Common sense and history tell you that rewarding illegal behavior will only encourage more of it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Rewarding law breakers produces more law breakers.
Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.
When we violate the law ourselves, whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.
The act of policing is, in order to punish less often, to punish more severely.
As I've seen over and over again during my career, the best way to deter individual conduct is the threat of going to jail. That's what truly changes behavior. That's what changes the calculus as employees and executives decide whether to participate in an illegal scheme.
While I support immigration regulated through a legal framework, I do not support rewarding those who broke the law to get here.
Punishment can do a lot for criminals, and send a message to the rest of society.
Years of research in psychology has shown that rewards and punishments can be very effective in changing behavior. But, at the same time, they can create an addiction to rewards and punishments.
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
Crimes, like virtues, are their own rewards.