border

Overview

The authors examine U.S. efforts to prevent illegal immigration to the United States. Although the United States has witnessed a sharp drop in illegal border crossings in the past decade alongside an enormous increase in government activities to prevent illegal immigration, there remains little understanding of the role enforcement has played. Better data and analyses to assist lawmakers in crafting more successful policies and to support administration officials in implementing these policies are long overdue.

View the full report (pdf). Read more about Managing Illegal Immigration to the United States

The yardstick used in the immigration bill to determine border control may produce too rosy a picture of how well the Border Patrol is doing in cracking down on illegal crossings, according to an independent study released Monday that threatens to upend the immigration debate.

In their 76-page report, three researchers at the Council on Foreign Relations also said the drop in illegal immigration is only partly a result of tougher border security and about two-thirds because of economic changes in Mexico and the U.S. that have made it less attractive for Mexicans to migrate north.

At a time when the success or failure of the immigration bill depends on the security level of the border, the authors said it’s surprising how little is known about border security and how little effort the administration and Congress have made to try to get it under control.

“The Border Patrol doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, which is some people are going to come across the border, get across the border unseen,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the report’s authors.

...The Senate Judiciary Committee... did adopt one key Republican-authored change that would set a goal for the Homeland Security Department to apprehend or deter 90 percent of illegal crossers along the entire southwestern border. As originally written, the bill required the 90 percent standard only in high-traffic sectors.

The Council on Foreign Relations report, though, questioned the measure the Border Patrol uses to calculate the 90 percent “efficiency” rate.

Efficiency is calculated by taking the number of illegal crossers the Border Patrol captures and the number it estimates turned back, and then guessing how many got away cleanly. A 90 percent efficiency rating would mean nine out of 10 who crossed illegally were apprehended or forced to turn back.

The problem, according to critics on Capitol Hill and to the report’s authors, is that it’s tough to estimate “turn-backs” and those who got away.

Border Patrol figures suggest an 80 percent efficiency rating right now.

But the Council on Foreign Relations researchers looked at other methods of tracking illegal crossings, including surveys administered to those trying to cross and Border Patrol statistics on recidivism. By those numbers, the Border Patrol was catching no more than 60 percent of illegal crossers at the end of the last decade...

CAIRCO Research:

How many illegal aliens reside in the United States? - including an in-depth analysis of border apprehensions and "got aways"

Border security and porous border fencing

Managing Illegal Immigration to the United States, CFR, May, 2013

  Read more about Independent study raises the bar for border security, immigration reform

The bill’s authors also stuck together to defeat a Republican amendment that would have barred anyone from seeking citizenship until the U.S.-Mexico border had been secured for six months. Supporters of the bill charged that the real effect of that provision would have been to delay citizenship indefinitely for the estimated 11 million people living here illegally.

The fast-paced action unfolded as the Judiciary Committee convened the first of what’s expected to be two weeks of meetings to plow through some 300 amendments to legislation backed by President Barack Obama to remake the nation’s immigration laws...

The bill survived an early test as the committee voted 12-6 to defeat a Grassley amendment to require border security for six months before legalization programs could begin. Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina voted with Democrats to bring it down. Flake and Graham are among the Republican authors of the bill. Read more about Immigration bill survives early test as senators defeat GOP amendment on border security

...A national opinion survey of Mexico by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 4-17 among 1,000 adults, finds that roughly two-thirds (66%) of Mexicans have a favorable opinion of the U.S. – up from 56% a year ago and dramatically higher than it was following the passage of Arizona’s restrictive immigration law in 2010, when favorable Mexican attitudes toward the United States slipped to 44%...

Mexicans are also now more of the view that the U.S. takes their country’s interests into account when deciding international policy. About half (51%) say Washington considers their country’s interests...

More than 11 million Mexicans live in the U.S., including about 6 million [to 40 million] who are in the country illegally. Mexicans are divided on whether this is good or bad for their country...

About six-in-ten Mexicans (61%) say they would not move to the U.S. even if they had the means and opportunity to do so. However, a sizable minority (35%) say they would move to the U.S. if they could, including 20% who say they would emigrate [illegally] without authorization.

9Mexicans are less likely than they were a year ago to say that people from their country who move to the U.S. have a better life there; 47% say life is better in the U.S., compared with 53% in 2012. About one-in-five (18%) say Mexicans have a worse life in the U.S., while 29% say it is neither better nor worse. However, among those who have close friends or relatives living in the U.S., 70% say these friends or relatives have achieved their goals, while just 25% believe they have been disappointed.

Three-in-ten Mexicans say they personally know someone who went to the U.S. but returned to Mexico because the person could not find work. About a quarter (27%) know someone who has been deported or detained by the U.S. government for immigration reasons in the last 12 months...

CAIRCO Research:

As of May 3, 2013, US population was 315, 788, 230 according to the US Census Bureau.

Mexico's population was 116,147,000 and total fertility was 2.3 as of mid-2012, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

35 percent of Mexico's population who would migrate to the United States amounts to a staggering 40,651,450.  That's 40 million people, or nearly 13 percent of the total US population. 

The 20 percent of Mexico's population who state they would sneak into the United States illegally, amounts to 23,229,400, or 7.4 percent of the total US population.

Thus, with our incredibly porous border, and the undeniable attraction of promises of amnesty, we can rest assured that a sizeable portion of these millions will try to sneak into the United States as illegal aliens.

It should be noted that the old, outdated number of illegal aliens currently living in the United States is 11 million. Other analyses estimate that up to 40 million illegal aliens have escaped capture at our border and are living in the United States. These are the cumulative numbers of illegal aliens since the original 1986 IRCA amnesty for illegal aliens.

Thus, if all of the people in Mexico who said they would sneak into the US illegally actually did so, the number would amount to twice the official count of all illegal aliens currently living in the United States. If all of the people in Mexico who want to emigrate into the United States actually did so, it would amount to the total number of illegal aliens already living in the US as estimated by alternative studies.

It doesn't stop there. Mexico's mid-2050 population will be 143,924,800, according to the Population Reference Bureau. That's an increase of 27,777,800. Assuming the same interest in migrating to the US, an additional 5,555,560 Mexicans will want to sneak illegally into the US, and a total of 9,722,230 will intend to migrate to the US. That's in addition to the numbers today, calculated above, who want to migrate to the US.

The United States is under no obligation to act as Mexico's population relieve valve and to be forced to accept up to 50,373,680 new job seekers by 2050. That 50 million would be nearly 16 percent of today's US population. 

Why would we want to grow US population by another 16 percent within 40 years? 

  Read more about Poll: One Third of Mexicans Would Move to U.S.

In 1986... Congress and President Ronald Reagan enacted a broad amnesty to be followed by a massive border strengthening to prevent millions more illegal aliens from entering our country.

...Congress implemented its 1986 plan in reverse order: It provided amnesty without first securing the border. The amnesty acted as a lure, attracting more illegal aliens by suggesting that the path to legal U.S. residency and possible citizenship is simply to get here and stick around. Meanwhile, the border itself was not secured.

No wonder recent estimates put the number of illegal aliens here today at 11 million [to 40 million]...

President Obama wants to grant amnesty, including a path to citizenship, without first making the border secure.

In violation of his oath of office, he's refused to enforce all the immigration laws on the books now. Furthermore, in an apparent scheme to spur more illegal immigration, his administration has been running advertisements in Mexico about food stamp availability here...

Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, has even told Congress that the "border has never been more secure."

But just a few years earlier, in 2005, while George Bush was President and she was governor of Arizona, Napolitano declared that a "state of emergency" existed on the U.S.-Mexico border...

James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Foundation warned in 2010, "for several years, Republicans have chanted a 'secure the border first' mantra. It allowed them to look tough on the illegal immigration issue while dodging the issue of 'comprehensive' reform. It's a bad strategy. It suggests that, if the Obama administration overcomes the 'border first' problem, it will be clear sailing for a push for amnesty."

Carafano identified the loophole the Obama Administration now plans to exploit.

The Administration supports - and the so-called "Gang of 8" immigration legislation includes - giving the executive branch the power to "certify" that the border is secure. Once that certification is in place, green cards can be distributed to those who came here illegally, and the "path to citizenship" for illegal aliens can begin.

Recall how quickly Janet Napolitano's view of the border changed from "emergency" to "secure"? Under the "Gang of 8" legislation, the government official who gets to decide if our border is secure is - you guessed it - HHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

If we don't want a repeat of our 1986 mistake, we can't allow passage of immigration legislation that lets the executive branch determine when the border has been secured... Read more about Without a secure border, Congress is headed for another disaster

There’s a confrontation coming between the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress over the most basic question of immigration reform: How secure is the U.S. border with Mexico?

Not only does the administration not know — and perhaps doesn’t want to know — but there are signs the border is less secure than some of the most skeptical Republicans thought.

Last year the Border Patrol began experimenting with a new drone-based surveillance system that had been developed for finding Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Starting in the fall, officials used the radar-based system over a fairly small portion of the Arizona border. The results were striking.

“According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between October 1 (2012) and January 17 (2013),” reported the Los Angeles Times recently. “But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.”

That means officers caught fewer than half of those who made the crossing in that part of Arizona. If those results are representative of other sectors of the border, then everything the administration has said about border security is wrong.

“These revelations are in stark contrast to the administration’s declaration that the border is more secure than ever due to greater resources having been deployed to the region, and that lower rates of apprehensions signify fewer individuals are crossing,” Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote in a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

“Since the creation of DHS, Congress has provided significant funding increases in the number of Border Patrol agents, the building of nearly 700 miles of fencing and the deployment of advanced technologies to increase the nation’s ability to monitor the border,” the Texas Republican added. “However, we do not know if additional resources have produced better results.”

For years, Napolitano and other officials at the Department of Homeland Security have pointed to the declining number of border apprehensions as proof that the total number of illegal crossings is also declining. Now, it could mean the administration just isn’t catching most of the crossers... Read more about New data on border crossings could change immigration debate