My stepfather was an illegal alien, in THREE countries. With a price on his head and the secret police hot on his trail, he was smuggled out of Cuba by friends at the Mexican Embassy (in a mail pouch with diplomatic tags!). But once safe in Mexico, they could no longer offer him protection. He was asked to leave the country so he swam the Rio Grande and turned himself in to US authorities. They tried to return him to Mexico but they wouldn't take him, so he was sent instead to a concentration camp in Texas for illegal aliens.

Eventually released, he was allowed to travel to Florida where there were government programs for Cuban refugees, there he met my mother and eventually married and settled down. When he was finally elegible to apply for US residency, he was told that no illegals IN the US could apply, he would have to do so from outside the country. He was forced to travel across the border (illegaly, he had no papers) to Canada, formally go to a US embassy there and get his documents stamped, then come back across the border the next day so he could enter legally. If the Mounties had stopped him going north he could conceivably have found himself at el paredon in Cuba. He was still under a death sentence there. A night in Toronto, but it took months to make all the arrangements.

So I'm not surprised about Superman's special status. With INS, nothing surprises me.