There is law for a reason, and 300 millions American citizens and legal aliens abide by it. Do you want make all of them feel idiots?Obviously you've never dealt with immigration. My wife was a Chinese citizen here on a student visa when we married, and so I've dealt with the process first hand.
It seems to me that most people believe that the process of getting a green card or citizenship is just a matter of filling out a couple forms, going to a notary, and waiting a few months for everything to be approved. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and as a result, many people who want to do everything legally, who really try to do so, wind up with an illegal status.
The process involves scores of forms that must be filled out just so. I can tell you from personal experience that figuring out exactly what the INS wanted was a challenge -- for me, an native English speaker who got 680 on the SAT verbal section. It's nearly impossible for non-native speakers, but many of them can't afford a lawyer to help them.
My wife's application was rejected twice. The first was due to confusion about the correct papers to prove marriage. The second was due to improperly collected fingerprints. We went to the State Police to have the fingerprint cards done. Who is better qualified to take good fingerprint samples than the police, right? We were rejected because the NJ State Police are not certified by the INS as fingerprint authorities. It seems that, to get the prints done legally, we had to drive to the duly certified fingerprint authority, some 40 miles away, which turned out to be a camera shop. Her prints were taken by some Indian guy, obviously an immigrant himself, rather than a police officer -- and these were accepted.
On one occasion the wife was at the INS office in NYC Federal Plaza. The woman at the counter was telling wife that something had to be done just so, no exceptions. Wife asked to speak to a manager to try to clear up the misunderstanding -- a perfectly legitimate request in any business. Rather than trying to work with my wife to resolve the disagreement, the worker pushed a little button, and two big burly guys came out of a door and physically removed my wife from the premises, claiming that she was a threat.
Obviously this process is not about a correct and complete application: they are about perpetuating the INS itself, through the fees for fingerprint certifications; shoring up their little fiefdoms, and so on. Anyone who believes that people who are unsuccessful in navigating this bureaucracy are criminals, bad elements that we don't want in our society, is badly mistaken.