A real immigration solution

There has been a fair amount of debate on immigration in this country lately and it has certainly become something of a "hot button" political topic.  You have the right side of the aisle arguing against immigration in general.  They seem to believe that if we let one more Mexican into our country that somehow that extra little oomph will destroy the economy, bankrupt Social Security, overburden Medicare and Medicaid and unbalance the price of vegetables all while simultaneously causing us to lose the "War on Drugs".  I, of course, am only mildly exaggerating there.  Meanwhile, you have the lefties who seem more in favor of our traditional immigration policy which is to say essentially a total lack of policy.  OK, I jest.  The left seems to favor our traditional stance which is more or less to not enforce the existing policies as they are written.  Really neither of those stances is viable in the long term.  If we choose the right side, the logical conclusion is that we have to build huge hideous monstrosities along our border to prevent easy passage between countries.  We would also need to hire a bushel or fifty of border guards and arm them appropriately to prevent any criminals from trespassing.  This would certainly not be a definitive fix, though.  How could it be?  The drug smugglers have already shown they are capable of building elaborate underground labyrinths to circumvent any attempt at stanching the flow of lucrative drugs into our fine country.  So, it would seem to be unbelievably short sighted to build an enormously expensive structure when the means to bypass it already exist and have been proven to work.  On the left side, we have basically our current policy.  I would argue that for the most part it really hasn't been TOO horrible as it is but it is a dangerous proposition as well.  In the long term, having laws that are at best not enforced willingly or at worst are unenforceable promotes a lack of respect for the law and essentially emboldens the populace not only to ignore that particular law but others which may be more essential.  Think about it for a minute.  When you are on a road that has a 35mph speed limit but everyone else seems to be doing 50mph do you continue to do 35mph or do you sort of keep up with the traffic flow?  When you are doing 50mph in that 35mph zone are you more or less likely to stop for that yellow light?  So the current policy is dangerous for similar reasons but also because of other existing policy issues.  The 14th amendment would be a reasonable place to start that discussion.  When people talk about the 14th amendment they are mostly referring to the Citizenship Clause which was a response to the 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v Sandford that held blacks could not be citizens.  The 14th amendment (and more specifically the Citizenship Clause) which was enacted in July 1868 states that those children born in the USA are citizens.  This was originally intended to apply to freed slaves but later the merit and intent of this amendment was tested in the Supreme Court.  The case of United States v Wong Kim Ark in 1898 held that under the 14th amendment a man born in the USA to foreign nationals (in this case Chinese citizens) who have permanent domicile and residence in the USA and are carrying on business in the USA and whose parents are not foreign diplomats or here in other official capacity by a foreign power are citizens of the USA.  Currently, this is bounced around in the media as the "Anchor Baby" law.  Thus it is known due to foreign nationals who come to this country late in pregnancy with what would seem to be the intent of dropping a litter and instantly having legal protection against exportation due to their status as parents and caretakers of a US citizen (i.e. having an anchor).  If you look at this closely, it would seem this is only possible based on a lack of willingness to enforce the laws as written and instead applying a loose interpretation.  What I am saying is that if you look at the letter of the law, those that traverse a border and squirt out a baby only gain citizenship if they were here and permanently domiciled while carrying on business and not here in official capacity from another country.  Certainly, if we just enforced this as written it would eliminate a fair percentage of these so-called "Anchor babies".  But enforcing that law to the letter would soak up an inordinate amount of resources and may not give us the result we are looking for despite our best efforts.  But why is the Anchor Baby a problem in the first place?  The right wing would have you believe that having (mostly poor blue collar) families cross the border and have a baby entitled to citizenship is a financial drain on the government due to social programs such as WIC and Medicaid.  While there is a degree of validity to this argument, it is also true that if we simply enforced the rules as written this would not be an issue.  So, it should be fairly apparent that this is one fine mess with no viable solution.  Or is it?  What if we instituted a brand new policy on immigration that was more enforceable, more rational, and had the potential to alter the demographics of those who choose to immigrate in the first place?  I would suggest a three headed monster as a solution.  By that I mean there should be three pathways to achieve legal citizenship.  The first option would be a "buy in".  In this model, you could pay a one time fee to obtain legal status.  This would be great because it would be consistent with the "American Way" in that those who would use this pathway would already be accustomed to buying their way into whatever they want.  The buy in price would have to be set fairly high, say $50,000 or possibly more.  This would ensure a certain percentage of white collar workers exercising this pathway.  In addition, such a large fee would assure us that people coming in via this route had a good level of commitment to staying.  The second pathway to legal citizen status would be to serve for a period of 3 years in our military.  This would be a period in which the candidate for citizenship would be paid in accordance with what other military enrollees are paid and they would be expected to be competent in their verbal and written communications in the English language because the battlefield is not a place for poor communications.  The third and final pathway to citizenship would be to spend a period of 7 years in the USA working and paying taxes.  This trial period would not entitle the candidates to any social benefits such as Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security even while they toiled away and put money into the pot for these programs.  This would allow us to build some sustainability into these social assistance programs while providing a reasonable pathway to citizenship for those who would like to seek it.  In addition, it would allow for the same worker protections afforded legal citizens to these hard working citizen candidates while they worked to prove their commitment to this country.  So, there you have it.  My possibly overly simplistic solution to immigration.  I'd be interested in hearing other opinions on how to fix this issue.