Immigration Enforcement

Immigration Enforcement
Name
Institution
Introduction
The United States has experienced considerably high levels of illegal immigrations since the early 1970s up to the time of the time of Great Recession that started in 2008. There was an attempt by the Congress in 1986 to address the issue of illegal immigration. The Congress passed the IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act) which was the first initiative related to the current era of immigration enforcement. The IRCA illegalized hiring of unauthorized workers, provided for legalization of unauthorized immigrant population and necessitated strengthened border enforcement. In the following decades, illegal immigration continued to grow and this was associated with defects in IRCA, job creation growth due to US economy growth during 1990s and 2000s and also due to deeply embedded migration push factors within Mexico and Central America (Meissner et al, 2013). This paper is aimed at shedding light on chief issues that face immigration enforcement in the US as well as States and local laws immigration enforcement.
There are various issues with regards to immigration enforcement in the United States. These issues include boarder security, worksite enforcement, criminal aliens, permanent admission, employment eligibility verification, temporary workers, legalization, birthright citizenship, noncitizen eligibility for federal benefits and the role played by local and state law enforcement when it comes to enforcing immigration laws.
Border enforcement is one of the main issues regarding immigration enforcement. It entails a road sweep of geographies, responsibilities, as well as activities involving nation’s air, sea and land entry and also admission processes. The US Government has heavily funded and publicized enforcement along the southwest border where US borders Mexico. This enforcement has therefore been considered as the most prominent pillar of the system of immigration enforcement. CBP has been allocated historic resource for border enforcement. The resources include staffing and especially for Border Patrol where the number of staffs has gone up double fold for a period of seven years from 2005 to 2012 to 21,370 agents. A lot o funding has also been channeled to technology, infrastructure, and staffing within port-of- entry. DHS defined its role as that o managing and not sealing borders. As such, DHS does not have the idea of averting all illegal entries as a major goal because such an idea is not an attainable result of border enforcement. However, border patrol has been very effective in that it has been recorded that boarder apprehensions which reached a climax at almost 1.7 million in Fiscal Year 2000, dropped to 340,252 in Fiscal Year 2011 and this was the lowest figure since 1970 (Meissner et al, 2013; Wasem, 2012).
The other issue that is of great concern in enforcement is visa control and travel screening. This serves as the first line when it comes to defense in various aspects border control. It has also been considered as an immigration system’s critical pillar. Since the incidence of September 11, 2001 terror attack, there have been dramatic improvements in the systems of nation’s screening capabilities. As a result of tigh...