Knowing where we are heading

The current immigration law did not work as intended, and it resulted in millions of aliens working here illegally. Many politicians want to try to resolve the problem of illegal immigrants and illegal border crossing first, and then fix the currently not functioning legal immigration system. It is like pumping water from a sinking boat first, and fixing the hole in the bottom of the boat later. In my approach, before we would decide what to do with illegal aliens, we would need to know how we want to handle legal immigration in the future. Therefore, for the sake of discussion, we need to put the current immigration mess aside, and agree on a system of legal immigration that is good for the country, and that would not cause us such havoc again. Knowing where we are heading, we can go back to the currently illegal immigrants and decide if and how some of them might be allowed to legalize their status.