With or Without "Inspection" - Does it Really Matter?

I refuse to allow anyone to make me feel ashamed of mine and The Dreamer's situation.  I know that it is the law of man and not the law of God that deemed my husband "illegal" and that anyone who knows us and has interacted with us on any kind of level, at any point in our lives, would vouch for our integrity, not just as a couple, but also as individuals.  For this reason, I tend to be very open about our situation in my day-to-day life.  The majority of the US population is ignorant to all things involving immigration and I enjoy the opportunity to educate through my experience when given the chance.  It's usually akward at first, explaining that my husband was deported, especially when I don't know the person's political views regarding the issue, but I never lie about the situation regardless of their political beliefs, because, afterall, those that agree with me aren't those that need to be educated.

I have yet to have a person tell me to my face that my husband deserved to be deported.  And to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of confrontation, so I'm grateful for that.  Instead, everyone expresses some form of sympathy, shock at the injustice of the situation and hope that The Dreamer will be granted a visa to return to the US as soon as possible.  What they don't realize, though, is that despite their supposed support for The Dreamer and I, many of them are not on our side.  They focus on the fact that The Dreamer entered the country on a visa and use that fact to distinguish him from the many other undocumented immigrants who enter the country "without inspection" and then build the case that because The Dreamer entered with inspection, he is somehow more "correct" than those that enter without.  In other words, they're on our side only because The Dreamer was lucky enough to get a tourist visa before entering the country.

Now I know, on a practical level, for those American citizens wanting to spend the rest of their lives with an immigrant who entered without inspection, that that little fact makes a world of difference, but only because the law distinguishes between those that entered with inspection and those that entered without.  When The Dreamer was still in the US and we had plans to adjust status I felt one-hundred percent blessed by the fact that he had entered the country on a visa.  Visas are hard to come by in Peru and the fact that he had one, even an expired one, gave us better options for the future than those without.  But, in the end, it didn't matter how he had entered the country, he was deported just the same.

My question is this - why is it more "correct" to use a tourist visa to immigrate to the US than it is to cross the border without one?  In both cases the purpose is the same - to better one's life.  And in both cases the end result is the same - a person who was not given legal permission to make a life for themselves in the US is doing so.  In both cases someone is working without permission to work and someone is "unlawfully present".  The one doesn't have any more or less integrity than the other.

One commenter on a blog that I frequent chose to refer to those that enter with inspection as entering through the "front door" and those that enter without inspection as entering through the "back door", and then implied that the choice of which door to use was determined by the immigrant.  But, the truth is that those that choose to immigrate to our country aren't given the choice of which door to use - if they were, I don't know of anyone who wouldn't choose the "front door" - but the choice isn't theirs because more often than not the "front door" is closed, locked and dead bolted against their knocking.

It would be easy to accept the kind rationalization of those who "support immigration, just not illegal immigration" when they confirm the injustice of my situation based on the fact that The Dreamer was trying to do things the "correct" way, but I'm not ignorant to the difficulty involved in obtaining a visa, and I don't think that those that enter "without inspection" are any less "correct" than my husband.  So, thank you for your support, but your NOT on my side.