Immigration Memo Analysis

The debate over immigration has become one of the most heated arguments. Immigrants leave their home countries desperate need for food to feed their families, unemployment purposes, their poverty conditions environment, for those who are employed are tired of the below market wages, and the unequal treatment. Today they are about 11 million undocumented workers in the United States and Americans fear that because of this matter, immigrants will increase

Lourdes Medrano is a strong advocate for immigration reform to strengthen the border and the security manning the border. She supports her argument by showing how President George W. Bush’s surge on the US-Mexican border. President Bush doubled the man power along the border, while leading the technological advance on the border. Medrano shows how President Bush brought immigration reform into the spotlight, when roughly 1.6 million immigrants where entering the US illegally. Now the number is historically lower at 356,873 immigrants. The budget for the border patrol has been steadily increasing 1.1 billion in 2001 to 3.5 billion in 2012. Medrano presents how President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in 2006, which authorized 700 miles of fencing. This his directly contributed to 651 miles of fencing created by 2012. Surge on immigration reform has also doubled the man power from 2001 to 2012, which is exactly what President Bush envisioned. With the border patrol now being a division of Homeland Security and help from the national guard, they have grown much bigger then what they once were. Even the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says that “our borders have, in fact, never been stronger.”

The writer of this article explains that grassroots leadership and others pressured the Obama administration to put a stop to the holding centers like T. Don Hutt which they did, but in 2014 it started detaining large numbers of immigrants and their families. This family detention is a place where whole families are kept in prison cell at the same place.

But, why do people still want to come to U.S?Because of various reasons, some of them want freedom, others says they have escaped from their government, some people consider U.S the land of dreams, some people might come because of employment opportunities, some others want to get rich, quite a few others want to practice their religion without any fear. Finally, they all came to have and build a better life. They want to have a better future, a good job, a fancy car, a huge house, and safety.

Under the Obama administration several undocumented immigrants had been detained and ordered to be deported, however they continued to live in the United States, for varying reasons. These reasons range from persons who are not informed of their deportation status due to fact that they missed their hearings, or documents were sent to previous addresses and were not received, or they belonged to countries that do not accept US deportees. Under Obama's adminstration several undocumented  immigrants were also delayed deportation based on humanitarian reason or because they were not considered to be a risk or threat. Obama's guidelines  was based on deporting immigrants with serious criminal records  or immigrants who were considered a risk or

hoping to get a chance at a better life; others are refugees escaping persecution and civil wars in their home country. Krishnadev Calamur wrote about Donald Trump’s Executive Order 1187 and how Donald Trump had made it his goal to ban all Muslims from the start of his campaign and seeing that those countries were in Barack Obama’s visa-waiver program he took advantage and used it to ban all seven countries (5). The grand result of this ban ended in people coming together to protest at several airports across the country where people with valid documentation were detained. This ban had a great impact that a multitude of citizens, lawyers, demonstrators, and the media descended to witness the order’s impact, but Trump tried to dismiss the reality of the impact by tweeting, “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning.” (15), when it was a lot more than that. The S. 2458 introduced n Senate mentions, “To amend section 217(a) (12) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, relating to the restriction of the use of the Visa Waiver Program for aliens who travel to certain countries.” (3). This demonstrates what Hanson and Johnson have been trying to present; that there is no humane way of handling undocumented immigrants and that the day when government has made it possible to fix this problem is far from being created

Immigration policies have had a tendency to violate human rights. These immigration policies, along with others, resulted in the global apartheid in the U.S. Some policies required more patrol enforcement at the border which made the journey for immigrants to the U.S. more rigorous. This enforcement has caused for immigrants to actually not look into migrating to the U.S. Also, with the local law enforcement working together with the border patrol has resulted into a huge problem, racial profiling. In racial profiling, even though there are immi-grants from all over the world, Latinos are mostly targeted. The policies, while they have in-creased deportation rates, they have affected the deportee’s U.S. citizen children.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the new immigration reform that was introduced by President Barack Obama. The issue has been split between politicians because one side wants illegal immigrants to face deportation while others want to make drastic changes to improve the broken system, so President Obama decided to take his own legal action on the issue. “Three critical elements of the President’s executive actions are: cracking down on illegal immigration at the border, deporting felons not families, and accountability by passing criminal background checks and paying their fair share of taxes” (The White House). Every year hundreds of thousands of immigrants come into the United States illegally. These immigrants come to America for a variety of reasons; whether it’s hoping for a chance at a better life or escaping violence and poverty in their home country. America’s immigration system has been broken for decades. Too many employers cheat the system by hiring undocumented workers who don’t have proper work authorization. There are millions of people living in the shadows that are afraid of being caught by authorities and sent back. These ongoing problems are neither good for the economy or the country. Obama has argued that this has been an ongoing problem for decades and that its time to fix this broken system. “The President’s actions will streamline legal immigration to boost our economy and will promote naturalization for those who qualify” (The White

88 cases involved terrorism. In 2010-11 there were 4,098 deportations. Only 37 cases involved terrorism. This shows that after 9/11 occurred, our nation became merciless when it came to deportations. More innocent immigrants are deported than immigrants who could actually present a threat, even though data shows otherwise. Many of those who are deported with the title of criminal have also never committed a high-profile crime. David Buhrman, a writer and research suggested that, “what [the Obama administration] mean by a criminal violation is someone arrested bicycling on the sidewalk; really they've defined everything as criminal. And they're using that to get rid of people.” (5) This puts immigrants at high risk of being deported, not only deported back into their country, but deported with a criminal

“We are nation of immigrants. Some came here willingly, some unwillingly. Nonetheless, we are immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants, one, and all. Even the natives came from somewhere else, originally. All of the people who come to this country come for freedom, or for some product of that extraordinary, illusory condition. That is what we offer here—freedom and opportunity in a land of relative plenty.” (Middletown Journal 2005)

The use of immigration detainers — requests for jails to hold immigrants for an extra 48 hours so they can potentially be deported — has spiked in Texas since President Trump took office, according to data released last week by the research organization TRAC. Thanks to Texas’ “sanctuary cities” ban, county jails across the state are forced to comply with the growing influx of once-voluntary requests.

Deportation is fearful, particularly for children who have no control over the situation or what will ultimately happen to their parents. It’s critical to act humanely in this type of situation. The existing executive order of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (ACA) from Obama should be upheld with regards to defining immigrant criminals and capturing them. This order is based on the supposition that overall immigrants are good people and that if they work with the US government with their information they will re-enter society and not be deported. Should deportation occur the collaboration of municipal and county governments in rural areas is paramount, but deportation should be extremely rare and only be a last resort if necessary.

The Syrians are leaving their country for so many reasons, like they often decide to finally escape after seeing their neighborhoods bombed or family members killed. Thousands of Syrians are leaving their country each day. The risk on the journey to the border can be a high risk like, families walk for miles through the night to avoid being shot at by a snipers or being caught by soldiers who will kidnap young men to fight for the regime. Also, Latinos who are coming to the United States are coming to get a better life their inspired by the “American dreams”, but that’s not the only reason the want to come to the United States because life out there can be very hard. Poverty, political instability and recurring financial crises often conspire

On November 10, 2015, two National Economic Experts argued on “what the U.S. Immigration policy should be?” Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies argued against open immigration, while Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst for the CATO Institute argued in favor of freer immigration. Reporter Jonathan Gonzalez of 9News Denver moderated the debate. The argument made by both experts was supported by strong evidence even though the ideas appear to be on two extreme ends with no middle ground ideas or compromises. At one extreme there is a need to reduce or stop immigration while the other extreme advocates for open borders. Even though Immigration has been an important part of American history, recently it has become a contentious issue, which is mostly about borders or no borders, and does not take in to account the macroeconomic aspect of this movement. The two experts argue on how the U.S. immigration program needs to adjust by scaling back or blocking further immigration vs. open immigration policy consistent with American values that promotes free-market economy.

Immigration reform is the old yet new revitalized hot topic being discussed in the media which will not seem to fade away from the spot light despite its drawbacks. The reality of that ongoing debate is that this country, and the State of California in particular, was founded by immigrants fleeing an oppressive government, yet this same country and state now oppress immigrants fleeing from similar situations trying to reestablish new lives within its borders. We cannot forget where we originated from and the foundation this great nation and state was built upon. In this age of progressive thinkers, it is time to