Many immigrants do come lawfully, of course, but there are an estimated Those are good and reasonable questions. The reason that my ancestors migrated lawfully to the U. You see, until , there basically was no federal immigration law : anyone who arrived was welcome to make their life in the U. That began to change in , with the Chinese Exclusion Act, when the Congress decided that immigrants from China—who some argued were biologically inferior to Europeans—should be kept out altogether.
Over the next four decades, we gradually restricted further groups—the poor, the sick, the uneducated, those suspected of holding questionable ideologies—until in , Congress enacted a new immigration quota system that drastically limited immigration. It became extremely difficult to migrate, especially if you were from a country outside of the Northern and Western European countries that were granted the vast majority of the limited number of visas made available.
That changed again in , when President Johnson signed into law a dramatic overhaul of the U. America could not and would not go back to an era of open borders, Johnson said as he signed the law, but the new law would base eligibility to immigrate not primarily on race or country of origin, but rather on family connections and employability.
In the nearly fifty years since that last overhaul, that system has worked fairly well for some people-spouses, minor children, and parents of adult US citizen and highly skilled workers with advanced degrees who could find an employer sponsor, for example-but, particularly as our economy has grown but visa quotas have not, the system is not working very well today.
Because the quota numbers are much lower than demand, family members can wait up to twenty years to be reunited through the proper legal channels in some cases. We can tell people to wait their turn in line, but, for example, for a Mexican or a Guatemalan, a Filipino, a Pole, or folks from many other countries who does not have a college degree and has no close relatives who are U. But if they manage to come unlawfully—and historically we have not made it so difficult to do so, though our borders are much more secure now than they have ever been—they will almost certainly find work—because even in a time of high unemployment, there are certain jobs that most Americans have not proven willing to do.
For individuals living in poverty, desperate to support their families, that has been an attractive option. Everyone would prefer to pay a reasonable fee and be granted a visa, but that has not been an option for most of those presently here unlawfully. That, in short, is how we got into this mess, and why so many immigrants—most of them family-oriented people—have ended up undocumented in the shadows of our society. To go even deeper in understanding how history and policy relate to this topic, check out the resource page for further book recommendations.
January 20, at PM. What Will Become of Libyan Refugees? Recovering Evangelical says:. March 8, at AM. July 4, at PM. September 22, at PM. September 23, at PM. Some argue that if their ancestors could do it, so should the unauthorized immigrants in our country today. Many of our ancestors didn't actually come here through federal "legal" channels — there weren't restrictive federal immigration laws in place at the time.
Yet, until the 's, the federal government did virtually nothing to restrict immigration to the United States. In most cases, immigrants who arrived to the United States in search of work or a new life simply settled in the country and became citizens after a period of time. Indeed, during that period immigration from various parts of the world to the United States was widespread; by , forty percent of the residents of New York, Chicago, and other major metropolitan areas, were foreign-born.
In , beginning with the Emergency Quota Act, the United States began to restrict immigration through the use of national origins quotas. For instance, in , the Immigration Reform and Control Act IRCA was passed to control and deter unlawful immigration to the United States, making it unlawful to knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants and increasing border enforcement. Today's unauthorized immigrants would prefer to live and work lawfully in the United States if they could.
Moreover, according to two well-regarded opinion surveys of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, the large majority of those unauthorized in the country today would have preferred to enter lawfully if they could have. In fact, some 98 percent of those surveyed indicated that they would prefer to live and work lawfully, rather than in unauthorized status. Under current laws, no "line" for lawful immigration to the United States actually exists for the majority of our immigrants.
So, why didn't they just "stand in line" to do so? Currently, that wait can range anywhere from five to 27 years. For instance, a U. Whether you are fleeing violence and persecution or simply trying to provide for your family, no avenue exists to get your family to the United States. Sure, there is refugee status, but you have to be in a U. Yes, there is asylum status, but you have to be physically in the United States to ask for asylum. Of those who make it and can make that claim, almost 60 percent are denied.
They do it because there is no other avenue to get here. The executive order also did not create any process for reuniting the over 2, children already separated from their parents.
Experts fear some of these children may never be reunited. Trump has since been ordered by the courts to stop the zero tolerance policy, but family separations continue to this day. Importantly, there are proven and reasonable alternatives to indefinite family detention in jail-like conditions.
One alternative would be to allow community supervision of immigrants by non-profit or government contractors. The Department of Homeland Security launched such a program in , where families were monitored by social workers who helpedthem find housing, a lawyer, and made sure they attended their court hearings.
In what should be a clear signal of his intent, Trump ended this effective, more humane, and cost effective program in After ending the program, his Administration falsely claimed child separation and indefinite family detention were the only solutions.
A GPS ankle monitor could be used as backup alternative for the cases where an immigrant would otherwise be detained awaiting their immigration hearing. As this crisis moves forward, the Trump Administration continues to keep families in detention and more than 2, children are still separated from their parents. The truth is, multiple studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.
Among people aged , 1. Even when some undocumented immigrants are described as having criminal records, that statement can be misleading, and does not mean they have committed any serious crime.
This just means that a judge, at some point maybe decades ago, when political attitudes were different , recognized that the person was there without status and ordered that person removed. A prior deportation order does not reflect whether or not that person is a deportation priority see below.
Many immigrants who are given deportation orders have no prior criminal history. Finally, crossing the border is a misdemeanor, while being in the U. This means that undocumented immigrants in the U. Donald Trump made a campaign pledge out of building a border wall — but the truth is that the communities around the border are actually some of the safest in America.
It would be a huge waste of money Trump wants to spend billions of dollars on it for an imagined problem, as border crossings are currently at a year low.
There are major problems with building a border wall , as well: land on the border is not particularly well-suited for building, and much of it is private land that would have to be reclaimed through eminent domain.
If the wall is built, millions of taxpayer dollars would be spent over many years taking land away from Americans for a project nobody wants. In late , Trump shut down the government — an incident that would lead to the longest government shutdown in history — in order to pressure Congress to give him money for the border wall. When they still refused, Trump declared a national emergency so that he could take money away from military projects in order to fund his wall.
Congress has voted multiple times to reject this national emergency, and Trump has twice vetoed these votes. As things currently stand, Trump has been granted authority to begin defunding military projects and building the wall, while court battles on the issue continue.
Read more about the border wall here. Since the government cannot and should not remove all 11 million undocumented immigrants, it would make the most sense for immigration officials to focus on removing immigrants who are actually dangerous or who have committed serious crimes.
The rest of the immigrant population should be left alone in the interest of public safety. As several Chiefs of Police associations have said, immigrants need to trust law enforcement enough to cooperate with police and report serious crimes. Think of the undocumented population as drivers on a highway. On a highway, almost everyone overspeeds a little bit, meaning that none of the drivers are in strict accordance with the law. But many people would think it was unfair for drivers to be pulled over for going just a little bit above the limit.
Undocumented immigrants are a crucial piece of the U. Some 70 percent of all farmworkers in the U. Meanwhile, immigrants do start businesses, create jobs, and make major contributions to the economy. Reports have shown that mass deportation of immigrants would lead to:. The agricultural industry there collapsed without immigrant labor to work the fields, as crops were left to rot and farmers went out of business.
Half a decade later, agriculture in Georgia and Alabama has still not recovered. The same issue applies to farmers, dairy farms, and ranchers from California to Washington to New Mexico to Michigan to Florida.
And r epeatedly , farmers have told stories about trying to find American workers to do the same jobs immigrants do — only to have the native-born Americans quit after mere hours in the field. Read more about immigrants and the economy here.
Or, they can hold that person until immigration agents come pick them up for detention and deportation. This is what the Trump Administration wants cities to do — even though multiple court rulings have found this practice to be unconstitutional. Also, cities risk incurring lawsuits for violating the Fourth Amendment rights of migrants who are in their custody. This is because cities with pro-immigrant policies see better relationships between immigrant communities and the police.
When we reference federal immigration agents who come to jails to pick up immigrants, or agents who carry out immigration raids, or agents who come to homes or courthouses to arrest immigrants, we are usually talking about ICE. CBP also interacts with migrants including asylum seekers who come to the U. CBP also has broad powers to operate anywhere in the U.
In a way that was not true of his predecessors, Trump is conducting mass, indiscriminate deportations of immigrants, including:. Trump is also trying to restrict immigration in other ways, notably through his multiple attempted Muslim travel bans, unwillingness to admit refugees , reported turning away of asylum applicants at the border which is illegal under international law , cancellation of temporary protected status TPS for multiple groups of immigrants, and more.
As commentators have noted, Trump and his advisers are acting on policies guided by ethno-centrism , i. It should be noted that Sessions is a famous opponent of immigration, both legal and undocumented. Sessions has longtime ties to anti- immigrant extremist groups , and is moving the U. Department of Justice toward having more influence over immigration and deportation, for example, by directing U.
Mass deportation comes at a huge cost, not only relative to how much the U. Read more about how Donald Trump has changed immigration enforcement here , here , and here.
DACA is not legal status, but provides:.
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