Illegal immigration to the United States

Illegal immigratiofuck youn to the United States refers to the act of foreign nationals voluntarily resettling in the United States in violation of U.S. immigration and nationality law. Unsanctioned entry into the United States is a crime under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and those who have entered unlawfully are subject to deportation. Crossing the United States border without US Government authorization or failing to honor the terms of authorized forms of entry, such as tourist visas, represent the most common means of violation. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act illegal entry into the US constitutes a misdemeanor for first-time offenders, while persons who have been shown to repeatedly enter the US can be charged as felonies. Entering the US for seasonal employment without proper government authorization is also normally classified as illegal immigration, even when the individual plans to return to their country of origin when their employment ends. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a bureau of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is the primary federal agency tasked with enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In March 2006 the Pew Hispanic Center estimated the undocumented population ranged from 11.5 to 12 million individuals, a number supported by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). Pew estimated that 57% of this population comes from Mexico and about half of them are illegal; 24% from Central America and, to a lesser extent, South America; 9% from Asia; 6% from Europe, and the remaining 4% from elsewhere.

Means of violation

File:ElPaso-Juarez-EO.JPG

El Paso (top) and Ciudad Juárez (bottom) seen from earth orbit; the Rio Grande is the thin line separating the two cities through the middle of the photograph.

People become illegal immigrants in one of three ways: entering without authorization or inspection, staying beyond the authorized period after legal entry, or by violating the terms of legal entry. The United States Government Accountability Office estimates that “between 400,000 and 700,000 illegal immigrants have entered the United States each year since 1992.” A substantial portion did so by crossing the United States–Mexico border and to a lesser extent the United States-Canada border.

Methods of entry

According to the Pew Hispanic Center somewhat more than half of the undocumented migrant population entered the country without a visa: "[s]ome evaded customs and immigration inspectors at ports of entry by hiding in vehicles such as cargo trucks. Others tracked through the Arizona desert, waded or swam across the Rio Grande or American Canal in California or otherwise eluded the United States Border Patrol which has jurisdiction over all the land areas away from the ports of entry on the borders with Mexico and Canada."

Dangers

The unfenced rural mountainous and desert border between Arizona and Mexico has become a major entrance area for illegal immigration to the United States, due in part to the increased difficulty of crossing illegally into California. Each year there are several hundred immigrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border. The number of deaths has been steadily increasing since the middle 1990s with exposure (including heat stroke and dehydration) as a leading cause.

The tightening of border enforcement has disrupted the "traditional" circular movement of many migrant workers from Mexico by increasing the costs and risks of crossing the border, thereby reducing their rate of return migration to Mexico. The difficulty and expense of the journey has prompted many migrant workers to stay in the United States longer or indefinitely. The percentage of illegal immigrants who used to routinely return home and no longer do is unknown.

Visa overstays

Visa overstays are a second significant form of violation. A "visa overstayer" is someone who remains in the United States after the temporary authorization afforded by a visa expires. Visa overstayers tend to be somewhat more educated and better off financially than those who crossed the border illegally.

To help track visa overstayers the US-VISIT (United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) program collects and retains biographic, travel, and biometric information, such as photographs and fingerprints, of foreign nationals seeking entry into the United States. It also requires electronic readable passports containing this information.

Causes of illegal immigration

See also causes for illegal immigration.

High population growth

World population has grown from 1.6 billion in 1900 to an estimated 6.6 billion today. In Mexico alone, population has grown from 13.6 million in 1900 to 107 million in 2007.

In 2000, the United Nations estimated that the world's population was growing at the rate of 1.14% (or about 75 million people) per year. According to data from the CIA's 2005–2006 World Factbooks, the world human population currently increases by 203,800 every day. The United States Census Bureau issued a revised forecast for world population that increased its projection for the year 2050 to above 9.4 billion people, up from 9.1 billion people. Almost all growth will take place in the less developed regions.

Trade liberalization

The massive decrease in living standards for the Mexican rural poor since the 1980s as a result of trade liberalization generally, and cuts in subsidies for peasant producers and increased competition specifically, has brought about a great rise in outmigration from the Mexican countryside. According the Wall Street Journal, the incomes of the bottom quintile in Mexico (urban and rural) have fallen by 21% since trade liberalization. This can be seen as the principal cause of out migration from the Mexican countryside both to Mexican cities and the United States itself. Agricultural trade liberalization was a component of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but it began before NAFTA and is part of a "wider constellation of policies and policy changes that affect the rural poor." These actions have hurt the rural poor, particularly the 3 million farmers growing Mexico's traditional staple, corn. These farmers face tough competition from the subsidized agribusiness of the United States. Indeed, it has been estimated that since the 1990's, 2 million agricultural laborers (including farmers and their employees) have been forced to leave their farms and seek employment elsewhere as a result of U.S. grain subsidies in combination with NAFTA. It is reasonable to assume that a significant percentage of these 2 million expropriated workers immigrated to the United States.

Global disparity in standard of living

The chief cause of illegal immigration is considered to be economic. Illegal Latino immigrants traditionally have been portrayed as seeking jobs and wages better than those available in their home countries. The United States Department of Labor calculates that the Zone A (most industrialized) minimum wage in Mexico in 1999 was 34.45 pesos, or about US$3.50 per day. The Zone C (rural/agricultural) minimum wage was 29.70 Pesos a day, or roughly US$3.02 a day. By contrast, the U.S. minimum is set at $5.85 per hour under US federal law, and many States required rates higher than the federally mandated minimum. Importantly, the liberalization of the Mexican agricultural sector since the 1980s has caused a massive decrease in living standards for Mexican peasants. This has led to an outmigration of peasants to the cities--and to the United States.

Illegal employers

The continuing practice of hiring unauthorized workers has been referred to as “the magnet for illegal immigration.” Illegal hiring has not been prosecuted aggressively in recent years: between 1999 and 2003, according to the Washington Post, “work-site enforcement operations were scaled back 95 percent by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which subsequently was merged into the Homeland Security Department. Major Illegal employers have included:

• Wal-Mart, which in 2005 agreed to pay $11 million to settle a federal investigation that found hundreds of illegal immigrants were hired to clean its stores. Wal-Mart used sub-contractors and claimed that it was unaware that the sub-contractors were employing illegal immigrants as janitors. In August 2006 Wal-Mart instituted a policy to require any contractors working for them to have in place a system of verifying worker eligibility and auditing their worksites to assure their projects stay in compliance, handing out their own fines to contractors for not staying in compliance with this policy. Contractors wanting to bid on Wal-Mart projects are now required to have a system in place to accomplish this outlined in their bid.

• Swift & Co.: in December 2006, in the largest such crackdown in American history, U.S. federal immigration authorities raided Swift & Co. meat-processing plants in six U.S. states, arresting about 1,300 illegal immigrant employees. Because Swift uses a government Basic Pilot program to confirm whether Social Security numbers are valid, no charges where filed against Swift. Company officials have questioned the program's ability to detect when two people are using the same number.

• Tyson Foods, has also been accused of actively importing illegal labor for its chicken packing plants; However, the jury acquitted the company after evidence was presented that Tyson went beyond mandated government requirements in demanding documentation for its employees. Tyson also used its enrollment in the Basic Pilot and EVP Programs (voluntary employment eligibility screening programs) as part of its defense.

For decades, immigration authorities have alerted employers of mismatches between reported employees' Social Security cards and the actual names of the card holders. On September 1, a federal judge halted this practice of alerting employers of card mismatches.

Impacts

Economic

Main article: Economic impact of illegal immigrants in the United States

The Economic impact of illegal immigrants in the United States depends on whether taxes paid by illegal immigrants and their contributions to the economy make up for the government services which they use, as well as the economic input of the immigrants themselves and the cost of externalities such as added strain on public health that they may add. Those who find that immigrants, including illegal immigrants, produce a negative effect on the US economy often focus on the difference between taxes paid and government services received, while those who find positive economics effects focus on added productivity and lower costs to consumers for certain goods and services.[1] Economists themselves overwhelmingly view immigration, including illegal immigration as a positive for the economy.[2] Chauncy Lennon of Harvard and another paper by Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson [13]</ref> Paul Samuelson, a Nobel prize-winning economist from MIT, concurs asserting that there is no unitary, singular effect, good or bad, that arises from illegal immigration, but instead a variety of effects on Americans depending on their economic class. Samuelson posits that wealthier Americans tend to benefit from the illegal influx, while poorer Americans tend to suffer.

Research by George Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard University, shows that the average American's wealth is increased (albeit by less than 1%) by illegal immigration. The effect on wages for middle class individuals was an overall wealth increase. However, illegal immigrants had a long-term reduction of wages among American poor citizens during the 1980s and 1990s by 4.8%.

Most Americans would not see any wage increases if illegal immigrants disappeared. However, high school drop outs would expect to see an average of 25 dollars a week raise if illegal immigrants disappeared. On the other hand, they would also see an increase in the costs of goods and services[14]. Illegal immigrants are though have disproportionately affected certain groups of American citizens such as black and Hispanic poor with whom they compete for jobs.

Professor of Law Francine Lipman writes in a 2006 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Tax Lawyer of the American Bar Association Section of Taxation that the belief that undocumented migrants are exploiting the US economy and that they cost more in services than they contribute to the economy is "undeniably false". Lipman asserts that "undocumented immigrants actually contribute more to public coffers in taxes than they cost in social services" and "contribute to the U.S. economy through their investments and consumption of goods and services; filling of millions of essential worker positions resulting in subsidiary job creation, increased productivity and lower costs of goods and services; and unrequited contributions to Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance programs."

Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico and current Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, asserts that illegal immigrants are only a drain on government services when they are incapable of paying taxes; and that this incapacity is the result of restrictive federal policies that require proof of citizenship. He further argues that the US economy has "crucial" need for migrant workers, and that the current debate must acknowledge this rather than just focus on enforcement.

Undocumented workers are estimated to pay in about US$7 billion per year into Social Security..

Free market advocates claim that we are not in a free market due to government social welfare programs (e.g., welfare, Social Security, Medicare, etc.), but that if we were, restrictions on free migration would also limit the free market.

Racial tension

Minority racism is sometimes considered controversial because of theories of power in society. Racist thinking among and between minority groups does occur, for example conflicts between blacks and Korean immigrants (notably in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots) or between blacks and Hispanic immigrants. There has also been an increase in racial violence between whites and Hispanic immigrants and between African immigrants and American blacks.

Crime

Both legal and illegal have been found in to be less likely to commit crimes, the increase in border crime is due to illegal immigrants being more likely to be victimized by crime, and/or illegal immigrants use smugglers whom commit more crime. Namely, they find that their results reflect a reliance of border crossers on smugglers; and the pervasiveness of drug smuggling contributes to violent crime along the border. Crime rates from 1994 to 2005 have slightly declined, although both legal and illegal immigration have increased. Robert Sampson, Professor in Social Sciences at Harvard University, writes in Harvard Magazine in 2006 that being in the country illegally gives illegal aliens an "extra incentive to keep a clean record and not commit crimes, in order to avoid deportation".

Persons apprehended while attempting to enter the United States illegally after committing previous crimes in the United States are indictable for the attempt to illegally re-enter the country.

Sociologist Tony Waters in his 1999 book Crime and Immigrant Youth agreed with others that immigrants themselves are less likely to be arrested and incarcerated. However, he also noted, that the children of some immigrant groups in the United States are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. This is a by-product of the strains that emerge between immigrant parents living in poor inner city neighborhoods, and their sons. There were an estimated 25,000 street gangs and more than 750,000 gang members active across the USA in 2004, up from 731,500 in 2002. A confidential report by the California Department of Justice indicated that in 1995 60 percent of the 20,000 members of the 18th Street Gang in Los Angeles was composed of illegal immigrants. Also, about 60 percent of the membership of the Columbia Lil' Cycos gang was illegal, according to a 2002 statement by former U.S. attorney Luis Li.

According to a 1997 report by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, "Through other violations of our immigration laws, Mexican drug cartels are able to extend their command and control into the United States. Drug smuggling fosters, subsidizes, and is dependent upon continued illegal immigration and alien smuggling."

Another large scale multi-million dollar criminal operation connected to illegal immigration is identity theft.

Operation Community Shield has detained over fourteen hundred illegal immigrant gang members.

Potential future crimes feared:

"The Salvadoran gang, known to law enforcement authorities as MS-13 because many members identify themselves with tattoos of the number 13, is thought to have established a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, from where it has arranged to bring illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico into the United States."

MS13 publicly declared that it targets the Minutemen, civilians who take it upon themselves to control the border, to "teach them a lesson", possibly due to their smuggling of various Central/South Americans (mostly other gang members), drugs, and weapons across the border. A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the twenty thousand member 18th Street Gang in California is illegal. Barbara and David P. Mikkelsen, authors of Snopes, state that 18th Street likely has the highest membership rate including illegal aliens of the California gangs.

"A top al Qaeda lieutenant has met with leaders of a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with roots in Mexico and the United States — including a stronghold in the Washington area — in an effort by the terrorist network to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement authorities said."

"Mexican alien smugglers plan to pay violent gang members and smuggle them into the United States to murder Border Patrol agents, according to a confidential Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by the Daily Bulletin."

Terrorism

Mohamed Atta al-Sayed and two of his co-conspirators had expired visas when they executed the September 11, 2001 attacks. All of the attackers had U.S. government issued documents and two of them were erroneously granted visa extensions after their deaths. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States found that the government inadequately tracked those with expired tourist or student visas.

Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think-tank that promotes immigration reduction, testified in a hearing before the House of Representatives that

"out of the 48 al-Qaeda operatives who committed crimes here between 1993 and 2001, 12 of them were illegal aliens when they committed their crimes, seven of them were visa overstayers, including two of the conspirators in the first World Trade Center attack, one of the figures from the New York subway bomb plot, and four of the 9/11 terrorists. In fact, even a couple other terrorists who were not illegal when they committed their crimes had been visa overstayers earlier and had either applied for asylum or finagled a fake marriage to launder their status."

Vice Chair Lee Hamilton and Commissioner Slade Gorton of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has stated that of the nineteen hijackers of the September 11, 2001 attacks, "Two hijackers could have been denied admission at the port on entry based on violations of immigration rules governing terms of admission. Three hijackers violated the immigration laws after entry, one by failing to enroll in school as declared, and two by overstays of their terms of admission." Six months after the attack, their flight schools received posthumous visa approval letters from the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for two of the hijackers, which made it clear that actual approval of the visas took place before the September 11 attacks.

Corruption

In September 2005, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service reported that there were over 2,500 cases of their employees facing misconduct charges involving exchanging immigration benefits for sex, bribery, and influences by foreign governments to assist in violations of U.S. border security. In addition, another 50 such cases are being added weekly. These include cases turned over to the CIS and might not be the complete list according to sources speaking to the Washington Times . Several other news agencies have also reported known cases of the U.S. Border Patrol supporting trespassing of U.S. borders. . Agents have also been discovered to be illegal aliens themselves conspiring to smuggle illegal aliens.

Not only have charges been filed, in some cases, the Border Patrol agents have pleaded guilty (such as the case of Pablo Sergio Berry) or been found guilty in a court of law (such as the case of Oscar Antonio Ortiz who was found to have smuggled more than 100 aliens across the border, Michael Anthony Gilliland and Richard Elizalda.

Health

There are many controversial claims as to the roll played by illegal immigration in various health concerns:

In response to one reported charge that made it onto Lou Dobb's television program on CNN, the reportedly increased number of cases of leprosy to 7,000 in the last three years was called into question. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting reported in their investigation (and available on their website): A Centers for Disease Control report notes (3/30/07), "The number of reported cases of Hansen disease (HD) in the United States peaked at 361 in 1985 and has declined since 1988." The Health Resources and Services Administration reports that "166 new cases were reported in the U.S. in 2005 (the most recent year for which data are available)."

CBS reporter Lesley Stahl questioned Dobbs on these numbers.

Stahl: "Seven thousand is the number of leprosy cases over the last 30 years," not the past three, and nobody knows how many of those cases involved illegal immigrants. Now we went to try and check that number, 7,000. We can't. Just so you know....

Dobbs: Well, I can tell you this. If we reported it, it's a fact.

Other controversial charges often used during the debates include:

Chronic Chagas disease remains a major health problem in many Latin American countries. With increased population movements the possibility of transmission by blood transfusion has become more substantial in the United States. Approximately 500,000 infected people live in the USA, virtually all of them immigrants.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)], tuberculosis (TB) cases among foreign-born individuals remain disproportionately high, at nearly nine times the rate of U.S.-born persons. Prior to being awarded a green card, legal immigrants over the age of 15 must have a chest x-ray or skin test to check for tuberculosis. Illegal aliens are not screened in this manner. According to Dr. Lee Reichman, "Unless Americans are willing to adopt suffocatingly draconian immigration policies, the likelihood is that with globalization TB will again become epidemic here, in the same way that HIV moved from Africa to take root throughout the world. Suffering does not localize. When we engage with the world, we engage, inescapably and absolutely, with the world's infections. And the most devastating infection in the world is not Ebola or Lyme disease, West Nile virus or even HIV, but tuberculosis."

In 1996, the Johns Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research estimated it cost $13,000 to treat each case of TB. About 53 percent of the people diagnosed in the United States each year with tuberculosis are born outside the U.S. In the Los Angeles area, 80 percent of people infected with TB are foreign-born, with Mexico leading the way, followed by the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China." says Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-CA24)

A California study, "California’s Undocumented Latino Immigrants: A Report on Access to Health Care Services", page 38, found about 90% of illegal immigrants in California do not have non-government medical insurance.

Environmental

A few years ago, there were 45 abandoned cars on the Buenos Aires refuge near Sasabe, and enough trash that a volunteer couple filled 723 large bags with 18,000 pounds of garbage over two months in 2002."

Each year, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 illegal immigrants try to make the 15 to 30 mile hike through the wilderness to reach cities in the United States. "That works out to a city the size of Baton Rouge, La., living in the park without a sewage system, without garbage collection, without a grid of dedicated roads or sidewalks. They move where they want in four-wheel-drive cars, ATVs, motorcycles, bicycles and their own feet."

Demographic transition

Of those who immigrated between 2000 and 2005, 58% were from Latin America. The Bureau of the Census projects that by 2050 one-quarter of the population will be Hispanic. Census statistics also show that 45% of children under age 5 are from a racial or ethnic minority. In 35 of the country's 50 largest cities, non-Hispanic whites are or soon will be in the minority. In California, non-Hispanic whites slipped from 80% of the state's population in 1970 to 43% in 2006.

Immigration enforcement

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection is responsible for apprehending individuals attempting to enter the United States illegally. The United States Border Patrol is its mobile uniformed law enforcement arm, responsible for deterrence, detection and apprehension of immigrants who enter the United States without authorization from the government and outside the designated ports of entry.

Activity on the United States-Mexico border is concentrated around big border cities such as San Diego and El Paso, which have extensive border fencing and enhanced border patrols. Stricter enforcement of the border in cities has failed to significantly curb illegal immigration, instead pushing the flow into more remote regions and increasing the cost to taxpayers of each arrest from $300 in 1992 to $1700 in 2002. The cost to illegal immigrants has also increased: they now routinely hire coyotes, or smugglers, to help them get across.

In December 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to build a separation barrier along parts of the border not already protected by a separation barriers. A later vote in the United States Senate on May 17, 2006, included a plan to blockade 860 miles of the border with vehicle barriers and triple-layer fencing along with granting an "earned path to citizenship" to the 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. and roughly doubling legal immigration (from their 1970s levels). In 2006 the Senate approved 370 miles of new double- and triple-layered fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers and then refused to fund them. In December, the House voted for 700 miles of new barriers. Neither was able to reach a compromise bill. There is no assurance that if built, these new layers of protection will reduce the flow of illegal aliens from Mexico.

Please see main article, United States–Mexico barrier.

Police and military involvement

There have been extensive efforts on the part of local law enforcement to increase police presence at the border. However, federal judges have ruled that control of illegal immigration is the exclusive domain of the federal government and have prohibited local communities and states from attempting to enforce ordinances intended to control illegal immigration.

In 1995, the United States Congress considered an exemption from the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits direct participation of Department of Defense personnel in civilian law enforcement activities, such as search, seizure, and arrests.—authorizing the United States Secretary of Defense to detail members of the Armed Forces to enforce the immigration and customs laws in border areas. U.S. Army personnel were stationed along the U.S.-Mexico border to help stem the flow of illegal aliens and drug smugglers. These military units brought their specialized equipment such as FLIR infrared devices, and helicopters. In conjunction with the U.S. Border Patrol, they would deploy along the border and, for a brief time, there would be no traffic across that border which was actively watched by "coyotes" paid to assist border crossers. The smugglers and the alien traffickers ceased operations over the one hundred mile sections of the border sealed at a time.

In 1997, Marines shot and killed 18 year old U.S. citizen Esequiel Hernandez Jr while on a mission to interdict smuggling and illegal immigration in the remote Southwest. The soldiers observed the goat herder from concealment for 20 minutes maintaining radio contact with their unit. But at one point, this young man (who the Pentagon says previously had fired shots in the vicinity of Border Patrol agents) raised his rifle and fired shots in the direction of the concealed soldiers. After firing two shots, this young man was, in turn, shot and killed. In reference to the incident, military lawyer Craig T. Trebilock argues that "the fact that armed military troops were placed in a position with the mere possibility that they would have to use force to subdue civilian criminal activity reflects a significant policy shift by the executive branch away from the posse comitatus doctrine." The killing of Hernandez led to a congressional review and an end to a nine-year old policy of the military aiding the Border Patrol.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks the United States again considered placing soldiers along the U.S.-Mexico border as a security measure. In May 2006, President George W. Bush announced plans to use the National Guard to strengthen enforcement of the US-Mexico Border from illegal immigrants, emphasizing that Guard units "will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities." Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in an interview with a Mexico City radio station, "If we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called on the President not to deploy military troops to deter aliens, and stated that a "deployment of National Guard troops violates the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act". According to the State of the Union Address in January 2007, more than 6000 National Guard members have been sent to the US-Mexico border to supplement the Border Patrol, costing in excess of $750 million.

Sanctuary cities

Many cities, including Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Jersey City, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver, Aurora, Colorado, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine, have become "sanctuary cities", having adopted ordinances banning police from asking people about their immigration status. However, if ICE (formerly the INS) finds an undocumented immigrant in violation of local sanctuary laws, this will not keep them from being deported.

Critics

The Cato Institute is among the critics who argue that increasing border security is counterproductive. The institute argues that increasing border security reduces the proportion of illegal immigrants caught at the border and increases the length of time illegal immigrants remain in the country. Cato claims that the only significant change on illegal immigrants has been in length of stay due to the cost of returning. The probability of returning within twelve months has gone from around 45% in 1980 to between 25 and 30% from 1998-2002. Also, the average trip duration has gone from 1.7 years to 3.5 years. According to the Cato Institute, the only important change in security has been one of cost. The Border Patrol's budget has gone from $151 million in 1986 to $1.6 billion in 2002. This has caused the cost of apprehending an illegal immigrant to go from around $100 per arrest before 1986 to around $1700 in 2002..

Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argues that "[illegal immigrants] are going to get here as long as they have economic incentives to come." Jacoby further asserts that politicians and others use construction of a massive fence as a proxy to avoid addressing real issues.

Legal issues

Birthright citizenship

Main article: Birthright citizenship in the United States of America

The Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, in precedent set by United States v. Wong Kim Ark, to grant citizenship to every child born in the U.S. regardless of the citizenship of the parents, with the exception of the children of diplomats and children born to enemy forces in hostile occupation of the United States.

The Court in Wong Kim Ark did not explicitly decide whether U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" (it was not necessary to answer this question since Wong Kim Ark's parents were legally present in the United States at the time of his birth). However, the Supreme Court's later ruling in Plyler v. Doe stated that illegal immigrants are "within the jurisdiction" of the states in which they reside, and added in a footnote that "no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment "jurisdiction" can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful."

Equal protection under US law

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a state statute denying funding for education to children who were illegal immigrants. It established that regardless of legal status, illegal immigrants are still “persons” and thus protected as such under some provisions the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the US Constitution, notably the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a "person" in any ordinary sense of that term. Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as "persons" guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments…The Equal Protection Clause was intended to work nothing less than the abolition of all caste-based and invidious class-based legislation. That objective is fundamentally at odds with the power the State asserts …to classify persons subject to its laws as nonetheless excepted from its protection."

Locally mandated immigration policy

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was the last major overhaul of immigration law passed by the US Congress; attempts to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” in 2005 and 2007 faltered. State and local governments have responded by passing local laws and ordinances to control illegal immigration within their own jurisdictions. These laws are primarily aimed at (a) limiting an illegal immigrants' ability to obtain jobs, housing, or a legally acceptable form of identification. (b) To empower local law enforcement agencies to inquire into an immigrant's legal status. However, the 1986 law pre-empted most existing state immigration policies and forbids states from enacting tougher criminal or civil penalties for illegal immigration than those set by Congress. Further, the US Supreme Court in De Canas v. Bica, 424 U.S. 351 (1976) stated “[The] power to regulate immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power.” The supremacy clause (Article VI, Clause 2) of the United States Constitution makes laws passed by Congress “the supreme law of the land”, thus placing the constitutionality of locally passed laws and ordinances in question.

Several lawsuits have been filed challenging the constitutionality of locally imposed measures, on the grounds that it is not the place of local government to assume the responsibilities of the Federal government. Two of the most closely watched cases involve ordinances passed in Hazleton, Pennsylvania and Farmers Branch, Texas that include fining landlords that rent to illegal immigrants, and allowing local authorities to screen illegal immigrants in police custody. On July 26, 2007, a federal court struck down the Hazleton ordinance as unconstitutional. The ruling is regarded by many to set a legal precedent that can be used to strike down local immigration ordinances nationwide. Hazleton's mayor has promised to appeal the decision. The Farmer's Branch ordinance remains under temporary restraining order enjoining enforcement of the ordinance pending a final ruling.

Several US cities have taken the opposite approach and have instructed their own law enforcement personnel and other city employees not to notify or cooperate with the federal government when they become aware of illegal immigrants living within their jurisdiction. These cities are often referred to as “sanctuary cities” and include Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and other mostly large urban cities. Most of these cities claim that the benefit illegal immigrants bring to their city outweigh the costs. Opponents say the measures violate federal law as the cities are in effect creating their own immigration policy, an area of law which only Congress has authority to alter.

Immigration Reform and Control Act

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) made the hiring of an individual without documents an offense for the first time. The act is somewhat redundant since the forging of government documents (fake immigration documents or providing falsified social security numbers) is already a felony, and for most companies such documents must be provided to the government in its tax filings. However, the government does not notify those whose identities have been stolen for the falsified social security numbers, thus making it difficult to estimate the extent of the problem.

Immigration with and without quotas

The immigration quota system was first expanded with the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 which was used to reduce the influx of East and Southern European immigrants who were coming to the country in large numbers from the turn of the century. This immigration was further reduced by the Immigration Act of 1924 which was structured to maintain the cultural and ethnic traditions of the United States.

The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration had nearly shut down immigration during the decade of the Great Depression of 1929. In 1929 there were 279,678 immigrants recorded and in 1933 there were only 23,068. By 1939 recorded immigrants had crept back up to 82,998 but then the advent of World War II drove it back down to 23,725 in 1943 increasing slowly to 38,119 by 1945. After 1946 about 600,000 of Europe's Displaced Person (DP's) refugees were admitted under special laws outside the country quotas, and in the 1960s and 1970s large numbers of Cuban and Vietnamese refugees were admitted under special laws outside all quotas.

Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965 which essentially removed all nation-specific quotas, while retaining an overall quota, and included immigrants from Mexico and the Western Hemisphere for the first time with their own quotas. It also put a large part of immigration, so-called family reunification, outside the quota system. This dramatically changed the number, type and composition of the new arrivals from mostly European, to predominantly poor Latino and Asian. It also dramatically increased the number of illegal aliens as many poorer people now had family or friends in the U.S. that attracted them there. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was passed, creating amnesty for about 3,000,000 illegal aliens already in the United States. Critics believe IRCA just intensified the illegal immigration flow as those granted amnesty illegally brought more of their friends and family into the U.S.

Without quotas on large segments of the immigration flow, legal immigration to the U.S. surged and soon became largely family based "Chain immigration" where families brought in a chain of off quota new immigrant family members. The number of legal immigrants rose from about 2.5 million in the 1950s to 4.5 million in the 1970s to 7.3 million in the 1980s to about 10 million in the 1990s. In 2006 legal immigrants to the United States now number approximately 1,000,000 legal immigrants per year of which about 600,000 are Change of Status immigrants who already are in the U.S.

Matrícula Consular identification cards

The Matrícula Consular ("Consular Registration") is an identification card issued by the Government of Mexico through its consulate offices. The official purpose of the card is to demonstrate that the bearer is a Mexican national living outside of Mexico. Similar consulate identification cards are issued to citizens of Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador, and Honduras. This document is accepted at financial institutions in many states and, with an IRS Taxpayer Identification Number, allows illegal immigrants to open checking and saving accounts.

REAL ID Act

The REAL ID Act of 2005 prohibits States from issuing identification or driver's permit cards to anyone who cannot demonstrate that they are legally in the USA, taking full effect on December 31, 2009. Citizenship and/or immigration status is to be clearly denoted on these ID cards and they automatically expire on the expiration date of non-citizens' visas or other authorizing documentation.

Historical context

Every wave of immigration into the United States has faced fear and hostility, especially during times of economic hardship, political turmoil, or war: in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, one of the nation's first immigration laws, to keep out all people of Chinese origin; during the "Red Scare" of the 1920s, thousands of foreign-born people suspected of political radicalism were arrested and brutalized; many were deported without a hearing. In 1942, 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent were interned in camps until the end of World War II, of which about one-third were naturalized or native-born citizens.

Chinese experience

Main article: Chinese Exclusion Act (United States)

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was passed due to the belief that Chinese laborers were unfair competition and lowered wages of native born Americans. Anti-Chinese sentiment was also present for fear that Chinese immigrants were unable to assimilate. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act had cut off nearly all Chinese immigration. The first laws creating a quota for immigrants were passed in the 1920s, in response to a sense that the country could no longer absorb large numbers of unskilled workers, despite pleas by big business that it wanted the new workers. Ngai (2003) shows that the new laws were the beginning of mass illegal immigration, because they created a new class of persons — illegal aliens — whose inclusion in the nation was at once a social reality and a legal impossibility. This contradiction challenged received notions of sovereignty and democracy in several ways. First, the increase in the number of illegal entries created a new emphasis on control of the nation's borders — especially the long Canadian border. Second, the application of the deportation laws gave rise to an oppositional political and legal discourse, which imagined "deserving" and "undeserving" illegal aliens and, therefore, just and unjust deportations. These categories were constructed out of modern ideas about crime, sexual morality, the family, and race. In the 1930s federal deportation policy became the object of legal reform to allow for administrative discretion in deportation cases. Just as restriction and deportation "made" illegal aliens, administrative discretion "unmade" illegal aliens. Administrative law reform became an unlikely site where problems of national belonging and inclusion played out.

Controversy regarding current immigration issues

Defining the issue

A fundamental controversy in the debate stems from lack of consensus on what challenges or problems illegal immigration actually poses to the United States, and on what a successful immigration policy would look like--for example, whether this policy would treat immigration primarily as a humanitarian issue, a law-enforcement issue, or an economic issue. Many critics on the left argue that the debate as it is presently conducted has failed to achieve progress primarily because it defines the problem in a short-sighted and counterproductive way, criminalizing the "illegal immigrant" and overemphasizing domestic policy such as border security. As Paul Rubin has written for the Washington Post,

• "Economists have... long argued that the economics of immigration—immigrants coming here to exchange their labor for money that they then exchange for the products of other people's labor—is positive sum. Yet our evolutionary intuition is that, because foreign workers gain from trade and immigrant workers gain from joining the U.S. economy, native-born workers must lose. This zero-sum thinking leads us to see trade and immigration as conflict ("trade wars," "immigrant invaders") when trade and immigration actually produce cooperation and mutual benefit, the exact opposite of conflict.

These critics argue that "immigration reform" fundamentally entails foreign policy, labor, and civil rights reform, and that U.S. preoccupation with "illegals," citizenship law, and policing its borders is a politically expedient way of skirting deeper challenges. These include:

• Globalization and U.S. foreign policy. For example, the progressive think tank the Rockridge Institute has argued, "What role have international trade agreements had in creating or exacerbating people's urge to flee their homelands? If capital is going to freely cross borders, should people and labor be able to do so as well, going where globalization takes the jobs?... Such a framing of the problem would lead to a solution involving the Secretary of State, conversations with Mexico and other Central American countries, and a close examination of the promises of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to raise standards of living around the globe.

Proponents of this wider strategy are generally critical of the current administration's approach to the issue:

• "Bush's 'comprehensive solution' entirely concerns the immigrants, citizenship laws, and the border patrol. And, from the narrow problem identified by framing it as an 'immigration problem,' Bush's solution is comprehensive. He has at least addressed everything that counts as a problem in the immigration frame.... But the real problem with the current situation runs broader and deeper."

Terminology

The Immigration and Nationality Act is the primary body of federal immigration law in the United States. It defines the term "alien" as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.” It defines the term “immigrant” to mean every alien not falling within a set of “classes of nonimmigrant aliens” spelled out in detail by the act, for example: diplomatic personnel, students residing within the US to attend school, athletes attending athletic events, ship and aircraft crew members; and others residing or staying within the United States on a temporary basis. The act classifies aliens remaining within the US on a permanent basis as immigrants without regards to an individual’s legal status.

There are a variety of terms which can be found in government agency news releases, photo captions, and reports. These terms include undocumented immigrant, unauthorized immigrant, illegal immigrant, undocumented migrant, unauthorized migrant, migrant, unauthorized immigrant worker, illegal migrant, illegal alien, undocumented alien, unauthorized worker and unauthorized resident.

The Associated Press Stylebook, the primary style and usage guide for most newspapers and newsmagazines in the United States, recommends using "illegal immigrant" rather than "illegal alien" or "undocumented worker". According to Voice of America's, a weekly analysis of American English from the official international radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government, "The most common term by far, though, at least as reflected in the news media, is illegal immigrants" in reference to people who are in the United States without following immigration laws.

At the 1994 Unity convention, the four minority journalism groups – the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists , the Asian American Journalists Association and the Native American Journalists Association – issued a joint statement on the term illegal aliens: "Except in direct quotations, do not use the phrase illegal alien or the word alien, in copy or in headlines, to refer to citizens of a foreign country who have come to the U.S. with no documents to show that they are legally entitled to visit, work or live here. Such terms are considered pejorative not only by those to whom they are applied but by many people of the same ethnic and national backgrounds who are in the U.S. legally." Press releases from these minority journalism groups in 2006 reaffirmed this position and recommended using undocumented immigrant and avoid the term illegal as a label .

Public reaction to current immigration issues

The immigration reduction movement seeks to reduce the levels of illegal immigration into the U.S. The Minuteman Project has been lobbying Congress for stronger enforcement of the border laws and is reported to be organizing private property owners along the U.S.-Mexican border for the purpose of building a fence to discourage illegal border crossings.

The No More Deaths organization offers food, water, and medical aid to illegal aliens crossing the desert regions of the American Southwest in an effort to reduce the increasing number of deaths along the border.

According to a 2006 report by the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacists and other extremists are engaging in a growing number of assaults against legal and illegal immigrants and those perceived to be immigrants.

The Center for U.S. - Mexico Immigration Analysis reports that while both concerns over the impact of undocumented Mexican workers on the U.S. economy and anti-immigrant attitudes are rising, that the consequences of tightening immigration control will be damaging to both sides of the U.S. and Mexico Borders.

Public opinion

An August 18, 2007 Rasmussen Reports poll reported that poll respondents favored building a fence along the border with Mexico, by a margin of 56 percent in favor and 31 percent against. 58 percent of the survey respondents supported cutting off federal funds to sanctuary cities; 29 percent were against cutting off such funds. 71 percent support an identification card for foreign workers and students; while 16 percent oppose such a card. These issues are more volatile among Republican Party voters than among the populace at large. The poll found that 75 percent of surveyed Republicans support building a fence along the southwestern border. 73 percent support terminating federal funds to sanctuary cities. 81 percent of these voters support a national identification card for foreign workers and students.

See also

• 2006 United States immigration reform protests
• Dillingham Commission
• The Center for U.S. - Mexico Immigration Analysis
• Elvira Arellano
• Free immigration
• Ignacio Ramos
• Immigration to the United States
• Immigration reduction
• Know Nothing
• Migra
• Multiculturalism
• Nativism (politics)
• Operation Jump Start
• Overpopulation
• Sanctuary
• Sanctuary city
• United States immigration debate

References

• http://www.uscis.gov/propub/ProPubVAP.jsp?dockey=24e12c5b6b3ca34ade72f667ecbc8d58 Immigration and Nationality Act, Title 8 Code of Federal Regulations]

Further reading

• Barkan, Elliott R. "Return of the Nativists? California Public Opinion and Immigration in the 1980s and 1990s." Social Science History 2003 27(2): 229-283. in Project Muse
• Brimelow, Peter; Alien Nation (1996)
• Cull, Nicholas J. and Carrasco, Davíd, ed. Alambrista and the US-Mexico Border: Film, Music, and Stories of Undocumented Immigrants U. of New Mexico Press, 2004. 225 pp.
• Thomas J. Espenshade; "Unauthorized Immigration to the United States" Annual Review of Sociology. Volume: 21. 1995. pp 195+.
• Flores, William V. "New Citizens, New Rights: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenship" Latin American Perspectives 2003 30(2): 87-100
• Hanson, Victor David Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (2003)
• Lisa Magaña, Straddling the Border: Immigration Policy and the INS (2003
• Mohl, Raymond A. "Latinization in the Heart of Dixie: Hispanics in Late-twentieth-century Alabama" Alabama Review 2002 55(4): 243-274. ISSN 0002-4341
• Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004),
• Ngai, Mae M. "The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy in the United States, 1921-1965" Law and History Review 2003 21(1): 69-107. ISSN 0738-2480 Fulltext in History Cooperative

External links

• The History of Immigration, by Jorge Majfud
• Border Security: Fences Along the U.S. International Border[15] a report of the Congressional Research Service (January 13, 2005) provided by the Federation of American Scientists.
• Minuteman Project
• Immigration Counters
• PoliticosLatinos.com Videos of 2008 US Presidential Election Candidates' Positions regarding Immigration

Center for U.S. - Mexico Immigration Analysis [16]