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It is clear that large-scale, long-term undocumented migration will pose a long-term threat to national security interests if left unchecked. It is also clear that the U.S. government is entirely to blame for the fact that there are 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country now, and should not punish the immigrants for doing what the government and corporations have encouraged them to do.

So we need to secure the border, yes.

We need to crack down on corporations that exploit undocumented workers, yes. But there is a more significant issue at stake here: The fate of the 12 million human beings who now live in this country, who have done nothing that our politicians and their corporate backers have not encouraged them to do for decades. It would be brutally unfair--not to mention impractical--to deport them all, and if we're not going to deport them, the only way we will end the cycle of migrant worker exploitation is by granting them citizenship.

I harbor no illusion that our leaders will actually grant amnesty. They count on donations from corporations that benefit, directly or indirectly, from the exploitation of undocumented workers. But if they were really interested in solving the problem of illegal migration, they would find a way to quickly deprive corporations of their pool of undocumented workers and, issues of basic human decency aside, we don't have the law enforcement manpower to forcibly deport 12 million people.

We can only drive them further underground, where they will have even less access to human rights protections--which is very likely what conservative immigration reform politicians want, since that outcome would benefit the corporations that pay their campaign bills.

Amnesty, combined with serious penalties for employers that hire undocumented workers in the future, is the only real way out of the situation we're currently in. It is the most decent option we have, and it is also the option most likely to secure the border and end the system of undocumented worker exploitation--which is precisely why our well-funded leaders in Washington have no intention of pursuing it.