Illegal Immigration

Armando Jimenez

Spanish 2

4/17/06

Illegal Immigration Issue

Each year the Border Patrol is making more than a million apprehensions of people who flagrantly violate our nation's laws by unlawfully crossing U.S. borders to work and to receive publicly-funded services, often with the aid of fraudulent documents. Such entry is a misdemeanor and, if repeated, becomes punishable as a felony. Over eight million illegal immigrants live in the United States. Illegal immigration causes an enormous drain on public funds. The seminal study of the costs of immigration by the National Academy of Sciences found that the taxes paid by immigrants do not cover the cost of services received by them. We cannot provide high quality education, health care, and retirement security for our own people if we continue to bring in endless numbers of poor, unskilled immigrants. The Border Patrol plays a crucial role in combating illegal immigration, but illegal immigration cannot be controlled solely at the border. About half of the illegal alien population is comprised of visa overstates--people who entered the country legally, but became illegal aliens by their failure to leave the U.S. upon expiration of their visa. Once entry occurs, there is little chance of detection and virtually no chance of deportation, except for convicted criminals. The three major components of immigration control--deterrence, apprehension and removal--need to be strengthened by Congress and the Executive Branch if effective control is ever to be reestablished. Controlling illegal immigration requires a balanced approach with a full range of enforcement improvements that go far beyond the border. These include many procedural reforms, beefed up investigation capacity, asylum reform, and documents improvements, major improvements in INS detention and deportation procedures, limitations on judicial review, improved intelligence capacity, greatly improved state/federal cooperation, and added resources. Effective control and management of the laws against illegal immigration require adequate resources. But those costs will be more than offset by savings to states, counties, communities, and school districts across the nation. I think that the illegal immigration issue is alright because the people come over to our states and do work that nobody