Stimulating Illegal Immigrants?

This topic has received a lot of media attention lately, and of course is a often severely debated topic.

As many of you know the US government has passed a couple stimulus bills over the last 6 months. Much of this money is supposedly being used to stimulate an economy that has been in worse shape than anyone can remember since the Great Depression. How will it stimulate the economy exactly? Mostly by job creation. The last stimulus bill is estimated to create around 2 million jobs for Americans. The debate arose when it was recently estimated that some 300,000+ of these jobs will likely be given to illegal immigrants. That's a staggering number considering most these immigrants will send a large portion of that money back to their home countries, and are not paying even a cent of income taxes on it.

So the question is, what can and what should be done? This is America, the land of opportunity. Does that mean that these people who have built lives here, although illegally should not be helped as well? These same people are benefiting from the US government without giving anything back via income taxes, while the legal citizens are paying taxes from their paycheck each and every week. There are only 2 ways to really approach these situations.

#1 Seek those who have established lives here in the US illegally.
#2 Prevent the leaks that are allowing the immigrants through the borders

In my opinion Option 2 is really the only humane one. Those who have been living in this country illegally for years, establishing themselves, building a place to live, starting a family, should not simply be uprooted. It should have been the responsibility of the government to prevent these peopel from getting here in the first place. Instead of uprooting those already here, the government needs to plug the border holes, and then legalize those who are here illegally so that they can start paying taxes.

I would love to hear your opinions on the situation. Please feel free to chime in at the Talkgold Debate Forum.