World: Becoming a Much Smaller Place

World: Becoming a Much Smaller Place

The current policies and immigration laws being used in this country are outdated and unenforceable. With the improvement of technology and transportation, the world has become a much smaller place. Legal and physical barriers to immigration are too easily circumvented to be of any practical use. Advocating a policy of mass deportation and imprisonment of undocumented foreigners serves only to breed resentment and fear and merely perpetuates the wasting of money and resources on a system that has already failed. The definition of insanity is trying to do the same thing but hoping for different results. It is for this reason that we should discontinue enforcement of current laws in favor of an amnesty program.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, as of 2007 there were an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Using the best case scenario under full enforcement of current laws only 1.5 million immigrants could be deported per year. According to a 2005 Pew Hispanic Center study, illegal immigrants are entering the United States at a rate of over 500,000 per year. This means that if we were to attempt to completely seal our borders and the indigenous population remained stagnant, it would take us at least 12 solid years before we could remove every illegal immigrant. According to Senator John McCain in 2006 during a speech on the Senate floor, “It would take 200,000 buses extending along a 1,700 mile long line to deport 11 million people. That’s assuming we had the resources to locate and apprehend all 11 million which we don’t have and never will have.” Senator McCain is right. If enforcement on this scale were possible, would it not already be taking place? Starting a “War on Immigration” will just be another program doomed to failure. The “War on Drugs” started in 1969 has not changed the nation’s illegal drug usage and has only served to overburden our court system and overcrowd our jails with recreational drug users. If we...

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