# Illegal immigration to the United States

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/illegal-immigration-to-the-united-states/723747>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 29, 2015, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/illegal-immigration-to-the-united-states/723747 "2015-06-29T00:22:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 8

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**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2015, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/illegal-immigration-to-the-united-states/723747/141 "2015-07-10T14:01:32Z")

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It’s very disturbing that you think he is making sense.

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**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2015, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/illegal-immigration-to-the-united-states/723747/142 "2015-07-10T14:05:47Z")

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It’s not that cut and dry **Really Not All That Bright**

[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117412/deportations-under-obama-vs-bush-who-deported-more-immigrants](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117412/deportations-under-obama-vs-bush-who-deported-more-immigrants)

Basically under Bush there was a higher number of “returns” which were informal and not kept track of precisely, towards the end of his term they began more “removals” which involved actual fingerprinting, the judicial system, and keeping track of the numbers. Obama simply continued the later Bush policy of “removals” where there is numbers that can actually be kept track of, so on paper it may seem like he deported way more illegals but it isn’t really so, in fact it’s probably impossible to know for sure since the “returns” weren’t tracked that well. If anything you might be able to say maybe they were close to equal but Obama merely followed what Bush already started.

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