How to fix immigration: Make the green card an expensive but available commodity

At heart, the problem with immigration is not the border. The problem is that Congress does not offer enough green cards to good people who qualify.

Currently, the waiting period for an immigrant from Mexico is eight years. That's just too long. The waiting period drives even good people to the smugglers to get here illegally, because they know jobs are waiting for them here.

Smart immigration policy would make the green card a commodity. It would increase the number of green cards to cover existing illegal aliens who can pass a criminal background check, but it would also increase the fees associated with becoming legal, and shorten the waiting times.

Central Americans in the U.S. work some of the most demeaning jobs. Our citizenry often won't do these jobs except at wages too high for their industries to remain sustainable, as we see in certain labor-intensive sectors of agriculture and service industries. We need these workers, but we also need to keep out the criminals, especially the deadly Central American and Mexican gangs that have infiltrated California.

The answer is to increase the number of green cards to cover the existing backlog, raise the application fee, and reduce the wait time to 18 months. This would not only clean up the backlog, it would also put criminals and coyotes who thrive on human smuggling out of business. The government could charge rates substantially higher than the roughly $5,000 that smugglers currently charge – after all, legitimate residency is worth a lot more money than a border crossing that results in a life in the shadows.