Illegal immigration to the United States

Illegal immigration 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. Those who have entered the United States in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act are subject to deportation, often after being found to be removable in a civil removal proceeding before an Immigration Judge. Crossing the United States border without U.S. Government authorization or failing to honor the terms of authorized forms of entry, such as tourist visas, represents the most of the 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.

Definition

Immigrants are classified as illegal for one of three reasons: entering without authorization or inspection, staying beyond the authorized period after legal entry, or 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.

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.

Modes of entry

Illegal immigration into the United States occurs mostly via land and sea. In 1993 a large group of undocumented Asian immigrants attempted entry into the United States via a sea vessel. Ten of them arrived dead. Land-borne illegal immigration occurs heavily via the U.S. border with Mexico. In March of 2006 the Pew Hispanic Center (PHC) estimated the undocumented population ranged from 11.5 to 12 million individuals, a number supported by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). Using data from March of 2004, PHC estimated that 57% of this population comes from Mexico; 24% from Central America and, to a lesser extent, South America; 9% from Asia; 6% from Europe, and the remaining 4% from elsewhere. Significant illegal immigration into the United States also takes place through its border with Canada, with most notorious recent case being that of a reportedly Algerian terrorist planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center somewhat more than half of the undocumented migrant population entered the country without inspection: "some 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. Dangers of illegally crossing the southern border into the US include: exposure to the elements, traffic accidents, and inhumane treatment at the hands of corrupt human traffickers.. “Exposure to the elements” encompasses hypothermia, dehydration, heat strokes, drowning, and suffocation. Also, illegal immigrants and coyotes may die or be injured when they attempt to avoid law enforcement. Martines, points out that engaging in high speed pursuits while attempting to escape arrest can lead to death.

Often, the people that choose to sneak across the border employ expert criminal assistance - smugglers who promise a safe passage into the United States. These smugglers are called "coyotes" and are paid thousands of dollars per person they assist in crossing the border.. Oftentimes, the money used to pay for this assistance is loaned - sometimes from loan-sharks who charge as much as 300 percent interest on short term loans..

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.

Overstays

Visa overstays are a second significant form of violation. A traveler is considered a "visa overstay" when one remains in the United States after the time of admission has expired. The time of admission varies greatly from traveler to traveler depending on what visa class into which they were admitted. Visa overstays tend to be somewhat more educated and better off financially than those who crossed the border illegally.

To help track visa overstayer 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

See also causes for illegal immigration.

Both supply and demand factors have been cited as reasons why illegal immigration occurs. Supply factors revolve around a readily available workforce experiencing poverty due to lack of work in their native country, and facilitated by their native government's lack of action to actively address the issue. On the demand side, a desire to join their relatives and sitgnificant availability of good-paying jobs are seeing as driving forces for immigrants to illegally enter the United States.

Supply

The Pew Hispanic Center has estimated that 56% of illegal immigrants come from Mexico. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to focus on causes specific to illegal immigration from Mexico.

Poor Fiscal Management

Mexico has a free market economy in the trillion dollar class and the highest income per capita in Latin America, but it ranks last among Latin American countries in spending for health and is in 17th place out of 25 countries in spending on education. The Mexican government's failure to follow through on its assurances to the Clinton administration that the Mexican government would invest billions of dollars in roads, schooling, sanitation, housing, and other needs to accommodate new factories, resulted in only a limited number of new factories ("maquiladoras") following NAFTA, the majority of which were produced in a zone near the U.S. border. Fewer factories meant fewer factory jobs. This failure to invest in its infrastructure also meant that China was able to out compete Mexico in the production of inexpensive manufactured goods, thus displacing Mexican workers . The number of manufacturing workers dropped from 4.1 million in 2000 to 3.5 million in 2004. Also, the U.S. was able to out compete Mexico in the production of inexpensive corn (maize). Consequently, the price of maize in Mexico fell 70% between 1994 and 2001, and the number of farm jobs dropped from 8.1 million in 1993 to 6.8 million in 2002.

Poverty

While Mexico is a wealthy country , it also has a high income disparity. Ugo Pipitone, an economist with the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City states that in Mexico the top 10 percent of wage earners earn some 36 times what the lowest 10 percent earn. According to a study on income distribution by political analyst Miguel Basanez, the wealthiest 20 percent of the population in Mexico controls 65.5 percent of the capital while the bottom 20 percent share 2.4 percent. While Mexico is a wealthy country , that wealth is centralized in the hands of a minority. 17.6% of Mexico's population lives in extreme poverty, while 21% live in moderated poverty, making a total of 38.6% of the Mexican population living in conditions of poverty.

Corruption

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, a survey of international businessmen that ranks countries from least to most corrupt, ranks Mexico at 72nd place out of 179 countries. This is even lower than such notoriously corrupt countries as drug-ridden Colombia. According to Global Integrity's 2006 Mexico Country Report, corruption costs the Mexican economy as much as $60 billion a year. A survey by the Center for the Study of Private Sector Economics (Centro de Estudios Económicos del Sector Privado), a Mexican research firm, estimates that 79 percent of companies in Mexico believe “illegal transactions” are a serious obstacle to business development. The 1994 economic crisis in Mexico associated with rampant government corruption resulted in a greatly decreased U.S. dollar value of Mexican wages relative to U.S. production workers.

Demand

On the demand side, it is argued that illegal immigration is driven by the desire of illegal immigrants to be with a relative or a loved one, and by the pool of better-paying jobs in the United States. The inaction of the U.S. government's to actively prosecute those who hire illegal immigrants provides a continuous pool of jobs in the States.

Family Reunification

The U.S.'s failure to enforce immigration policy assisted a "network effect" - furthering immigration as Mexicans moved to join relatives already in the U.S.

Availability of Jobs

The continuing practice of hiring unauthorized workers has been referred to as “the magnet for illegal immigration.”

Failure of US Government to Prosecute

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. 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 were 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 ("no-match-letters") 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.

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.

Policy issues

The Rockridge Institute asks, "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."

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, such as education, medical care, and incarceration of illegal immigrants.[1] Those who find positive economic effects focus on added productivity and lower costs to consumers for certain goods and services.[2]

Public Opinion

One of the most important factors regarding public opinion about immigration is the level of unemployment; anti-immigrant sentiment is highest where unemployment is highest and vice-versa.

Crime

Immigrants, both legal and illegal do not raise the rate of crime in the United States and native born Americans are five times more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants.

A study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has discovered that while property-related crime rates have not been affected by increased immigration (both legal and illegal), in border counties there is a significant positive correlation between illegal immigration and violent crime. However, crime rates from 1994 to 2005 have declined slightly, despite the fact that both legal and illegal immigration have increased. Robert Sampson, Professor in Social Sciences at Harvard University, explains that being in the country illegally might give 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.One large scale multi-million dollar criminal operation connected to illegal immigration is identity theft. 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." Operation Community Shield has detained over fourteen hundred illegal immigrant gang members. "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.. "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.

Health

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 medical insurance.

Almost $190 million or about 25 percent of the uncompensated costs southwest border county hospitals incurred resulted from emergency medical treatment provided to undocumented immigrants However, illegal immigrants are no more likely to visit the emergency room than native born Americans .

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) continues to bring injured and ill undocumented immigrants to hospital emergency rooms without taking financial responsibility for their medical care.

In 2006, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority estimated that it would spend about $9.7 million on emergency Medicaid services for unauthorized immigrants and that 80 percent of those costs would be for services associated with childbirth.

Madeleine Cosman writes in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons that the burden of illegal immigrants on the health care system in the US has forced many hospitals to close due to unpaid bills and the unfunded mandate of Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Between 1993 and 2003, 60 hospitals in California alone were forced to close, and many others had to reduce staff or implement other procedures which reduced the level of service they could provide. The article attributes these closings mainly to illegal immigration. [6]

To reduce the risk of diseases in low-incidence areas, the main countermeasure has been the screening of immigrants on arrival. 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 immigrants are not screened in this manner.

However, according to the Center 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. Immigration from areas of high incidence is thought to have fueled the resurgence of tuberculosis (TB), chagas, hepatitis, and leprosy in areas of low incidence. In 2003, nearly 26 percent of foreign-born TB patients in the United States were from Mexico. Another third of the foreign-born cases were among those from the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China, the CDC report said.

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."

Environmental

Illegal immigrants trying to get to the United States via the Mexican border with southern Arizona are suspected of having caused eight major wildfires this year, this report says. The fires destroyed 68,413 acres (276.86 km²) and cost taxpayers $5.1 million to fight.

Waves of illegal immigrants are taking a heavy toll on U.S. public lands along the Mexican border, federal officials say. Mike Coffeen, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Tucson, Arizona, is quoted as saying, while surveying the area by airplane: "the level of impact is just shocking." "Environmental degradation has become among the migration trend's most visible consequences, 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."

"It has been estimated that the average desert-walking immigrant leaves behind 8 pounds of trash during a journey that lasts one to three days if no major glitches occur. Assuming half a million people cross the border illegally into Arizona annually, that translates to 2,000 tons of trash that migrants dump each year." Fred Patton, chief ranger at Organ Pipe, is quoted as saying: "We've now got 300 miles of illegal roads these people have cut through the desert, and thousands of miles of illegal trails they've created. We collect over 30 vehicles a year, and we measure the trash they leave behind, everything from cans and bottles to clothes, by the ton. And they've fouled the few water sources to the point they are too filthy now even for the animals to drink."

Each year, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 illegal immigrants try to make the 15 to 30-mile (48 km) 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. ref>Violent Drama Plays Out Amid Natural Splendor By Bob Marshall, Newhouse News Service, Dateline Why, Arizona March 15, 2004</ref>

Apprehension & Deportation Expenses

Border control uses the latest technological advances to help capture these immigrants, sometimes detain/prosecute, and send back over the border. According to the US Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol Enforcement Integrated Database, apprehensions have increased from 955,310 in 2002 to 1,159,802 in the year of 2004. "But fewer than 4 percent of apprehended migrants were actually detained and prosecuted for illegal entry, partly because it costs $90 a day to keep them in detention facilities and bed space is very limited. For the remainder of the apprehended migrants, if they are willing to sign a form attesting that they are voluntarily repatriating themselves, they are simply bused to a gate on the border, where they re-enter Mexico."

After many are sent back to Mexico, many attempt to cross again the next day . In 2003 the United States adopted "Long-distance repatriation" as an option to help discourage immediate re-entry. This more costly option required that immigrants be flown to central and southern Mexico. "During the summer of 2004, the U.S. government pressured the Mexican government into accepting 'deep repatriation' of as many as 300 apprehended migrants per day to six cities in central and southern Mexico. Each of these 151 chartered flights cost U.S. taxpayers $50,000." Although this may seem to be working, nine out of ten of the immigrants interviewed by journalists after they landed stated that they "planned to re-enter the United States very soon".

Immigration enforcement

Please see main article, United States–Mexico barrier.

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.

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 (1,380 km) 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 2007 Congress approved a plan calling for more fencing along the Mexican border, with funds for approximately 700 miles (1,100 km) of new fencing. However, there is no assurance that if built, this new fence will reduce the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

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. This exemption would have authorized 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. 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.

Public Reaction

Locally mandated immigration policy

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.

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.

Public reaction to current immigration issues

The May 2006 New York Times/CBS News Poll, shows that 53 percent of American responded that “illegal immigrants mostly take the jobs Americans don’t want”. In another 2006 poll, the NBC/Wall Street Journal held in April, 61 percent of the U.S. population concluded that they would like illegal immigrants to stay within the United States if they “could pass a security check and pay taxes”. Showing that the actual majority of the population would rather have Mexican immigrants in the country as long as they abide by the taxation laws, and provide service that American citizens do not provide. However, in a third opinion poll by Zogby International in 2005, voters were also asked, "Do you support or oppose the Bush administration's proposal to give millions of illegal aliens guest worker status and the opportunity to become citizens?" Only 35% gave their support, and 56 percent said no. The same pole noted a huge majority, 81%, believes local and state police should help federal authorities enforce laws against illegal immigration.

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.Test3

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.

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" (because 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."

Deportation complications

Complications in deportation efforts ensue when parents are illegal immigrants and children are birthright citizens. Such was the case of Elvira Arellano, who was a refugee in a church. This is also the case in the instance of Sadia Umanzor, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, a central feature of a November 17, 2007 New York Times story. Umanzor is a fugitive from a 2006 deportation order. She was recently arrested, in anticipation of deportation. However, a judge postponed that deportation proceeding. The judge placed her in house arrest, citing the factor of a six-month old U.S.-born baby of Umanzor.

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."

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 emergence 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.

See also

• Immigration to the United States
• Immigration reduction
• Nativism (politics)
• Illegal alien
• Sanctuary city
• Minuteman Project
• 2006 United States immigration reform protests

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.
• 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
• Thomas J. Espenshade; "Unauthorized Immigration to the United States" Annual Review of Sociology. Volume: 21. 1995. pp 195+.
• Kennedy, John F. A Nation of Immigrants. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

External links

• Federation of American Scientists: Border Security: Fences Along the U.S. International Border (a report of the Congressional Research Service issued on January 13, 2005)
• University of California, San Diego: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: Immigration and Nationality Act, Title 8 Code of Federal Regulations
• Pew Hispanic Center: The State of American Public Opinion on Immigration in Spring 2006: A Review of Major Surveys
• A College Student's Research Paper in the Publics Opinion on Illegal Immigration in to the United States in Spring 2006