Being an illegal immigrant isn't necessarily a crime. It can be, but in a great many cases it's just an administrative violation. 'The laws as currently written' are not as simple as they sound - in many cases immigration law is arbitrary or self-contradictory.
I take issue with trying to classify it as an administrative violation. If your residency status is not legal, then you are committing a crime. Big or little, it is still a violation of the laws as written.
crime n. an action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law.
As far as the laws being arbitrary and/or self-contradictory, I won't disagree. THAT is what all the immigrant advocate organizations should be addressing. Not finding ways to make a person living here illegally get things like drivers licenses. Get the laws changed so they can more easily apply to live here legally.
Most laws are arbitrary and/or self-contradictory, yet we are still punished if we are caught violating them. In addition, there are so many laws, that most of us are constantly committing crimes (at a rate of three felonies a day).[1]
Harvey Silverglate is full of it and I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time. When you look into the cases he mentions you always find all kinds of incriminating detail that he left out of his articles. I've debunked some of his claims in detail before here on HN but I can't be bothered to dig that up again now. You should probably be able to find with a Google search though, I'm pretty sure they addressed this very WSJ article.
