Illegal immigration to the United States

A warning sign at the international boundary between the United States and Canada in Point Roberts, Washington

Illegal immigration to the United States refers to the act of becoming an illegal immigrant. An illegal immigrant is someone residing in the U.S. in violation of immigration law.

Various unlawful immigration-related acts, depending on the circumstances, may be criminal and/or civil offenses.

The Illegal immigrant population of the United States is estimated to be about 12 million people. Pew Hispanic Center has estimated that 57% of illegal immigrants come from Mexico; 24% from the rest of Latin America and 19% from elsewhere.

Terminology

Legal definitions

An alien, as defined by the Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the State Department, is any person who is neither a citizen or a national of the United States,. An immigrant is a "permanent resident alien", which in turn is by various definitions either an alien admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident (according to the US CIS), or any alien in the United States who is not in a class of "nonimmigrant alien" such as diplomats, students within the United States to attend school, athletes attending athletic events, ship and aircraft crew members, and others in the United States on a temporary basis (according to the Immigration and Nationality Act).

Journalism

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.

As example of newspaper policy, the Seattle Times avoids referring to illegal aliens, but uses the terms illegal immigration, illegal immigrant, and sometimes undocumented, explaining that in their use, "Illegal does not mean criminal, it simply means unlawful, not authorized or sanctioned, against the rules".

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.

Profile and demographics

Main article: Illegal immigrant population of the United States

Who are illegal immigrants?

• "A high proportion of illegal immigrants are sojourners: they come to the United Stated for several years but eventually return to their home country."

• Most illegal immigrants live in families where the adults are undocumented, but the children are U.S.-born. As of June, 2005, an estimated 13.9 million people -- including 4.7 million children -- live in families in which the head of household or the spouse is an unauthorized immigrant.

• Illegal immigrants continue to outpace the number of legal immigrants -- a trend that's held steady since the 1990s. While the undocumented continue to concentrate in places with existing large communities of Hispanics, they are also increasingly settling throughout the rest of the country.

• Illegal immigrants arriving in recent years tend to have more education than those who've been in the country a decade or more. A quarter have at least some college education. Nonetheless, undocumented immigrants as a group are less educated than other sections of the U.S. population: 49 percent haven't completed high school, compared with 9 percent of native-born Americans and 25 percent of legal immigrants.

• Illegal immigrants can be found working in many sectors of the U.S. economy. According to National Public Radio, about 3 percent work in agriculture; 33 percent have jobs in service industries; and substantial numbers can be found in construction and related occupations (16 percent) and in production, installation and repair (17 percent). According to USA Today, about 4 percent work in farming; 21 percent have jobs in service industries; and substantial numbers can be found in construction and related occupations (19 percent) and in production, installation and repair (15 percent), with 12% in sales, 10% in management, and 8% in transportation.

• Illegal immigrants have lower incomes than both legal immigrants and native-born Americans, but earnings do increase somewhat the longer an individual is in the country.

• Illegal aliens include serial rapists who have been deported repeatedly for drug offenses, star ivy league students and Brain surgeons at John Hopkins , contributors to the 9/11 attacks, and soldiers killed in the Iraq war.

Becoming illegal immigrants

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. Their mode of violation breaks down as follows:

Category
Entered Legally with Inspection Non-Immigrant Visa Overstayers 4 to 5.5 Million Border Crossing Card Violators 250,000 to 500,000
Entered Illegally without Inspection Evaded the Immigration Inspectors and Border Patrol 6 to 7 Million

A border crossing card is a card that allows non-immigrants "to commute back and forth each week from Canada and Mexico". See NEXUS and SENTRI.

Border crossing

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. They move where they want in four-wheel-drive cars, ATVs, motorcycles, bicycles and their own feet."

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. 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.

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.

Entry by sea ports

In 1993, 283 Chinese immigrants attempted entry into the United States via a sea vessel. Ten of them arrived dead.

Visa overstay

A traveler is considered a "visa overstay" once he or she 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.

Visa overstays mostly enter with tourist or business visas

Percent of Illegal Immigrants who are Visa Overstayers

Year	Percent
1994	More than half
2006	45%

Fraudulent marriage

People have long used sham marriages as a way to enter the United States. One of the most prominent cases was that of Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who gained entry into the US as a student, but then married fraudulently to stay in the country, and even became a US citizen and went on to become an employee of the FBI and the CIA, before pleading guilty to conspiracy. Engaging in a bogus marriage went hi-tech with the case of a Russian woman and an American man arranging a marriage over the Internet.

Breakdown by state

As of 2006, California had 2,830,000 illegal immigrants, or 25% of the total.
Texas had 1,640,000 illegal immigrants, or 14% of the total.
Florida had 980,000 illegal immigrants, or 8% of the total.
Illinois had 550,000 illegal immigrants, or 5% of the total.
New York had 540,000 illegal immigrants, or 5% of the total.
Other top ten states for highest percentage of illegal immigrants include; Arizona, Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington.

Present-day countries of origin

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

Country of Origin	Percent of all illegal immigrants
Mexico	57%
Central America (and to a lesser extent, South America)	24%
Asia	9%
Europe and Canada	6%
Other	4%

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the countries of origin for the largest numbers of illegal immigrants are as follows:

For 2005

Country of Origin	Raw Number	Percent of Total	Percent Change 2000 to 2005
Mexico	5,970,000	57	28%
El Salvador	470,000	4	9%
Guatemala	370,000	4	28%
India	280,000	3	133%
China	230,000	2	21%

For 2006

Country of Origin	Raw Number	Percent of Total	Percent Change 2000 to 2005
Mexico	6,570,000	57	40%
El Salvador	510,000	4	19%
Guatemala	430,000	4	48%
Philippines	280,000	2	40
Honduras	280,000	2	75%
India	270,000	2	125%

The Urban Institute, a research group in Washington, D.C., estimates "between 65,000 and 75,000 undocumented Canadians currently live in the United States."

Mexico

The Pew Hispanic Center has estimated that 56% of illegal immigrants come from Mexico. Mexican immigrants will almost surely shrink over time...If high immigration continues...Mexico will run out of Mexicans."

Causes

Main article: Illegal immigration § causes

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."

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.

Poor fiscal management, NAFTA, and lack of competitiveness

The Mexican government failed to follow through on promises to the United States to invest billions of dollars in roads, schooling, sanitation, housing, and other infrastructure to accommodate new "maquiladoras" (border factories) that had been envisioned as a way to reduce illegal immigration as a part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). As a result few were built, and China was able to out-compete Mexico for manufacturing goods for the United States market. Rather than increasing as planned, the number of manufacturing workers in Mexico dropped from 4.1 million in 2000 to 3.5 million in 2004. Also, price pressure from more efficient United States corn producers and the elimination of tariffs under NAFTA caused the price of maize to fall 70% in Mexico between 1994 and 2001, and the number of farm jobs to decrease from 8.1 million in 1993 to 6.8 million in 2002.

Inequality of wealth

Mexico has the highest income per capita in Latin America, but the wealth is centralized in the hands of a minority. It had a gross domestic product (in terms of PPP) of more than US$1.3 trillion in 2007, and more billionaires than Switzerland (including Carlos Slim whom Time Magazine, ABC News, and CNN Money claim is the world's richest man and who owns 8% of the country's GDP). Yet according to the World Bank 17.6% of Mexico's population lives in "extreme" poverty, while 30.1% live in "moderated" poverty, for a total of 47.7%.

Participation of authorities

There it has been some accusations from U.S. groups that the Mexican government is collaborating to make illegal immigration to the United States easier:

• It plans to produce 70,000 maps marking main roads and water tanks for people wanting to cross illegally into the US. According to Mauricio Farah of Mexico's Human Rights Commission, "The only thing we are trying to do is warn them of the risks they face and where to get water, so they don't die," But Russ Knocke, a spokesman for US Homeland Security said maps would not improve safety for those trying to cross the border, "It is not helpful for anyone, no matter how well intended they might be, to produce road maps that lead aliens into the desolate and dangerous areas along the border, and potentially invite criminal activity, human exploitation and personal risk,""In response to the growing concern over these immigrant deaths, the INS [Immigrantion and Naturalization Service] launched "Operation Lifesaver" ...using patrol flights and search-and-rescue missions to find migrants in distress."

• The Yucatan government (a state of Mexico) also produces educational materials (a handbook and DVD) about the risks and implications of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. According to some groups, this guide tells immigrants where to find health care, how to get their kids into U.S. schools and how to send money home. Sara Zapata Mijares of the Los Angeles Yacatecan Club and officials in Yucatan say illegal immigration is a reality and the guide is a necessity to save lives. Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform says, "This is really the way they keep their corrupt system afloat, by sending their excess workers to the United States and getting billions of dollars in remittances every year ... so for them this is a worthwhile investment".

• The Mexican government distributes a comic book which warns illegal immigrants about illegal passing across the border. That comic book recommends to illegal immigrants, once they've safely crossed the border, "Don't call attention to yourself. ... Avoid loud parties. ... Don't become involved in fights." The Mexican government defends the guide as an attempt to save lives. "It's kind of like illegal immigration for dummies," said the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, Mark Krikorian. "Promoting safe illegal immigration is not the same as arguing against it." However, on the last page of the comic book, it is clearly stated the Mexican government doesn't promote illegal crossing at all and only encourage visits to the U.S. with all required documentation.

Sending wages back

In 2003, then-President of Mexico, Vicente Fox stated that remittances "are our biggest source of foreign income, bigger than oil, tourism or foreign investment" and that "the money transfers grew after Mexican consulates started giving identity cards to their citizens in the United States." He stated that money sent from Mexican workers in the United States to their families back home reached a record $12 billion.. Two years later, in 2005, the World Bank stated that Mexico was receiving $18.1 billion in remittances and that it ranked third (behind only India and China) among the countries receiving the greatest amount of remittances.

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. (The Index ranks the U.S. in the 20th place. Lower ranking indicates less corruption.) According to Global Integrity's 2006 Mexico Country Report, corruption costs the Mexican economy as much as $60 billion per 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/pull factors

Family reunification

According to demographer Jeffery Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center, the flow of Mexicans to the U. S. has produced a "network effect" - furthering immigration as Mexicans moved to join relatives already in the U.S. According to Ramah McKay of the Migration Policy Institute, many analysts believe that the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. could be reduced significantly by alleviating the backlog by processing increased numbers of applicants each year and raising the cap on the first and second preference categories for family reunification.

Availability of jobs

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

Matrícula Consular identification cards

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

Legal issues

Immigration laws

Main article: United States nationality law

[of United States immigration laws]

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.

Under Paragraph (a), Title 8, Section 1325 of the U.S. Code, "Improper Entry By Alien", any citizen of any country other than the United States who

• Enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers;
• Eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers; or
• Attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact.

shall for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. Title 18 is crimes and criminal offenses. Additional civil fines may be imposed at the discretion of immigration judges, but civil fines do not negate the criminal sanctions or nature of the offense.

Persons in the United States illegally may be fined and imprisoned for up to 6 months. Repeat offenses can bring up to two years in prison. In addition, 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. Additional fines and sanctions include:

• At least $50 but no more than $250.
• Twice the amount on the first charge for repeated civil offenses.

Under U.S. Code Title 8 Section 1253, Penalties related to removal, any alien against who is either

• inadmissable,
• present in violation of law
• in violation of nonimmigrant status or condition of entry
• has had his conditional permanent residence terminated
• is guilty of smuggling
• is guilty of marriage fraud
• has not received a waiver for inadmissability

and who

• willfully fails or refuses to depart from the United States within a period of 90 days from the date of the final order of removal under administrative processes, or if judicial review is had, then from the date of the final order of the court
• willfully fails or refuses to make timely application in good faith for travel or other documents necessary to the alien's departure
• connives or conspires, or takes any other action, designed to prevent or hamper or with the purpose of preventing or hampering the alien's departure pursuant to such, or
• willfully fails or refuses to present himself or herself for removal at the time and place required by the Attorney General pursuant to such order

shall be fined under title 18,Crimes and Criminal Offenses, or imprisoned for not more than four years (or ten years if the alien has been found guilty of smuggling, other criminal behavior, failure to register falsification of documents, or criminal behavior which creates a security risk) or both. In addition, they may receive civil penalties under U.S. Code Title 8 Section 1324d, Civil penalties for failure to depart.

Additional offenses include:

• Marriage Fraud that is penalized by no more than 5 years in prison and or $250,000.
• Immigration-related entrepreneurship fraud, which can be fined and also penalized for no more than 5 years in prison.

Prevention

Main article: United States–Mexico barrier

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 expense for illegal immigrants has also increased, encouraging them to stay longer to recoup the cost.

Apprehension

US ICE, USBP, and CBP enforce the INA*, and to some extent the United States military, local law enforcement and other local agencies, and private citizens and citizen groups defend the border. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)* USCIS is not an enforcement agency. They do not enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act. They are a service oriented agency only.

At border

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 aliens who enter the United States without authorization from the government and outside the designated ports of entry.

In December 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to build a separation barrier along parts of the border not already protected by 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.

"If immigrants, whether legal or illegal, are apprehended entering the US while committing a crime, they are usually charged under federal statues and, if convicted, are sent to federal prisons."

At workplace

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.

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 employers of illegal immigrants have included:

• Wal-Mart. In 2005 Wal-Mart agreed to pay $11 million to settle a federal investigation that found hundreds of illegal immigrants were hired by Wal-Mart's cleaning contractors.

• 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.

• Tyson Foods. This company 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.

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.

After overstaying visa

"Although most of the public attention has been on clandestine crossings on the land border with Mexico, they account for about 60% of illegal immigrants. The rest enter legally and then overstay...Restricting the growth of the illegal immigrant population, therefore, calls also for programs that address this group of would-be residents."

Deportation

Complications

Complications in deportation efforts ensue when parents are illegal immigrants but their children are birthright citizens. Such was the case of Mexican Elvira Arellano, who sought sanctuary at a Chicago-area church in an effort to impede immigration authorities from separating her and her eight year old, U.S.-born son. This is also the case in the instance of Sadia Umanzor, an illegal immigrant from Honduras and the central figure of a November 17, 2007, New York Times story. Umanzor was 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 her six-month old U.S.-born baby as the factor.

Mass Deportation

According to the Washington Post, the liberal Washington think tank, Center for American Progress puts the cost of forcibly removing most the nation's estimated 10 million illegal immigrants at $41 billion a year. Advocates for tougher enforcement of immigration laws did not dispute the study's figures but disputed its assumptions about how law enforcement would work. The study assumed that tougher enforcement would induce 10 percent to 20 percent of undocumented residents in the United States to leave voluntarily. But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies argued that as many as half would leave voluntarily. He stated, "We do need to know what enforcement costs, but [the study] is a cartoon version of how enforcement would work." When the United States last deported a sizable number of illegal immigrants many more opted to return to Mexico.

Kennedy jurisprudence

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 16, 2008, per ponented Justice Kennedy ruled (5-4) "that someone who is here illegally may withdraw his voluntarily agreement to depart and continue to try to get approval to remain in the United States." The lawsuit is about two seemingly contradictory provisions of immigration law. One prevents deportation by voluntary departure from the country. The other section allows immigrants who are here illegally but whose circumstances changed to build their case to immigration officials, and must remain in the US. In the case, Samson Dada, a Nigerian citizen, overstayed beyond the expiration of his tourist visa in 1998. Immigration authorities ordered him to leave the country as he agreed to leave voluntarily, to allow his legal re-entry than if he had been deported.

Police and military involvement

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.

In 1997, Marines shot and killed 18 year old U.S. citizen Esequiel Hernández Jr while on a mission to interdict smuggling and illegal immigration near the border community of Redford, Texas. The soldiers observed the high school student from concealment while he was tending his family's goats in the vicinity of their ranch. But at one point, Hernandez raised his .22-caliber rifle and fired shots in the direction of the concealed soldiers. He was subsequently tracked for 20 minutes then 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.

Local enforcement

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.

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. These law have met with challenges as reported elsewhere in this article.

The Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office has argued that since the continued presense of illegal aliens in the United States incurs a civil penalty, that the presence of any undocumented person in the United States is a civil offense, not a criminal offense (the United States code identifies illegal immigration as both a criminal and civil offense). Therefore, this Sheriff's office claims that the removal of an illegal alien from the United States is an administrative process not a criminal process.

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.

Community-based enforcement

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 Indian reservations along the US/Mexico border are overwhelmed with illegal aliens passing through their lands, leaving debris and waste, as well as committing crimes on tribal lands. They have asked the US Government to stop the flood of illegal aliens as they are unable to do so.

The No More Deaths organization offers food, water, and medical aid to migrants 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.

Impacts

Economic

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

Poverty

Seperate research by both George Borjas, Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard University and Paul Samuelson, Nobel prize-winning economist from MIT has shown that illegal immigration had a small effect on reducing the economic status of U.S. poor but little to postive effect on others.

Impact on Black Americans

Research by George J. Borjas (Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at Harvard University), Jeffrey Grogger (the Irving Harris Professor in Urban Policy in the Harris School at the University of Chicago), and Gordon H. Hanson (the Director of the Center on Pacific Economies and Professor of Economics at UCSD) found that a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 4.0 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 3.5 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost one percent.

Social Security

Undocumented workers are estimated to pay in about $7 billion per year into Social Security. However, the cost of supporting the amount of illegal immigrants currently in the country is much higher and overshadows the amount they pay into Social Security.

Social services

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. reviewed 29 reports published over 15 years to evaluate the impact of unauthorized immigrants on the budgets of state and local governments. It found the following:

• State and local governments incur costs for providing services to unauthorized immigrants and have limited options for avoiding or minimizing those costs
• The amount that state and local governments spend on services for unauthorized immigrants represents a small percentage of the total amount spent by those governments to provide such services to residents in their jurisdictions
• The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants
• Federal aid programs offer resources to state and local governments that provide services to unauthorized immigrants, but those funds do not fully cover the costs incurred by those governments.

Health care

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.

Education

Using the U.S. INS statistics on how many illegal immigrants are residing in each country and the U.S. Dept of Education's current expenditure per pupil by state, the estimated cost of educating illegal alien students and U.S.-Born Children of Illegal Aliens in 2004 was $28,607,800,000.

Law enforcement costs

Apprehension & deportation

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." "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."

Crimes committed by illegal immigrants

According to Edmonton and Smith in The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration , "it is difficult to draw any strong conclusions on the association between immigration and crime". A study done by the Immigration Policy Center showed that immigrants and especially illegal immigrants are five times less likely to be in prison than American citizens, it is thought that the fear of deportations serves as an incentive to be more law abiding.. Also, cities with large immigrant populations showed larger reductions in property and violent crime than cities without large immigrant populations. . Almost all of what is know about immigration and crime is from information on those in prison. But not all crimes are detected, and many perpetrators are never apprehended. Incarceration rates do not necessarily reflect differences in current crime rates. Some reasons these researchers offer are

• For many minor crimes, especially crimes involving juveniles, those who are apprehended are not arrested. Only a fraction of those who are arrested are ever brought to the courts for disposition

• Immigrants may be apprehended by federal, state, or local authorities for criminal acts, but many illegal immigrants are apprehended by the Border Patrol and other enforcement officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Many illegal immigrants who are apprehended by Border Patrol agents are voluntarily returned to their home countries and are not ordinarily tabulated in national crime statistics. If immigrants, whether illegal or legal, are apprehended entering the United States while committing a crime, they are usually charged under federal statutes and, if convicted, are sent to federal prisons. Throughout this entire process, immigrants may have a chance of deportation, or of sentencing that is different from that for a native-born person.

• Except data on noncitizens in the federal criminal justice system, we lack comprehensive information on whether arrested or jailed immigrants are illegal immigrants, nonimmigrants, or legal immigrants. Such information can be difficult to collect because immigrants may have a reason to provide false statements (if they reply that they are an illegal immigrant, they can be deported, for instance). And the verification of these data is troublesome because it requires matching INS records with individuals who often lack documentation or present false documents.

• Noncitizens may have had fewer years residing in the United States than citizens, and thus less time in which to commit crimes and be apprehended. .

In 1999, law enforcement activities involving unauthorized immigrants in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas cost a combined total of more than $108 million. This cost did not include activities related to border enforcement. In San Diego County, the expense (over $50 million) was nine percent of the total county's budget for law enforcement that year.

Despite the problems in examining illegal alien crime rate by incarceration data that Edmonston and Smith point out, some studies have attempted to do exactly that - study illegal alien crime rate by incarceration data. One of these studies, by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that, "cities with large immigrant populations showed larger reductions in property and violent crime than cities without large immigrant populations", but adds, "As with most studies, we do not have ideal data. This lack of data restricts the questions we will be able to answer. In particular, we cannot focus on the undocumented population explicitly".

A study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has found that while property-related crime rates have not been affected by increased immigration (both legal and illegal), border counties there is a significant positive correlation between illegal immigration and violent crime.

Another study, by the immigrant-advocacy group, Immigration Policy Center, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, found that large increases in illegal immigration do not result in a rise in crime

Identity theft

Identity theft is associated with illegal immigrants who use social security numbers that do not belong to them, in order to obtain fake work documentation.

Drug smuggling

According to proceedings from a 1997 meeting of 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."

Gang violence

As of 2005, Operation Community Shield had detained nearly 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."

Environment

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, Arizona 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."

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. The fires destroyed 68,413 acres (276.86 km²) and cost taxpayers $5.1 million to fight.

National security

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.

Harm to illegal immigrants

There are significant dangers associated with illegal immigration including potential death when crossing the border. Since the implementation of Operation Gatekeeper immigrants have chosen more dangerous routes to get into the country. Most deaths are due to dehydration caused by the intense heats of the Arizona desert and the treacherous desert roads. In 2005 the death toll was over 450 a year. Deaths also occur while resisting arrest. According to the US Border Agency, there were 987 assaults on US Border Agents in 2008 and there were a total of 12 people killed by agents in 2007 and 2008.

Slavery

Indian, Russian, Thai, and Chinese women have been reported brought to the United States under false pretenses to be then used as sex slaves. “As many as 50,000 people are illicitly trafficked into the United States annually, according to a 1999 CIA study. Once here, they're forced to work as prostitutes, sweatshop laborers, farmhands, and servants in private homes.” US authorities call it “a modern form of slavery.”

Prostitution

The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women has reported scores of cases where women were forced to prostitute themselves. “Trafficking in women plagues the United States as much as it does underdeveloped nations. Organized prostitution networks have migrated from metropolitan areas to small cities and suburbs. Women trafficked to the United States have been forced to have sex with 400-500 men to pay off $40,000 in debt for their passage.” At least 45 thousand Central American children attempt to illegally immigrate to the United States every year and many of them finish in brothels as sex slaves, according to Manuel Capellin, director in Honduras of the humanitarian organization House Alliance.

Death

Death by exposure has been reported in the deserts, particularly during the hot summer season. “Exposure to the elements” encompasses hypothermia, dehydration, heat strokes, drowning, and suffocation. Also, illegal immigrants may die or be injured when they attempt to avoid law enforcement. Martinez, points out that engaging in high speed pursuits while attempting to escape arrest can lead to death.

Public opinion

Importance of the issue

Polls by the LA Times/Bloomberg, CBS News/New York Times, and USA Today/Gallup show that most Americans consider the issue of illegal immigration a serious one. In both the CBS News/New York Times Poll and the LA Times/Bloomberg Poll, close to 2 out of 3 respondents identified the issue as very serious or important.

Economic effects

US economy

Polls by NBC, ABC, CBS/New York Times, and the LA Times/Bloomberg consistently show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the overall impact of illegal immigration is one of harming the US economy. But in the same CBS News/New York Times poll, when asked "Do you think illegal immigrants coming to this country today take jobs away from American citizens, or do they mostly take jobs Americans don't want?" by a ratio of 2-to-1 the answer was "Take Unwanted Jobs".

Jobs

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.

A May 2006 New York Times/CBS News Poll shows that 53 percent of Americans feel that “illegal immigrants mostly take the jobs Americans don’t want”. A related poll was also performed by NBC/Wall Street Journal on April 21-24, 2006. In this poll, when asked " If you had to make a choice, would you favor deporting immigrants in America who are not legal citizens and do not have work permits, or would you favor allowing these immigrants to stay in America as long as they pass a security check, meet certain conditions, and pay taxes?", 61 percent of the U.S. population responded "Allow to stay." .

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 poll noted a huge majority, 81%, believes local and state police should help federal authorities enforce laws against illegal immigration.

Enforcement

71% of respondents in a Quinnipiac University Poll believe that enforcement of immigration laws will require additional measures beyond a border fence, with 65% of respondents supporting employer fines. 77% of respondents to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll support employer fines.. In a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicates 57% strongly favor employer fines and 17% somewhat favor them, while 44% strongly favor increased border security and 19% strongly oppose. In a CBS News/New York Times poll, 69% of Americans favor prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants, but only 33% favor deporting those who have lived and worked in the U.S> for at least two years.

Most polls find that the majority of Americans support either a pathway to citizenship or allowing illegals to stay on as guest workers. For example, Manhattan Institute reported that 78% of likely Republican voters favor a proposal combining increased border security, tougher penalties for employers who hire illegal workers, and allowing illegal aliens to register for a temporary worker program that includes a path to citizenship. Respondents favored the program over a deportation and enforcement-only plan 58% to 33%." The Quinnipiac poll reports that 65% of adults support a guest worker program for illegals.

Response of government

An ABC News Poll, indicates that most respondents (67%) believe the United States is not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from coming into the country and, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll most Americans believe that US immigration policy needs either fundamental changes (41%) or to be completely rebuilt(49%).

Federal response

In choosing a presidential candidate, most respondents to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll consider his or her stand on illegal immigration to be either an important (66%) or the most important(15%) issue, while a clear minority consider it to be either not too important(16%) or not important at all(2%).

Most respondents (51%) would be upset if Congress does not pass an immigration bill while significantly fewer (22%) would be pleased.

But a Chicago Tribune Super Tuesday exit poll shows that "Experts following the immigration debate claim Republicans had hoped illegal immigration would become a wedge issue between the two parties in the 2008 presidential election." And the report adds, "Voters across the country overwhelmingly and consistently have named the economy as their number one issue, in exit poll data from Super Tuesday and subsequent primaries..."

State and local response

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, most respondents (55%) believe state or local police forces should arrest illegal immigrants they encounter who have not broken any state or local laws. However, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll. Nov. 30-Dec. 3, 2007 reported that arrests and deportations were the least important, with border security, sanctions against employers, path to citizenship, and guest worker program heading the list .

The previously cited CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll poll indicates that most respondents (76%) are against state governments issues driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. A poll by the Field Institute found that "[California] residents are very much opposed (62% to 35%) to granting undocumented immigrants who do not have legal status in this country the right to obtain a California driver’s license. However, opinion is more divided (49% to 48%) about a plan to issue a different kind of driver’s license that would allow these immigrants to drive but would also identify them as not having legal status."

Further, most respondents (63%) in a Quinnipiac University poll support local laws passed by communities to fine businesses that hire illegal immigrants while only 33% oppose it.

See also

• Illegal immigration
• Immigration to the United States
• Operation Wetback
• Immigration reduction
• Nativism (politics)
• Sanctuary city
• Mexica Movement
• Mexican Repatriation
• 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

• Border Stories- a website devoted to stories from both sides of the U.S. Mexico Border
• Mexico Trucker - A website devoted to truthfully tackling the issues and teaching the truth about Mexico, the society and the culture
• 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
• Matias Documentary film about the death of an illegal immigrant, by Claudine LoMonaco and Mary Spicuzza
• Death at US-Mexico border reflects immigration tensions Guardian Co UK