Immigration was tightly controlled throughout most of my early life. INS worked tirelessly to catch people crossing our borders and return them to their own countries. INS raids on businesses employing undocumented workers were often reported on the evening news. Sometimes hundreds were arrested and detained.
It was an unending battle to stop the tide of people but INS did the best they could. I was aware that the total number of illegal aliens was steadily growing. INS could only do so much.
I got busy with my career and life. Didn’t pay much attention to INS and immigration. I just assumed they soldiered on the best they could. Catching and returning whoever they could.
Now it’s just one horrendous mess. Recent news reports estimate over 10 million people illegally reside in the US.
The floodgates are open and it’s my understanding INS is deliberately underfunded and their ability to enforce immigration law is restricted? I’m not entirely clear on just what has happened. The immigration laws are still active? Right? But enforcing them has not been a priority under Obama?
Obviously it’s impossible to retroactively return 10 million to their own countries. The logistics just aren’t feasible. We can and should return criminals after they complete prison sentences. That’s just a drop in the bucket.
How did we get here? Which President started the process of turning a blind eye to the flood of people? Who interfered with the INS and stopped them from doing their job?
What happened to protecting our borders? I’d appreciate any cites to articles on how we got here and what can be realistically be done.
What’s it going to take, to at least get some semblance of controlling the problem again? Doubling the budget for INS seems like a good start.
The US is a country formed by immigrants. I want to see that continue. People that apply to come here should be welcomed. Just like our own ancestors came here by legally immigrating.
Your premise is off. Stopping illegal immigration continues to be a priority, and net illegal immigration rates are way down. Also, enforcement is up, and deportationsare at an all time high.
What else is new? Problems grab viewers/readers/listeners, and that gets advertising dollars. The press would have you believe kidnapping and violent crime are both at all-time highs, as well.
There are objective measures for immigration, kidnapping, and violent crime (though they may be apples to oranges by different organizations). Greatness is subjective, and depends on what the person or entity evaluating values.
Well pardon my phrasing, but no shit? The press is doing a poor job?
Now can you figure out why so many are stunned and pissed about the outcome of the election? It is not just that so many disagreed, it is that they disagreed based on lies and disinformation.
I did see a piece on one of the news magazines, I think 20/20? about citizen patrols in the desert along the border.
The tv cameras had night vision and people were filmed crossing. They filmed numerous camps with obvious signs of recent use. Even observation posts where people watched out for INS or other law enforcement.
It impressed the heck out of me. The ranchers and their families are in real danger when drug smugglers and human traffickers use their land to cross. The criminals are well funded and think nothing of killing people that get in their way. Mexico’s drug wars are much too close to our border.
Human trafficking rakes in big money and they’ve gone high tech.
We’ve had plenty of tough immigration laws but enforcement has always been poor. It didn’t used to take much to cross the border from Canada or Mexico. It’s been easy to get a visa and come here but not much follow up on making sure you eventually went home. Except for some stupid xenophobia it wasn’t really a problem before either. Now in the age of terrorism there is at least a legitimate reason to be more careful, but people are still mostly concerned about ‘them’ not being ‘us’.
I think, in the good ole days, Americans became accustomed to buying fruit and vegetables on the cheap. Made possible by illegal immigrants. Maybe the powers that be recognized this. What could go wrong? We have cheap produce.
Possibly the farms were saturated with workers. And some learned skilled labor. Hanging sheet rock, painting, etc. Americans were even happier. Now they have cheap groceries and homes. And all went well, until the economy stopped growing. American laborers were out of work. The blame was pointed on illegal immigrants.
When they tried to shut the barn doors, the horses were already out.
Don’t assume that all our ancestors came here legally. There were still rules about who would be admitted, and an unknown but probably large number lied when applying for entry, about their health, their education, their possible contacts, maybe even their names of where they came from, or presented false documents. Any who did bend the truth, technically, entered illegally. Then, as now, immigration authorities were understaffed and underfunded, and nearly everyone just sailed through more or less unchallenged.
America is once again (just as in the 30’s and 40’s) seeing Nationalism in its rawest form:
The Country is in horrible shape and getting worse by the minute!
Only I can correct the problems and make the place safe!
p.s. - it is all the fault of those dirty Jews/Protestants/Catholics/Mongols/Jews/Irish/Russians/Jews*/immigrants/illegal immigrants/Japanese**
Jews are the great go-to bad guys on at least 3 continents
** - most like modern US experience. Maybe some of those camps are still sanding…
The Red Baiting of the 50’s was an aberration in that ALL the really bad guys were domestic. See: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg = these were twofers - domestic AND Jewish
Since you can’t even be bothered to notice that the INS hasn’t existed for over a decade (you can thank George W Bush, btw), I’m confused by your sudden urgency and deeply-held opinions about doubling its budget.
What the US can do about illegal immigration into the US is to stop making it so damned miserable to live in many other countries that those people feel they have to flee w/ no other plan but to get to safety, much less a plan for legal immigration.
The press was doing its job by reporting what candidates were saying. Don’t blame the press if people just accepted what they heard in speeches without checking the facts.
The press reported the facts along with the speeches. But a lot of people didn’t read past the headline or listen past the soundbite.