Why aren't the immigration laws enforced?

Answer 1

Answer

If you are a legal alien trying to get into the US the the Immigration laws are certainly enforced. A Brit singer who is up for an MTV award has today been refused entry, but it has such long borders that they are impossible to police.

But of course there is problems for people trying to come into this country legally..but my question was if the government can find Saddam in a hole 29.000 miles away why can they not find 17 million illegal aliens who jump the border making it difficult for families who want a better life and want to obey the law from getting into this country..why does the government not enforce the immigration laws on the streets of my town and yours?

Answer

To reference the above, the prime reason that the Executive appears not to be enforcing the immigration laws are multiple:

(1) the physical job of enforcing the laws is impossible. It is simply logistically impossible to prevent the flood of illegals from entering the country - the southern border is too large and too remote to provide any sort effective of physical barrier, and the costs of patrolling the border would be astronomical (on a par with what we spend on the whole US Military), and Congress has not deemed it important enough to appropriate the funding to try.

(2) Once in the country, the scale of illegals is again far to high to handle - currently, there are an estimated 11 million illegals. For comparison, there are 2.2 million prisoners (in all jail/prisons, at all levels). The law enforcement effort required to round them all up (or even a meaningful number of them) would again be enormous, and prodigiously expensive. And, again, Congress has not decided that this is a high enough priority to allocate the required funds to accomplish this.

(3) Whether or not it's popular, the fact remains that the US greatly benefits from having the cheap labor pool that the illegals provide. Estimates are that almost 90% of agricultural labor is performed by illegals, and huge portions of the construction, food processing, and janitorial industries are likewise filled with illegal workers. The illegals currently work for considerably lower wages than a legal resident or citizen would demand, and thus, businesses are happy to look the other way when hiring them. This in turn keeps down the prices that these industries charge the consumer.

(4) Besides the ready pool of cheap labor provided by illegals, they also end up paying more into the system than the services they use. Illegals (for obvious reasons) are highly reluctant to have interactions with official government services, and thus seldom avail themselves of services that a legal resident or citizen would use. In addition, as an illegal, they don't have the documents to qualify for most such assistant. However, as virtually all illegals now have forged SS numbers (which are needed to pass the cursory inspection when business hire them), they have payroll taxes and normal federal/state taxes withheld from their paychecks, like any normal legal resident. However, as illegals, they can't file income tax returns, and certainly can't claim any SS benefits. So all those taxes go into the system, and the illegals can't claim any of the services they pay for.

(5) The current system of LEGAL immigration is completely broken - it fails spectacularly to allow enough people to satisfy the labor requirements, and has completely idiotic allocations in terms of who/where can apply for those few visa we do allow. Thus, the system itself highly encourages illegal immigration, since the method of granting visas is so convoluted and broken that "jumping the line" by illegally entering is very tempting.

(6) Also, remember that a relatively large minority (up to 25%) of "illegals" in the US originally arrived here on legal visas, and simply have overstayed those visas. These tend to be vacationers and students, for the most part. The US currently doesn't have a system which tracks visa users, and once again, Congress has failed to make it priority for funding.

So, to put it succinctly: the US immigration system itself is completely broken, Congress fails to allocate enough funding to enforce the laws for the system we have, and businesses (and, in the end analysis, consumers) are addicted to the cheap labor (and lower prices) that illegals provide.

Answer 2

Because we are stupid and think that we can save the world. Just keep letting them in and we will have no country left.