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Illegal immigration to the United States

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Illegal immigration to the United States (Illegal+U.S. immigration) refers to the migration of people across the national borders of the United States, in violation of U.S. nationality law.

The terms illegal alien, illegal immigrant, undocumented alien, undocumented immigrant,, and undocumented worker, are common terms used to refer to U.S. residents without either U.S. citizenship or a valid immigration status. Terms using the designation of "illegal" or "alien" may carry a pejorative connotation when referring to certain groups of non-citizens.1

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Illegal Immigrants Info
Education Profile Number Percent
Less then 12 yr. 6,700,000 67.0%
High School 3,000,000 30.0%
College Graduate 300,000 3.0%
Total Illegal Pop. 12,000,000 Jan 2006
Total Working 7,500,000
Criminals Caught 202,842 2004
Criminals Deported 88,895 2004
Caught and Released 1,010,000+ 2005
Illegal Immigrants/year 1,500,000+ Total
Voluntary returns/year - 200,000+ 2005
Change of Status/year - 600,000+ 2005
Net Increase/year 700,000+ Illegal Immigrants
Source: Pew Hispanic Data Estimates[link]
A Description of the Immigrant Population [link]

Contents

Methods used to enter the U.S. illegally

Overview

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Visa & BCC Overstayers
Country Estimate
[2004]

Mexico 300,000
Canada 100,000
India 25,000
Philippines 21,700
Poland 18,500
Colombia 18,100
South Korea 17,500
Guatemala 12,100
China 11,400
Honduras 11,300
El Salvador 10,700
Ecuador 10,400
Dominican Republic 10,300
Bahamas 9,600
Haiti 9,100
UnitedKingdom 8,600
Israel 8,000
Jamaica 7,500
China,PRC 7,100
Italy 6,100
Russia 5,800
France 5,400
Hong Kong 4,600
Trinidad and Tobago 3,900
Japan 3,700
Argentina 3,400
Peru 2,900
Ireland 2,800
Panama 2,200
Chile 2,100
Netherlands 2,100
SouthAfrica 2,100
Thailand 2,100
CostaRica 2,000
Singapore 1,900
Turkey 1,800
Venezuela 1,700
Portugal 1,500
Taiwan 1,500
Germany 1,300
Sweden 1,000
Brazil 900
Denmark 800
Switzerland 700
Australia 500
Belgium 400
Norway 400
New Zealand 300
Spain 300
NetherlandsAntilles 200
Austria 100
Finland 100
Total 683,500
Source: Pew Hispanic Data sheet[link] and
[link] Office of Travel and Tourism Industries
GAO estimates
Roughly 60% of the people classified as illegally immigrating are undocumented aliens and 40% are nonimmigrant overstayers. An "undocumented alien" is typically a foreign national that does not possess a valid passport and/or a valid U.S. visa. An "overstay" is typically a foreign national in possession of a tourist visa, which only permits that individual to visit the United States as a tourist, and strictly prohibits the individual from working in the United States. The maximum length of stay in the United States for an individual in possession of a tourist visa is normally six months. Other "overstays" include individuals with once-valid U.S. work visas or permanent resident (green cards) which have expired.

Crossing the border without a valid passport and U.S. visa is a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for subsequent violations. The first offense is punishable only by deportation, and in practice future offenses are only punishable by deportation and a ban on entering the U.S. legally in the future. Immigrants who are caught illegally trespassing U.S. territory are fingerprinted and immediately returned, unless they are a repeat offender, in which case they may be criminally prosecuted. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) made the hiring of an illegal alien an offense for the first time. H.R. 4437 would have made the first offense of crossing the border illegally a felony.

Illegal Border Crossing

Approximately 40-60% of people entering illegally into the United States crossed a border without having a valid passport and visa inspected by an immigration officer at a Port of Entry (POE). [link][link] Methods of crossing the border include utilizing underground routes, hiding in vehicles, wading or swimming across the Rio Grande River, breaking through security fences, hanging on to trains, or walking on foot (mostly using the cover of night) through remote areas of the border. In some areas like the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and new Mexico these illegal methods are often dangerous.#redirect Would-be immigrants suffocate in shipping containers, boxcars, and trucks, sink in unseaworthy vessels, die of dehydration or exposure during long walks without water.#redirect Sometimes migrants are abandoned by their human traffickers if there are difficulties, often dying of thirst, suffocation or heat prostation in the process. Others may be victims of intentional killing, rape or robbery by their often unscrupulous "coyote" guides.#redirect This extensive illegal immigrant traffic through inhospitable deserts in Arizona and New Mexico has resulted in hundreds of illegal immigrants dying as well as extensive ecological damage to the fragile desert environment and property owners along the border. One estimate is that between 1998 and 2004 there were 1,954 immigrant deaths in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.#redirect The higher crime rates associated with all this traffic has led to extensive efforts on the part of individual sheriffs and communities trying to prevent further damage to their property and communities.#redirect

For a period of time in the 1990s 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. Sher Zieve claims this was very effective but temporary as the illegal traffic resumed as soon as the military withdrew.[link]. After the September 11, 2001 attacks the United States looked at the feasability of placing soldiers along the U.S.-Mexico border as a security measure. #redirect .

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Each state in the United States has a National Guard organization that could, in principal, be placed on the border at a state governor's discretion to assist with border security; many states also have a backup to the National Gurard called the State Defense Force that could, in an emergency, also be activated for this purpose. Arizona and New Mexico have currently declared the counties that border Mexico to be under serious duress caused by uncontrolled illegal immigrant traffic, thereby enabling governors to deploy National Guardsmen to the international border. Arizona has exercised this option but New Mexico has not.

It is estimated that over a million people cross the border illegally each year, most of whom are of Mexican origin. The rest are labeled "Other Than Mexicans" (OTM), of whom a majority are Central Americans. Border Patrol activity is concentrated around big border cities such as San Diego and El Paso which already have separation barriers.#redirect

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.
Enlarge
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.

Beach at Border Field State Park near San Ysidro, California. (Tire tracks from Border Patrol jeeps are visible on the beach.)
Enlarge
Beach at Border Field State Park near San Ysidro, California. (Tire tracks from Border Patrol jeeps are visible on the beach.)

In December, 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to build a separation barrier along parts of the border not already protected by a separation barriers. A later vote in the United States Senate on May 17, 2006 included a plan to blockade 860 miles of the border with vehicle barriers and triple-layer fencing along with granting amnesty to the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and roughly doubling legal immigration. Bay Buchanan, head of Team America, an immigration reduction political action committee, estimated that it would take less than six months to build a 2,000 mile, triple-layer fence and would cost roughly $1.5 - 3 billion. On the same show, Buchanan claimed that the 1990s-era border security program Operation Gatekeeper cut down unauthorized immigration by 90%.

The borders
United States–Mexico border

United States-Canada border

From countries with no visa agreements
Immigrants from nations that do not have automatic visa agreements, or who would not otherwise qualify for a visa, sometimes cross the borders illegally. Individuals from North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Syria, Sudan, and Iran are required to submit to strict questioning from U.S. officials before their applications are processed. Their applications take longer to process than those for visitors and immigrants from other countries. [link]

Often, these individuals enter from a land border using falsified documentation from a third country. For instance, Ahmed Ressam, a member of Al Qaeda, originally from Algeria, entered Canada with a falsified French passport. Once in Canada, he procured a false Canadian passport to enter the United States. In the case of Cuba, the U.S. offers political asylum to many Cubans, but they first must reach U.S. soil. [link]

Visa or Border Crossing Card Overstayers

A visa overstayer is someone who has entered the United States legally and then overstayed or violated his or her visa or Border Crossing Card (BCC) conditions. Fradualent and forged visa and BCC passes are included in this category. An estimated average 40-60% of all illegal immigrants to the U.S. entered this way. The number of overstayers varies considerably from country to country depending on the location of the country, the cultural, political, social and economic conditions in a given country in a given time. The PEW Hispanic institute reported [link] that the INS had developed statistics that showed 3.2% of all Central and South America visas are overstayed, 1.7% of all Mexican visa holders violate their visas by overstaying and Europeans on average 0.5% overstay their visa. A U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) study gives estimates for all countries showing that China, India, Korea, and the Philippines had violation rates as high as 8%.[link] In general the poorer the country they came from the more likely the foreign visitor was to violate their visa.

Two of the terrorists behind the September 11, 2001 attacks were visa overstayers. The federal government historically has not checked up on visa holders once they are in the country. Visa overstayers tend to be more educated and be better off financially than those who crossed the border illegally. [link] One common means of visa overstaying is coming to the U.S. on a student visa and not going to school or not leaving the country after finishing school. [link]

Profile Summaries of Illegal Immigrants

Profile Summaries of Illegal Immigrants January 2006
Job Category Illegal
Immigrant 		Native -1
8+ yr sch. 		Average
Native 		# Illegal
Immigrant 		# Native
8+ yr sch. 		# Average
Native
Managerial / Self Employed 1.50% 5.9% 32.2% 108,000 758,000 33,810,000
Retail / Business 4.90% 15.2% 29.2% 352,800 1,952,700 30,660,000
Service Private 1.20% 1.0% 0.3% 86,400 128,500 315,000
Farm Mgr 1.60% 1.6% 1.1% 115,200 205,600 1,155,000
Service Retail 18.20% 20.3% 10.3% 1,310,400 2,607,900 10,815,000
Farming -2 17.50% 2.9% 1.0% 1,260,000 372,600 1,050,000
Production 22.0% 20.1% 11.9% 1,584,000 2,582,200 12,495,000
Construction 33.0% 33.1% 14.0% 2,376,000 4,252,400 14,700,000
Total # Working 7,500,000 12,847,000 108,000,000
Labor rate of Participation -3 82% 46.3% 66.30%
Unemployment Rate 7.0% 7.0% 4.10%
Country Profile Sex / age Profile Worker profile
Mexican 6,840,000 57% men 18-39 5,300,000 43.7% 4,500,000 80%
Latin & Central Amer. 3,000,000 25% women 18-39 3,500,000 29.1% 2,000,000 60%
Asia 1,080,000 9% more than 40 1,300,000 10.7% 1,000,000 80%
Europe + Canada 720,000 6% less than 18 2,040,000 17.0% 200,000 10%
Rest of World 480,000 4% Born / yr. 300,000
Totals Jan 2006 12,100,000 Total Pop. 12,400,000 Total Working 7,500,000
Net Rate of Increase / year 700,000+ Illegal Immigrants See Note 7
Net Rate of Increase / Month 60,000+ Illegal Immigrants

  1. Native Population that most closely matches Illegal immigrant population is workers that never graduated from high school.
  2. Farm work is the only job category that illegal immigrants uniquely fill; but it does have a 30,000 H2-B visa program for it!
  3. Rate of Participation is frction of population seeking work
  4. Average Education of illegal immigrants may be less if the ~30% Central American's are included.
  5. How many criminals turn around after deportation and return is unknown; but it is significant that ICE catchs more than they deport.
  6. Estimated number may be low by several hundred thousand
  7. Other estimates of net increase are over 850,000 illegal immigrants / year.
Information Sources:

Illegal immigration debate

See United States immigration debate

Well known people accussed of being or hiring illegal immigrants

There have been occasional incidents where immigration status has been an issue in politics.

Legal issues

See also: Immigration to the United States

Legal and political status

Immigrants without proper legal status in the United States often have no valid identity cards or other official identification documents, they may have reduced or even no access to public health systems, proper housing, education and banks, which may result in the creation or expansion of an underground economy to provide these services. In the U.S., however, hospitals (which are not allowed to ask the citizenship status of patients) have the obligation to provide care regardless of a patient's ability to pay. Madeleine Cosman contends that this has led to many hospitals running a deficit and being forced to close.[link] Also, free public education is extended to all children in the U.S. regardless of their citizen status. The matricula consular and passports are usually considered legal identification by many police agencies and governments.

Amnesty acts

  1. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
  2. Amnesty of 1994
  3. Extension Amnesty of 1997
  4. NACARA Amnesty of 1997
  5. HRIFA Amnesty of 1998
  6. Late Amnesty of 2000
  7. LIFE Act Amnesty of 2000

14th Amendment and citizenship

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1866 with the original intention of providing citizenship (with accompanying civil rights and civil liberties) to former slaves after the Civil War. The amendment provides citizenship to all children born in the U.S. under a legal doctrine referred to as jus soli (sometimes this is also called "Birthright Citizenship"). The U.S. government cannot deport a minor that is a U.S. citizen, however, the government may choose to deport his or her family members who lack status as legal residents.

Children of families with mixed immigration status are sometimes referred to as anchor babies because once the illegal immigrant family gives birth to the baby inside the U.S., the baby is said to "anchor" them to the U.S. However, many immigrant advocates regard the term to be pejorative, and prefer the term "Permanently Residing Under Color Of Law," or "PRUCOL." PRUCOL is a broadly-defined status which covers a variety of situations, including, but not limited to, those persons who are appealing for an adjustment of status as refugee, or persons who are awaiting hearings to decide status and final legal disposition of their case.

Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) made the hiring of an individual without documents an offense for the first time. Enforcement has been lax, but major businesses have often been found to use illegal immigrants. 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. 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. [link]

Legal Cases

Some major companies have been accused of hiring undocumented workers.

Historical events

Chinese experience

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

Quotas

The quota system was installed 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 structed to maintain the culture and ethnic balance of the United States.

There was never a quota for Jews, only for people from specific countries, but the number of Jewish applicants exceeded the quota for Germany, and the waiting list for these immigration spots grew enormously in the 1930s. The U.S. had nearly shut down immigration during the Great Depression of 1929. In 1929 there were 279,678 immigrants recorded and in 1933 there were only 23,068[[Citing sources citation needed]]. By 1939 recorded immigrants had crept back up to 82,998 but then the advent of World War II drove it down to 23,725 in 1943 increasing slowly to 38,119 by 1945[[Citing sources citation needed]]. After 1945 large numbers of European refugees were admitted under special laws, and in the 1960s and 1970s large numbers of Cuban and Vietnamese refugees[[Citing sources citation needed]]. Congress then passed the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965 which removed all nation-specific quotas, while retaining an overall quota, and included immigrants from Mexico and the Western Hemisphere for the first time. This dramatically changed the composition of the new arrivals from mostly European, to predominantly Latino and Asian.

In the U.S. the first laws requiring passports for American citizens and creating a quota for immigrants were passed around the turn of the 20th century, in response to increased Irish, Italian and Jewish immigration. A few years earlier the Chinese Exclusion Act had restricted Chinese immigration. The quota for Jews was 5,000 a year in the 1930s and 1940s, and the waiting list for these immigration spots grew enormously when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.

See also:Immigration to the United States

References

Headline text

Footnotes

Note 1: The terms "illegal alien(s)" and "illegal immigrant(s)" are commonly used to refer to those engaging in illegal immigration, which some people believe carry a negative or pejorative connotation. However, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol use illegal alien as their preferred term. Some individuals prefer the term undocumented alien, undocumented immigrant, or undocumented worker, though these have been based on "political correctness." When the term undocumented worker is used, it generally encompasses all people who enter without documents, including children, the elderly, and those who do not work. The term illegal immigrant is the preferred language of the AP Stylebook.

External links

 

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