Well Of Course

The reason they're called undocumented immigrants is because they don't have any documents. They don't stamp a date and time of entry on the passport of someone crossing illegally over the border. That's why this silly compromise ended up going down to defeat today. Senators tried to make bargains that have no possibility of being useful in the real world. You either support earned legalization or you don't, if you pass something saying "only if you've been in the country five years" can you gain legal status every illegal immigrant in the country is going to say they've been here five years. All you would be doing is opening up a document forgery racket on things like electric bills (which could prove somewhat that an illegal was here for a certain number of years.

Not everything is negotiable in the familiar consensus-building apparatus of the Senate. You can bargain on the amount of the fine an illegal must pay, or how many years they'd have to work before getting on the track to legal status, but the whole "if they've been here two years, then A, if not, then B" is not helpful. The more I see this, the more I think nothing will get done this term, which opens this up as a wedge issue in the 2006 elections. That is dicey and could benefit either side, as there's generally a split in the country over this. Third-party anti-immigrant candidates would REALLY hurt the GOP, however, whereas there's little chance of that threat happening on the pro-immigrant side.