Is Immigration Reform Inevitable?

It's possible that the real reason for the Real ID act is the desire of people in our federal government to control illegal immigration. Real ID will certainly have a spectacular effect on illegal immigrants. They may be able to purchase illegal Real ID cards, because - as my readers know - the prospects for hacking Real ID and for inside crookedness is excellent. However there are an awful lot of illegal aliens in our society, and it's unlikely that most of them will have access to, and be able to afford, good fake ID. So Joseph G. Cella has written about what may happen to illegal immigrants as Real ID is adopted, assuming that the law works as it is intended to work. (Cella assumes there are 12 to 15 million illegal aliens in the US, and that with baby boomers retiring and aliens forced not to work, the US will experience an acute labor shortage.)

I've already read many essays about how Real ID is not "fair" to immigrants (both legal and illegal). Cella takes a different approach. What he sees is chilling, and he is certain it will lead to legal reform (and massive legalization) in the handling of aliens. He writes, in Immigrant's Weekly:

When the REAL ID ACT is fully implemented, no undocumented alien will be able to get a drivers license in any state. He or she will not be able legally drive, open bank accounts, deposit paychecks, transfer funds, travel by air, or by bus or train for interstate trips. As it is not in our national interest to either deport our workforce, or to deny our workforce the ability to function within our society, a legalization program is the only possible remedy. It is however in our national interest to deny such abilities to our criminal and terrorist undocumented population.

To be sure, in order to legalize under any program every individual will be required to undergo extensive CIA, FBI and international security checks. Those who pass such checks will be permitted to legalize as they become documented. However, those who are felons, have terrorist ties, or are otherwise ineligible to become legal, will probably not participate in the program, or, if they do, will be deported. In the end, we will have a legally documented work force of individuals who have cleared deep security, background and criminal checks, with a far smaller group of criminal and/or terrorist undocumented individuals who will be essentially unable to function in our society due to their inability to secure legal identification, travel, or to open bank accounts and the like.

Finally, any legalization program will require the applicants to pay a significant penalty (probably $2,000.00 each), in addition to the filing fees for applications that they could not otherwise file. Multiply those amounts by the number of applicants, and the amount of revenue raised will be in the tens of billions of dollars.

Personally, I can't imagine how the CIA, FBI and DHS will have time to check out all these people. I also can't imagine where those billions in ransom fines will come from, but I can see a federal goverenment preferring to tax the families of immigrants rather than its own citizens. Cella concludes that "significant and comprehensive immigration reform is inevitable."