Pankaj S Sharma

Illegal immigration and Dilemma of US.

Illegal immigration have been a major problem for USA. Many a times social thinkers have warned the government about it. In this article some alarming  facts are being raised to grab attention of masses over the issue.

Every year thousands of illegal immigrants enter US border. At border, it’s not so that all of them get arrested and taken to the jails. As many as 5.5 million people have entered US Border and never left. Only few were caught by any American agency.

And here comes the fact for back-up. The Border Patrol's Tucson sector, the busiest in the nation, logged 241,673 apprehensions last fiscal year. In comparison, federal agents in Arizona tracked down and arrested 27 people who had overstayed their visas.

On the other hand visa violators who represent nearly half of the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, they have been largely ignored amid a national clamour to secure the border, fuelled in part by Arizona's tough new immigration law, the killing of a southern Arizona rancher and worries that cartel violence in Mexico could spill into this country, analysts and experts say.

"It's not that we have too much emphasis on the border. We still need enforcement on the border. The problem is not enough attention to the other issue," said Michael W. Cutler, a former senior agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which became Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The alarming fact is that in the past five years, the number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the U.S.-Mexico line has doubled, to more than 20,000 people. That's the highest level of staffing in the Border Patrol's 85-year history. Also, Arizona politicians including Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, and Democratic Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Ann Kirkpatrick have called for deploying the National Guard to the border, too.

One can ask a question that why there has been no corresponding call to increase the search for those who overstay visas?

In 2003, Immigration and Customs Enforcement created a special unit to track down visa violators. Funding grew from $6.7 million the first year to $68.3 million in fiscal year 2009, according to testimony in March by Assistant Homeland Security Secretary for ICE John Morton to the House Homeland Security Committee. Investigators analyze records of hundreds of thousands of potential violators based on data from various government databases that keep track of students, tourists and other people who enter the U.S. On average, the 272 investigators assigned to the unit arrest 1,400 visa violators a year, Morton said. ICE officials said the number of overstayers arrested each year has steadily risen, though they could not provide details.

Lon Weigand, assistant special agent in charge of ICE investigations in Phoenix, said most of the 27 visa violators in Arizona last year had overstayed tourist visas. ICE could not say whether that was up or down from previous years.

Article Tags: Visa Violators

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR