Illegal immigration

“ We need to resolve the status of illegal immigrants who are already here. They should not be given an automatic path to citizenship. This is amnesty, and I oppose it. Amnesty would be unfair to those who are here lawfully, and it would invite further waves of illegal immigration. ”

“ We must continue to do everything we can to strengthen our borders, enforce our laws, and remove illegal aliens from our country.
As I said in my State of the Union Address, we are a nation of immigrants, but we're also a nation of laws. And it is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years.
This week, I sent strong legislation to Congress to try to stop those abuses, to secure our borders in the future, and to speed up deportation of illegal immigrants. ”

“ Our country is currently facing a crisis of illegal immigration on our southern border. Democrat-supported loopholes in our Federal laws have enabled roughly half a million illegal immigrant family members and minors from Central America to be released into the United States since 2014, at unbelievably tremendous taxpayer expense. While illegal aliens can only be held for a period of days or weeks, it can take years to move their cases through the legal system to actually try to send them back to their home countries. ”

“ Illegal immigration is bad for illegal immigrants and bad for the workers against whom they compete.
Replacing the flood of illegals with a regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after background checks and who are provided labor rights would enhance our security, raise wages, and improve working conditions for all Americans.
But I fully appreciate that we cannot create a new guestworker program without making it as close to impossible as we can for illegal workers to find employment. We do not need new guestworkers plus future undocumented immigrants. ”

“ Illegal immigration funds criminal networks, ruthless gangs, and the flow of deadly drugs. Illegal immigration exploits vulnerable populations, hurts hardworking citizens, and has produced a vicious cycle of crime, violence, and poverty. ”

“ This will take pressure off the border and allow law enforcement to concentrate on those who mean us harm. We must also find a sensible and humane way to deal with people here illegally. Illegal immigration is complicated, but it can be resolved. ”

“ The scheme to deport political refugees through the Immigration Department was more successful. The immigration laws provide that, if it be discovered that an immigrant is a criminal or an anarchist, or if he has entered this country in an illegal manner, provided that such discovery is made within three years of his arrival here, the immigration officials may deport him. The question of the "undesirability" of the immigrant is not a subject for review by the courts, the immigrant may not appeal, and within two or three restrictions the immigration agent's word is law. ”

“ The issue before us is entirely statutory and requires our interpretation of the strict 1996 illegal-immigration law passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton. Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, 110 Stat. ”

“ No doubt Congress in 1957 was concerned with giving relief to some aliens who had entered this country by illegal means and established families here. But the people who were to benefit from this genuine human concern were those from countries like Mexico, which had no quota restrictions, and those who had misrepresented their national origins in order to avoid repatriation to Iron Curtain countries. There is nothing to indicate that Congress enacted this legislation to allow wholesale evasion of the Immigration and Nationality Act or as a general reward for fraud. ”

“ It is also an urgent requirement of our national security. Our objective is straightforward: The border should be open to trade and lawful immigration, and shut to illegal immigrants, as well as criminals, drug dealers, and terrorists. ”

“ To stop illegal immigrants from coming across our borders, we've added manpower, upgraded our technology, and taken the final steps necessary to complete a 14-mile barrier running along the San Diego border with Mexico. To enforce our immigration laws within our borders, we've hired more immigration agents, gone after criminal gangs, and targeted smugglers and coyotes who traffic in human beings. ”

“ Aliens not in custody routinely fail to appear in court and, even if they do appear, fail to comply with removal orders. There are more than 1 million illegal aliens who have been issued final removal orders from immigration judges and yet remain at-large in the United States. ”

“ As a prosecutor, I can tell you, it is a serious mistake to conflate criminal justice policy with immigration policy as if they are the same thing. They are not. I have personally prosecuted everything from low-level offenses to homicides. I know what a crime looks like. I will tell you: an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal. ”

“ But whatever be the case with purely voluntary emigration, all attempts to artificially encourage it by state grants or private benevolence, will, we may be sure, be vigilantly watched by the anti-immigrationists in every new country. The legal powers at present possessed by the Commissioners of Immigration in the United States are very feeble, the only persons with whom they can interfere, under the act of 1882, being "convicts, lunatics, idiots, or persons unable to take care of themselves without becoming a public charge;" ”

“ Intending immigrants as well as steamship companies learn the standards of exclusion and the methods of evasion, so that the proportion who take their chances and fail in the attempt is very small. Nevertheless, this deportation of immigrants, though averaging less than 1 per cent, is a hardship that should be avoided. It has often been proposed that this should be done through examination abroad by American consuls or by agents of the Immigration Bureau. ”

“ He found in his craft organization the only protection against the employers, and in the political boss the only protection against agencies that interfered with his personal and domestic life. The immigrant soon learned that our immigration laws were shaped by economic motives. He learned that he was in danger of being deported if he did not work. The menace which hangs over the immigrant during his early years is the phrase “likely to become a public charge.” And this alleged reason for deportation covers a multitude of other excuses which can be used as it is used—as a drag-net accusation. ”

“ The ongoing migration of persons to the United States in violation of our laws is a serious national problem detrimental to the interests of the United States. A particularly difficult aspect of the problem is the continuing illegal migration by sea of large numbers of undocumented aliens into the southeastern United States. ”

“ The recent immigration restriction laws make a decided break with past national history and tradition. There is little doubt that these laws are in part the fruit of an organized movement which, especially since the war, is attempting to classify all aliens, except those of one special group, as “hyphenates” and “mongrels”. These laws are haphazard, unscientific, based on unworthy prejudice and likely, ultimately, to be disastrous in their economic consequences. The present three per cent, immigration law is not based on any fundamental standard of fitness. ”

“ This section of the law is the one upon which immigrants are coached more thoroughly than on any other, and in addition to the large number of immigrants who violate the most lenient interpretation, there must be many others whom the courts would not hold guilty, who nevertheless believe themselves so and suffer a corresponding degradation of character. A third element in the situation, which complicates it still further, is the interpretation practically placed on the law by the immigration authorities, which is apparently more strict than that of the courts. ”

“ I mean we're not going to, as a practical matter, take 12 million people or maybe even 15 million people who are here illegally, assuming we could even find them, and deport them. I mean that's just simply not going to happen in our culture. ”

“ Three decades later, Congress brought 8 U. S. C. §1324 (a) (1) (A) (iv) into its current form—still without the words “assist” or “solicit.” Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, §112 (a) , 100 Stat. 3382 (making it a crime to “encourag [e] or induc [e] an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law”) .
On Hansen’s view, these changes dramatically broadened the scope of clause (iv) ’s prohibition on encouragement. ”

“ In other words, the line of argument is, if the foreign-born manifest a larger proportion of criminals among their number than do the native-born, all increases in the foreign-born population will mean a more than proportional increase in crime for the country as a whole. There is, however, another way in which immigration might operate to increase crime. That is, by interfering with the natural adjustment of economic relations between different classes, it may so alter the 329condition of the native-born as to lead to an increase in crime in this class. ”

“ Immigration laws require, for instance, exclusion and deportation of aliens who advocate the overthrow of the Government by force and violence, and declare ineligible for naturalization aliens who are members of organizations so advocating. ”

“ The period of Government jurisdiction over the landed alien and the period of the liability of the steamship companies for return of undesirable aliens for cause should be extended from one year to five years, or better, until the immigrant becomes a citizen. This would enable the immigration authorities to deport within five years after landing many diseased, insane and pauper immigrants, anarchists and other criminals whose undesirability was not manifest upon landing or within one year thereafter. ”

“ In his last annual message the President recommended the prohibition of immigration through Canada and Mexico, the strengthening of our exclusion laws, heavier restraints upon the steamship companies, and severer penalties for enticing immigrants. It is a striking fact that nearly all of the proposed additions to our laws are intended to stop the evasion and violation of the laws we have, which are made ineffective by fraud and questionable practices of the most extensive kind. ”

“ If we examine existing laws, and seek to understand the real nature of immigration restriction, we can see the character of this mistake. All of our legislation governing immigration should be described as improvement of immigration rather than restriction of immigration. ”

“ Some organizations raised concerns with regard to the administration of justice and barriers faced by migrant workers to gain redress, inter alia: the length a migrant arrested under Immigration Act may be held before being brought before a Magistrate; indeterminate detention pending removal ”

“ It is true that the law was intended to fill the need for agricultural workers by removing the 1917 prohibition against would-be employers' inviting and inducing foreign workers to come to the United States. But we are not persuaded that the law, which provided specific limitations and requisites to entry under it, can properly be interpreted to authorize would-be employers to invite, induce and offer rewards to aliens to circumvent immigration processing and to enter the United States in disregard and defiance of law. ”

“ We need not speculate as to Congress' purposes. Quite possible, as Judge Browning has persuasively suggested, 'Congress visualized a single administrative proceeding in which all questions relating to an alien's deportation would be raised and resolved, followed by a single petitiion in a court of appeals for judicial review * * *.' Yamada v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, 384 F.2d 214, 218. It may therefore be that Congress expected the Immigration Service to include within the § 242 (b) proceeding 'all issues which might affect deportation.' Ibid. ”

“ Refugees from Communist lands were also benefited, but the Act principally granted relief to persons who would be temporarily or permanently separated from their nearest relatives if the strict requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act, including the national quotas, were not relaxed for them. ”

“ The truth is that this movement for the restriction of immigration, so far as it is honest, springs from a sorry misconception of certain troublesome problems before us, or from a sorrier lack of courage to face them. Symptoms of deterioration in our political life, or in the character of our citizenship, are observed, and some volatile intellects find it most convenient to dispose of the whole matter by simply saying that the “foreign element” is alone chargeable with it, and that the trouble can easily be cured by stopping immigration. ”

“ The act referred to contains these provisions:
'That the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States, in accordance with the existing acts regulating immigration, other than those concerning Chinese laborers: All idiots, insane persons, paupers, or persons likely to become a public charge. ”

“ These conditions frequently result in an injustice to the immigrant. The police and court records of our great cities show an amazing proportion of crimes chargeable to the foreign population. For instance, out of 71,253 persons held for trial or summarily tried and convicted in the Magistrates’ Courts of New York City in 1907, only 30,261, or considerably less than half, were born in the United States. ”