Over the years, immigration legislation has mandated that the federal government establish safeguards within the immigration system. Repeatedly, these safeguards have been delayed or simply ignored jeopardizing the safety of Americans. This list details those laws and what the government hasn't done.

Are massive legal immigration and massive illegal immigration related? If so, how? Many in policy circles hold a view of "Legal immigration, good; illegal immigration, bad." The logical extensions of such a simplistic perspective are to assume that the overall level of legal immigration does not matter and to underestimate any correlation to illegal immigration. But the facts show a distinct connection exists... Many aliens who receive a permanent resident visa each year have spent years living in the United States illegally... "Anchor babies" and "chain migration" provide opportunities for many aliens to plant roots in the United States. Those aliens might not otherwise have done so.

The top problems survey participants named as the most important facing the country were the economy; unemployment/jobs; healthcare-related issues; federal government/politics; immigration/illegal aliens; federal budget deficit/debt; lack of money; terrorism, moral/ethics issues, national security, environment and the war in Iraq.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose sanctuary cities and 50% believe that the policies lead to an increase in crime.

Sixty-five percent of the respondents say they follow news stories that involve sanctuary cities; 28% say they follow them very closely. When asked about the creation of sanctuary cities, only 13% of respondents favor their creation.

Forty-nine percent of Americans support cutting off federal funding to sanctuary cities, while 33% oppose a cutoff.

A Gallup poll released on August 5, 2009 shows that 50% of all Americans believe that immigration should be reduced.  This number is 11 points higher than the figure from an identical poll conducted last year.  Only 14% of Americans say immigration should be increased (down from 18%) and 32% say immigration levels should remain the same (down from 39%).

Fifty-one percent of Arizona voters say it is more important for Congress to pass immigration reform than health care reform.

By a 65% to 20% margin, Arizona voters believe enforcing the borders is more important than legalizing the status of those already living here. Half of the state’s voters (50%) think it is possible to put an end to illegal immigration, while 34% do not.

A new Rasmussen poll shows that 66% of likely voters believe that the government should improve border enforcement and reduce illegal immigration.  However, only 32% of America's "Political Class" agree.

The poll also shows that 77% of likely voters believe that illegal aliens should not be able to receive driver's licenses and 73% of Americans believe that police officers should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when that person is pulled over for a traffic violation. 

Sixty-two percent of state residents oppose granting illegal immigrants some type of limited driver's license, according to a Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll.

Only 32 percent said children of illegal immigrants deserved in-state tuition rates, while 20 percent favored the lower rates for illegal immigrants themselves.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of U.S. voters believe that a police officer should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when the officer pulls that person over for a traffic violation. Only 21% disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters also say that if law enforcement officers know of places where immigrants gather to find work, they should sometimes conduct surprise raids to identify and deport illegal immigrants. Twenty-four percent (24%) oppose surprise raids.

In a Washington Post/ABC Poll released just before Barack Obama's inaguration, respondents ranked immigration No. 10 on a list of priorities for the administration. The economy, Iraq War, foreign policy and education were all ranked ahead of immigration. Twenty-one percent said that it was the highest priority, 48 percent said it was high priority, while 29 percent said it was low priority.

When asked about what governments should do to address illegal immigration, 83% of respondents supported stronger border controls, 74% supported cracking down on employers, and 68% supported deportation.

Only 32% of Obama voters considered his support for amnesty as a factor in their decisions to vote for him. 67% said it was either not a factor at all, or they voted for Obama in spite of his stance on amnesty.

60% of voters said reducing illegal immigration and cracking down on employers who hire them is important to them, while only 21% supported "legalizing or creating a pathway to citizenship" for illegal aliens.

57% of voters stated that amnesty would harm American workers and further strain public resources, while only 26% believe amnesty would aid economic recovery and ease public burdens.

The school’s announcement has drawn some criticism from immigration hardliners in Colorado, including Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo, but others have said they are fine with school’s decision as it provides no preferential treatment to undocumented immigrants.

“I have no problem with,” said Roy Beck, the head of NumbersUSA, an organization that favors strict immigration policy. “I would not think it was a good thing if they were giving preferential treatment to illegal aliens over a student from Missouri or somebody from Peru who applied for a student visa, but this doesn’t seem like what they’re doing.”

Another voice in the illegal immigration debate is NumbersUSA Director Roy Beck and he had this to say, “The chief difficulties that America faces because of current immigration are not triggered by who the immigrants are but by how many there are. The task before the nation in setting a fair level of immigration is not about race or some vision of homogeneous white America; it is about protecting and enhancing the United States’ unique experiment in democracy for all Americans, including recent immigrants, regardless of their particular ethnicity.”

But Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which wants to reduce immigration to the U.S., said the policy encourages people to overstay their visas and remain in this country illegally.

"Yes, if you ask the American people whether the government should go after the worst of the worst or the people helping in the PTA, they'll say go after the worst of the worst," Beck said. "The problem is that the administration is basically telling people that if you come here and overstay your visa and have never been convicted of a violent crime, we will never deport you. It's presence amnesty."

Beck said he sees a mixed message from Napolitano and the administration.

For Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA, which advocates limiting immigration overall, this new focus on enforcement was a relief since it changed a growing pattern of legalization legislation. "There have been zero amnesties passed since 9/11," he says. "It may be that 9/11 did change the environment so that it became harder for Congress to continue to pass an amnesty every couple years."

The federal government's active promotion of labor rights for illegal immigrants irks Roy Beck, executive director of Virginia-based Numbers USA, which favors more stringent immigration laws.

"It just follows the pattern of the labor secretary," Beck said. "In these matters, she's the secretary of illegal labor rather than of legal labor."

Events such as Monday's are "a signal that, 'Yeah, we have these immigration laws, but we're not very serious about them,' " Beck said. "The signal that ought to be sent is, 'If you come in contact with the federal government you'll be put in deportation proceedings.' "

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that favors reducing immigration into the United States, said it's true that the deportation rate, particularly deportation of convicted criminals, has been higher under Obama.

"My sense is that Obama deserves credit, for all the complaints about him, that he has done maybe a little better than Bush on deportations," Beck said. "I think the main context, though, is that the amount of deportations under Bush was rather small."

And even under Obama, Beck said, the administration is talking about fewer than 400,000 deportations in a country with an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA, which advocates tougher measures against illegal immigration, focused on the report's finding that 8 million illegal immigrants held jobs in 2010, slightly down from 8.4 million in 2009.

"The federal and state efforts to make sure that jobs go to legal workers have failed," Beck said.

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which favors tighter restrictions on legal and illegal immigration, said Smith’s focus on E-Verify and worksite enforcement will do as much as anything else to bring order to the system.

“We think there are a lot of issues in the Internet world that people get really excited about, and in many ways, it is a side show,” Beck said, referring specifically to cutting off benefits for illegal immigrants. “It is not as important as one thing, which is taking away the jobs. So if Lamar Smith is going to focus on keeping illegal aliens out of the jobs, that is more important than all the illegal immigration stuff put together.”

Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, which calls for reduced immigration, criticizes the shifts, saying they will lead to fewer arrests of illegal immigrants. "The message is, if you come here illegally, you can get a job, you can stay under the radar, don't commit a crime and you'll be fine," she says. "It's essentially a de facto amnesty."

Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations at Numbers USA, believes there is an ulterior motive behind the Obama administration's move to expand the program.

"This administration, including the secretary of Homeland Security, believes that if they can shift the focus of all immigration enforcement to just 'criminal aliens,' then they will be able to look like they're being tough on enforcement without actually affecting the vast majority of illegal aliens in this country," she states.

Last year, the Judiciary Committee approved two important pieces of legislation to stem the flow of illegal immigration and protect America’s communities from dangerous criminal immigrants. Despite promises of bipartisanship, the president has not expressed support for either one of these proposals.

Twelve restaurant workers were detained in an immigration raid off Brevard Road Tuesday, according to a local immigrants rights group. . .

Volker said agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained eight people from Latin American countries and four Asian immigrants ranging in age from 23 to around 40. Volkmer said some of the immigrants were from Mexico and El Salvador.

 

Federal agents arrested a manager at a cardboard box company in southwest Detroit this morning on charges he hired undocumented workers.

Edward Schlacht, 48, a supervisor at Grigg Box Company, was taken into custody this morning by agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

WASHINGTON – The U.S. deported nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants last year, and an increasing number of them were convicted criminals, according to figures set for release Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security.

Deportations have been on the rise for the past decade, and the 396,906 illegal immigrants deported in fiscal year 2011 is the highest number yet, according to the figures.

The illegal immigration debate hit home last week as the owners of the Cancun Mexican restaurants and the Fajita Grill were arrested on charges of conspiring to harbor illegal aliens and employing illegal aliens.

The soft, slow response of the federal authorities to the violations allegedly perpetrated by these Mexican restaurants is a perfect example of why we have an illegal immigrant problem in this country. The investigation into the Fajita Grill began in 2008, before the Cancun restaurant ever opened in Biddeford. Does it really take three years to check a few people’s citizenship status?

A Falfurrias woman is dead after police say a vehicle full of illegal immigrants drove through her house. Family members identify that woman as 70-year-old Bertha Gonzalez.

Police say Gonzalez was asleep when a Chevy Suburban crashed through her bedroom around 2:00 Saturday morning. They say the driver of that car and his seven passengers are all illegal immigrants.

Some pundits and political operatives — mostly Democrats — have already announced the demise of the Republican Party. They point to the growth of the Hispanic community and assert that the GOP needs to embrace amnesty for illegal immigrants to attract Hispanic voters.

But in the 1986 election, after a Republican president signed into law the largest amnesty for illegal immigrants in American history, only 23 percent of Hispanics voted for Republican candidates.

More recently, a November 2009 Zogby poll found that 82 percent of likely Hispanic voters strongly or somewhat support reducing the illegal immigrant population over time by enforcing existing immigration laws, such as requiring employers to verify the legal status of workers and increasing border enforcement.

The White House is urging lawmakers to back away from a campaign led by Hispanic Democrats to block deportations involving U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, a move that risks antagonizing Latino voters crucial to President Barack Obama’s re-election.

Several members of Congress who were scheduled to attend a March 31 news conference on the issue said administration officials contacted them to voice concern about their participation. Until U.S. immigration law is overhauled, the lawmakers say, Obama should use his executive power to protect families facing deportation or separation because at least one parent is an illegal immigrant.

The 2010 census found 43.2 percent of Arizonans under 18 were Hispanic and that whites were for the first time in a minority in that age group, at 41.6 percent. The ethnic and generational changes set the stage for Arizona to become a “test case” for responding to demographic trends as the U.S. becomes more diverse and increasingly Hispanic, said Jeff Milem, an education professor University of Arizona in Tucson.

“Arizona seems to be in the forefront,” he said. “We’ve got to lay the groundwork now for people to come together.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say they have broken up local ties to a brutal nationwide network of Hispanics who they believe produce false documents for illegal immigrants on the South Carolina Grand Strand and elsewhere in the region.

Some of the false documents were distributed in the Myrtle Beach, S.C., area by Victor Hugo Roa-Alzua, who will be arraigned in federal court Tuesday on five felony charges that he conspired to produce and transfer false identification documents.

Roa-Alzua is part of a national network headed by Israel Cruz Millan _ also known as El Muerto, which is Spanish for "the dead one" - that has been under investigation for the past year, according to court documents. The network has sent 1,500 wire transfers totaling about $1 million from its activities to a home base in Mexico, ICE officials said.