Enforcement Gone Bad - NYTimes

[getthefacts]

The failures of the immigration system are many and severe, but the main problem is not that the country is catching too few undocumented immigrants. It is catching too many. Since the early 1990s, you could write the federal government’s immigration strategy on a cardboard sign: Deport Them All.

A report last week from the Pew Hispanic Center laid bare some striking results of that campaign. It found that Latinos now make up 40 percent of those sentenced in federal courts, even though they are only about 13 percent of the adult population. They accounted for one-third of federal prison inmates in 2007.

The numbers might suggest we are besieged by immigrant criminals. But of all the noncitizen Latinos sentenced last year, the vast majority — 81 percent — were convicted for unlawfully entering or remaining in the country, neither of which is a criminal offense.

The country is filling the federal courts and prisons with nonviolent offenders. It is diverting immense law-enforcement resources from pursuing serious criminals — violent thugs, financial scammers — to an immense, self-defeating campaign to hunt down ... workers.

The Pew report follows news this month that even as a federal program to hunt immigrant fugitives saw its budget soar — to $218 million last year from $9 million in 2003 — its mission went astray. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, of the 72,000 people arrested through last February, 73 percent had no criminal record. Border Patrol agents in California and Maryland, meanwhile, tell of pressure to arrest workers at day-labor corners and convenience stores to meet quotas.

The country needs to control its borders. It needs to rebuild an effective immigration system and thwart employers who cheat it. It needs to bring the undocumented forward and make citizen taxpayers of them.

For all the billions spent on fences, raids, patrols and prisons, the number of illegal immigrants has steadily grown to about 12 million last year from four million in 1992. So has the need to overhaul the many parts of a festering, broken system: to clear out backlogs in legal immigration, to rescue families from limbo, to throw sunlight on the shadow economy, to deter unlawful hiring, to replace chaos with lawfulness and order. All those priorities have languished in the deportation era.


Yeah, I'm sure we are making this country safer because those 'illegals' are in jail now... What a waste of taxpayer money

[Lost in CT]

1. Honestly I wish they would have more raids on hotels and construction sites around here.

I also think fines and jail time for ALL employers so be enforced.

Picking up a migrant in your car should be no different than picking up a hooker.

You should have your car impounded and have your face plastered on Public Access.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. "I also think fines and jail time for ALL employers so be enforced."

But that would solve the problem. We've got a prison industry to protect, pinko.

[Lost in CT]

5. Why would the prison industry care if it's Roberto the migrant or Bob the homeowner?

Don't get me wrong I hate for profit prisons. But I think enforcement of the crime of hiring illegal day labor would go a long way.

Paying employment taxes shouldn't just be for Cabinet appointees anymore.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. I agree with you. I was being sarcastic.

:)

[Lost in CT]

8. Ahhh

:hi:

[getthefacts]

4. I honestly don't believe more raids are the solution

A mandatory employment verification program perhaps. But before, we should address the millions of people living in the shadows of society and bring them into legal status. We created the problem. We should fix it.

[Lost in CT]

6. Reagan created this problem with the last amnesty that encouraged a whole new generation to emigrate

If our employment rate was 4% and wage growth matched inflation no-one would care.

But wage growth is stagnant or negative in many industries as a direct result of illegal workers.

[getthefacts]

11. I have a different view

I think the current wave was a direct consequence of our economic well being during the 90s. Nobody cared about proper documentation then, nobody cared about the borders, we needed people to fill up the many job vacancies and we took them. Instead of creating a system to let those immigrate legally, we created more red tape in 1996 during the Clinton administration's Immigration Act.
Now we want to say to people who have been here for the past ten years living as Americans, hey, thanks for your help during the boom, now go back home. What we don't realize is that this is their home now.
Immigration has been a part of our history since its inception. 'Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...' I don't think we can attribute the desire of millions of people to immigrate here to Reagan. This is part of who we are. Those who stood against the Irish, the Italian, the Jewish people, were all on the wrong side of history. This time is not different.

[Lost in CT]

12. I think your view has a lot of merit. nt

[depakid]

13. Wasn't Reagan or amnesty

The problem was amplified by NAFTA -which dumped cheap goods on Mexican markets (driving farmers out of business) and drastically lowered urban wages.

The Clinton administration also made matters worse through operation gtekeeper- which attempted to clamp down on the border. This made it much harder to cross the border- and paradoxically increased the number of undocumented workers who formerly came and went.

Rather than keep risking repeated crossings- they then stayed rather than work in the states seasonally and then return. Not only did they stay, they brought their extended families.

We can blame Reagan for a lot of things- but migration and amnesty aren't among them.

[w4rma]

2. New regulations need to be passed to make it easier for businesses to identify illegals and then

the businesses that get caught with illegals need to be prosecuted, first. That will eliminate the incentive to cross the border for work and it will eliminate the ability of these businesses to force down wages by hiring illegally.

[Enthusiast]

9. We need to send some bankers

and speculators to prison.

[getthefacts]

10. Agree wholeheartedly.