Amnesty?

It escapes me, why are we talking about amnesty in the first place, as opposed to enforcing our existing immigration laws today; stopping the potential for illegal residency tomorrow! Our government certainly has demonstrated it's ability to monitor the status of it's citizens for every conceivable bit of information known to man, why not it's foreign entrants? The current proposed legislation largely speaks to amnesty for illegal immigrants already here and have been here for some time; essentially giving them citizenship as quickly as opposition will allow-, plain and simple as that, as I see it. Didn't we learn anything from our 1986 efforts to address this problem...,we worsened it! The "Gang of Eight" no matter how well intended they might appear to be, are once again getting the cart before the horse! Address the problem not the symptom! Secure our borders. Enforce our immigration laws! Not only are we wrongheaded in this proposed legislation, confusingly and suddenly becoming politically correct(?), but we can't afford it's cost (estimated to be in the trillions) to be born by we already over burdened citizen tax payers and our progeny to come. To say nothing of the affront to those millions of immigrants over the years who suffered the rigors of gaining legal citizenship. I'm all in favor of accommodating immigrants aspiring to be American citizens but not at the expense of our long contributing hardworking standing citizens. Prorate, definitively, their scope of benefits in possibly short-cutting early citizenship based on their rate of contribution to the system, not accelerating full participation as a political expedient. Yes as I understand the proposed bill, does speak to a proration of benefits, but it's timing and strength is both vague, seemingly unenforceable and stated in language generally suspect to me. If a bill is to be passed addressing our current "de facto amnesty", as Senator Rubio refers to it, it first and foremost must assure the sanctity of our borders; reenforce our existing immigration laws with out exception, before making any concessions to current illegal immigrants wishing to gain citizenship. A hard line I know, but I feel the well being of our country is at stake here! We can't be expected to pay for our government's past and present failure to defend and protect our borders in that the provisions to do so has been available to them all along! It is a fundamental expectation of all citizenry that their rights as citizens will not be usurped, diluted, penalized or lessened in any way by non citizens! After all, is that not the basic premise of attaining citizenship in the first place!