Perhaps I was assuming knowledge of the current immigration system on your part. As someone who has gone through the legal process, during the application process, at least in my case, the attorney told me that the sponsor cannot be dependent on any form of government assistance, the sponsor (employer or individual) has to show that they can support the new immigrant financially and not be a drain on society. In the case of a new law, of course this would have to be considered with some type of restriction on welfare benefits until permanent residency or citizenship is obtained (this takes years currently and always will and requires paying a lot of fees and a lot of effort). I understand your point about immigrants in the past and agree that attitudes were a little different back then, the idea is that if you didn't do certain things you would starve, and most of them did immigrate due to famine. I simply think that this would be a fair way to weed out the ones who are actually looking to work versus those who have no intention of being a productive member of society. I simply have a hard time believing that every illegal immigrant in this country is just a parasite looking for a free ride.