Illegal Immigration in the United States

The issue of illegal immigration in the United States has the status of a major social problem and sharp controversy over the proper public policy toward immigrant behavior. Illegal immigration achieved special resonance during the 1990s, which was marked by a series of public-policy initiatives that were fed by public opinion.

It is a commonplace of American history that the national population is make up almost entirely of immigrants. However, over the course of the 20th century, the ethnic and linguistic makeup of immigrants into the US shifted dramatically from the trends that dominated immigration in the previous centuries. Whereas in the 18th and 19th and in the first part of the 20th centuries the great majority of immigrants came from various countries of Europe, by the last third of the century the trend was markedly toward immigrants who were coming from Latin America and Asia. Furthermore, a significant portion of these immigrants entered the US surreptitiously and illegally, i.e., not through open and established channels of travel from country to country via visa, passport, etc. The shift in the pattern of immigration was accompanied by changes in the attitudes toward immigrants as well.

In the United States, the quintessential nation of immigrants, the influx of new arrivals has sparked a growing nativist backlash. While a Gallup poll in 1965 showed that only 33 percent of Americans believed too many immigrants were entering the country, the number increased t

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to visit the US. Indeed, there is some support for that image, in the highly visible and highly concentrated near-urban border points. Espenshade cites the fact that the Chula Vista, California, border station "covers just a single mile of border, yet it records more apprehensions than any other station" (Espenshade, 1995, p. 195). Along the same lines, Andreas (1994, p. 50) cites the erection of a 10-foot-high fence at the border near San Diego during the 1990s. However, there is a more institutional, or as it were industrial, character to illegal immigration that has emerged since the 1980s: smuggling of relatively large pools of immigrants in vehicles or vessels designed for the purpose. Immigrant smuggling deals in tens and dozens, sometimes hundreds, and it involves both Latin American and Asian immigrants. Whereas individuals who smuggle themselves and perhaps their families across borders put themselves at considerable risk for apprehension or the vicissitudes of furtive travel, those who are transported as part of a group would seem to be somewhat insulated from visibility and apprehension at the border. But that is only one standpoint from which to consider the phenomenon. According to Andreas, the increased attention b

Category: Government - I