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Enforcement Challenges
You either have a limited immigration system or you don’t, but there’s a grand experiment underway to test a third option: say you have limits, but don’t enforce them!
Click for enforcement reenvisionedThe illegal immigration system includes more people than the legal system.
Enforcement Challenge: Give Americans a legal system we can believe in.
Nothing undermines the credibility of legal immigration like the violation of borders. The government’s failure to close loopholes and faithfully execute the law has produced unbelievable, but predictable, results.
The United States has the largest legal immigration system in the world, issuing more than one million green cards every year. The illegal system is even bigger. Hundreds of millions of people around the world would like to resettle here. The United States has no choice but to set sensible limits on immigration, but no limited immigration system has any credibility without a commitment to enforcing those limits.
We can track tissue paper across the country but have to guess if or when a visitor leaves.
Enforcement Challenge: Keep better records
Roughly half of all illegal immigration consists of people who entered the U.S. on a temporary visa and never left. The average amusement park does a better job than the U.S. government of making sure people leave when their time is up.
The government does not comprehensively match the records of when people enter the U.S. with records of when people leave, so it has to make educated guesses. Anyone who has visited Disney World knows the technology for a state-of-the-art entry/exit system exists. Congress mandated an entry/exit system in 1996, but it has never been implemented, even after the 9/11 Commission made its completion a top recommendation.
It’s illegal to hire an unauthorized worker…but legal to never verify that authorization.
Enforcement Challenge: Trust, but verify.
There can be no border security without a secure workplace. Current workplace immigration policy can be summed up in three words: Trust; don’t verify.
Word has gotten out around the world: Yes, it’s illegal to work in the United States if you aren’t authorized; but the United States doesn’t check. There is no greater incentive for people around the world to risk lives and treasure than this obvious loophole in workplace enforcement.
Our law says “you can’t come in if we exceed our limit,” but our actions say “if you make it to the interior, you can stay illegally forever.”
Enforcement Challenge: Prioritize, but enforce the law whenever possible.
The New York City police department has more officers than Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has agents. And those relatively few agents have more frequently been prevented from carrying out removals than not.
The acting director of ICE under president Obama said, “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it’s just highly unlikely to happen,” and not much has changed since then.
One hundred percent enforcement is unlikely to happen, but there has to be enough enforcement to discourage people from attempting to circumvent the legal system in the first place.
“Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.”
Barbara Jordan, Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform
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