U.S.-Mexico Border & Illegal Immigration

The hiring of non-union immigrants has been used as a major union-fighting strategy by the major agricultural business interests of the Southwest, which dominate state politics. Indeed, this tactic has spread beyond the confines of the Southwest, agribusiness, and the U.S.-Mexico situation. Consequently, American unions have felt greater and greater pressure from their memberships to come out on general principle in favor of more restrictive immigration policies ("Unions and Immigrants").

Concurrent with this development has been the growing crisis in the U.S. government over the safety net of the social welfare structure. Most of the current instruments of social welfare may have been set up during the Depression, but they reached their zenith of elaboration during the last days of the post-War boom, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That is, benefits and programs were established during a period of tolerance and economic prosperity. No one expected state and federal governments to run up a national debt into the trillions of d

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ants?"), an indication, according to Arturo Vargas, vice president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, that "some who have assimilated share the same attitudes as the dominant population" ("Too many immigrants?"). The past decade has seen a flurry of official approaches to stemming the tide of illegal immigrants from Mexico. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) requires employers to verify the legality of all employees within three days of hiring or face stiff fines ("Toeing the line"). To date, Congress has allocated funds for only 320 workplace inspectors to check on seven million U.S. employers ("INS: Sanctions"); implementation of IRCA is ineffectively arbitrary ("Pressure from Mexico" 373). The Immigration and Naturalization Service has built 316 miles of fences along the prime illegal-entry points on the U.S.-Mexico border ("INS: Sanctions"). On the legislative front, Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas) recently introduced a bill that would entail building triple fences at certain points and increasing Border Patrol personnel drastically; the bill has 120 co-sponsors ("Congress Moves on Immigration"). The Senate has its own set of immigration bills to consider, led by S.1394,
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Approximate Word count = 2043
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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