aliens would simply expand the poverty class.
Obama says he is against the drastic current income disparity in this country. The policy suggested by the three aides would simply make matters worse.