Could this work? (re: immigration/border security)

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With immigration and border security a major, and often contentious, topic, I have been wondering what the best solutions would be to resolve the issue.

Here is the process I came up with:

Immigration:

The immigration process would be paperless. The prospective immigrants would submit an online form, stating their intent (work, asylum, residency/citizenship, etc.), the number of people in their family who would accompany them, their current address, their intended address, and an identifier (a driver's license or other ID from their country of origin).

If the reason for immigration is work, they can request renewal if it's a temporary/contract job, or upgrade their status to residency if it's permanent or for an indefinite amount of time.

If the reason is asylum, the status can be upgraded to residency at any time.

Once residency is established, they can register for the citizenship test at any time.

When they arrive in the U.S., all they need is their ID, which is already in the database. Only one ID is required if it's a family.

Those who already here ("undocumented"/"illegal") can use the same residency process.

Border security:

Basically a variation of the security measures used at the airports.

If arriving by automobile, they would drive into a scanning tunnel, which would resemble a car wash without the brushes. If no contraband is found, they're good to go.

If arriving by air or sea, they would go through the usual TSA screening process. If their belongings are in a cargo vehicle, they've already been screened.

In theory it seems workable. in practice, however, it may not work for all.

Consider the fact that Internet access is not universal, especially in third-world countries. Not everyone has a mobile telephone, either. Sometimes, the only I.D. document a person may have is a hand-written letter with their name on it. Most of the time, they have no I.D. documents at all. Illiteracy is another problem.

Thus, they system you propose would have to be implemented at the border, where there is already a backlog of applications with more immigrant-hopefuls arriving every day. Imagine traveling by foot for thousands of miles, only to be stopped and turned away because you cannot read, you have no I.D. documents, and no idea of how to use an automated system that's uses a language you do not understand -- you want to speak to a person who understands your language as well as your situation, but all you can do is wait in line with about 200 to 300 other hopefuls for the next available keyboard and monitor, which may or may not be working by the time you get to it.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

Issues that I can see:

1) People seeking asylum could find internet access difficult, and likewise may not have access to any form of identification.

2) The rest seems no different from now. People can still overstay their work visas. People can still cross the border illegally by smuggling/bypassing security measures.

Immigration isn't an easy issue. We can easily identify problems with the current system, but building a better one is tough.