Policies on Illegal Immigrants at Odds

Illegal immigrants receive in-state tuition for California colleges but don't qualify for federal loans.

They can buy cars and car insurance but, in most states, can't get driver's licenses.

And they regularly find jobs at publicly funded hiring halls but can't lawfully work.

Immigration policies in the United States are contradictory and often confusing, alternately welcoming illegal immigrants to the country and telling them to go away.

"Do you want me to go back to my country? Or stay? Or what?" said Cristina Cardelas, 24, who is working, paying taxes and attending school in a country where her presence is illegal.

"Public policy is not logical sometimes," said Harry Pachon, executive director of USC's Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Latino think tank. "It's almost like Prohibition. The law says one thing, but the reality is something else."

In recent months, the debate over illegal immigration has grown increasingly fierce in Washington and around the country as advocates and opponents have wrangled over day labor centers, driver's licenses, citizen border patrols and, most recently, voter identification.

"We are deeply divided among ourselves," said Frank Bean, co-director of UC Irvine's Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy.

Though nowhere close to agreeing on solutions, the two sides often can agree on at least one thing: U.S. policies frequently are at cross-purposes.

The main reason for the domestic tug-of-war is well known: the tension between the demand for cheap labor versus the public cost of providing health, educational and other services to migrants and their families.

Largely because illegal immigration is clandestine, no one has definitively measured its costs and benefits. Still, with 8 million to 10 million undocumented immigrants in the country, the issue provokes strong -- and often conflicting -- opinions.

"Immigrants are the backbone of our economy, and employers continue to need their labor," said Tanya Broder, staff attorney for the pro-immigrant National Immigration Law Forum, "but our immigration laws haven't kept up with this."

"You are not just getting the cheap laborer," countered Rick Oltman, Western field director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, "you are getting that guy's wife and child, who is in school.... You create these little illegal immigrant communities that are basically sanctuaries."