On Friday, May 18, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators introduced
a new version of Senator Arlen Specter’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA) after three months of negotiations. The bill’s most controversial feature is the offer of amnesty and citizenship for 85 percent of the currently 11.9 million illegal immigrants.
To understand the potential impact of the amnesty proposal, it helps to consider the extent of the problem.
In December 2003, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated that 8 to 12 million illegal aliens resided in the United States, and 700,000 new illegals were entering annually. These official data are in dispute, however. The Feds prefer to understate the extent of illegal immigration because they miserably failed to stop it.
In a September 2004 report, entitled “Who Left the Door Open?”, Time magazine calculated the number of illegals in the U.S. at 15 million. In January 2005, the Wall Street firm of Bear Stearns produced a study, entitled “The Underground Labor Force is Rising to the Surface,” that estimated 18 to 20 million illegal aliens present throughout the country.
Amazingly, all of America’s sophisticated technology and bureaucracy appear to be insufficient for the federal government to provide reasonably accurate information on how many foreigners are in the country and what they are doing.
According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, Mexicans make up about 57 percent of the illegal immigrants, 24 percent come from Central and South America, and approximately 9 percent from Asia. The Center for Immigration Studies reported in September 2004 that the last decade saw an unprecedented number of Mexicans cross the U.S. border.
Between 1990 and 2000, their number more than doubled from 4.2 million to 9.2 million. That amounts to 30 percent of the entire foreign-born population. The frequency of unauthorized border crossings from Mexico increased by more than 100 percent--from 2 million to 4.8 million, or 69 percent of all illegal aliens in the United States.
Most illegal entrants track through the Arizona desert or cross the Rio Grande or the American Canal in California. Others who are admitted as tourists or students overstay the duration of their visas and take jobs or get married to a legal resident.
On January 9, 2004, President Bush proposed a guest worker program with a thinly veiled offer of amnesty for the millions who are here illegally. On February 29, 2004, Fox News reported that 50 to 90 percent of illegal aliens apprehended claimed they were coming here for the "amnesty." One Border Patrol officer stated that “They believe that they are only responding to an invitation."
By June, 2004, Border Patrol statistics revealed that apprehensions along the southwest border had increased by 80 percent. It seemed that the possibility of amnesty did in fact encourage illegal immigration.
The media often portrayed illegal Mexican immigrants as poor people looking for any kind of job that would offer them a chance to make a better living. Yet, contrary to popular belief, Mexico is among the richer countries of the world but it does suffer from an egregiously unequal distribution of wealth.
There is a big difference between wages offered in Mexico and the U.S. While south of the border the minimum wage varies between $3 and $3.50 a day, many migrant workers in the U.S. can get $10 an hour. This huge disparity allowed Mexicans in the U.S. in 2003 to send about $13 billion back to family members in Mexico, according to World Bank data.
In 1986, the Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform and Control Act gave a one-year amnesty to about 3,000,000 illegal aliens. Yet, the invasion of illegal immigrants continued unabated. Why should the American people believe that another such law 21 years later will effectively end illegal immigration?