According to CNN.com, a "breakthrough" bill has been built by a bipartisan group of Senators. Personally, I'm torn by this whole situation, because we're talking about generally honest, hard-working, law-breaking, non-citizens. Oh, yeah, who happen to be performing a large amount of work at an extremely low price. These people likely impact multiple aspects of our economy, and represent a nice movie plot threat to national security. Allow me to expand on these thoughts...
First, and foremost, there's the issue that these are people who are illegally in this country. They should not be given a free pass or amnesty, by any means. But, by the same token, I don't necessarily know that we want them to up and leave (or be tossed out).
Second, many of these implicated individuals are working in jobs that allegedly nobody else is willing to do. Weeding fields, picking up trash, flipping burgers, etc. However...
Third, they're also willing to work at minimum wage (or below?) and that can't be good for the economy. The key to the second point above is that they're working in jobs at a wage below where others would be willing to work. This ties into...
Fourth, while their presence underpins the functions of daily life, they are also oftentimes not paying income taxes and, as mentioned above, they're potentially a drag on the economy. After all, whereas Walmart is a billion dollar enterprise, it's not exactly built on high profit margins. It's hard to grow the economy from at or below the poverty line.
Fifth, what is the impact on national security? Here I'm more concerned about drug incursions than terrorism, though that's probably also something to consider. Porous borders have long been a weak point in the "war on drugs" (hey, anybody notice the family theme here? Daddy Bush had "war on drugs" and Baby Bush had "war on terrorism" -- almost like they were reading from the same play book!!). Do these new classes of visa make this problem better or worse?
Sixth, does anybody care, so long as we can still communicate? I'm still not convinced that the Founding Fathers got it right by not establishing an official national language. Up until now, it's been ok, but I'm starting to feel like a minority as a native English speaker and, frankly, I'm starting to get too old to learn Spanish fluently, let alone reading and writing it. But back to my original point, aside from (illegal) immigrants who are affected, does anybody really care here? It's unclear. I will, however, say that if I were a legalized immigrant, I'd be downright upset if suddenly a bunch of illegal immigrants only had to come up with $5k to buy their way into staying here.
In the end, this is a complex issue, with no real, clear path to closure. Kind of like Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd say the Middle East, in general, except that we know that if Israel would just play nice and quit undermining the peace process, then things might actually stand a chance. But I digress...
