When you hear politicians talking about "fixing our broken immigration system," you can be pretty sure that what they really want is to dismantle enforcement and make it easier for employers to access cheap, foreign labor.
But for those who truly care about the harm that illegal immigration poses to American workers' incomes, to national security and to public safety, NumbersUSA has developed the following list of the 10 actions that would make the greatest strides toward ending illegal immigration.
It's the immigration ENFORCEMENT system that needs fixing.
There are a lot of ideas out there about what is needed to fix that system. We believe these 10 actions listed below would do more than any other to limit new illegal migration and to reduce the size of the current illegal population at the lowest cost to taxpayers and least disruption.
We have prepared this draft list from the collaboration with our staff lawyers and other Capitol Hill specialists who have deep experience with law enforcement and immigration legislation.
- Make E-Verify mandatory for all U.S. employers to eliminate the jobs magnet.
- Complete the Congressionally-mandated biometric entry/exit system to track non-immigrant visitors to the U.S.
- End the practice of birthright citizenship for illegal aliens and foreign visitors.
- Require state and local law enforcement to report affirmatively all non-citizens in custody to ICE, make ICE detainers mandatory, and require ICE to pick up and remove deportable aliens.
- Expand expedited removal to include all illegal aliens with criminal convictions.
- End catch-and-release of illegal aliens by requiring that they be detained until removal.
- Deny immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to nations that refuse to repatriate their citizens.
- Reform the judicial process in immigration courts, including restricting relief from removal, to expedite the process and reduce the backlog of cases.
- Restrict asylum to the internationally recognized definition of those who are unable to be returned to the home country due to a well-founded fear of (state) persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
- Allow Border Patrol access to all federal lands.
Many of these items are already federal law, but simply ignored by the current and past Administrations. Legislation has been introduced to repair much of the rest.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? JOIN OUR CONVERSATION BELOW. WHAT DO YOU THINK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THESE 10? WOULD YOU CHANGE THE ORDER OF PRIORITY? DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS?
ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA
