The Obama administration has directed an unprecedented amount of resources to ensuring our southern border is secure and undocumented immigrants (criminal and noncriminal) are deported. In June 2012 the Department of Homeland Security announced they would allow DREAM Act-eligible youth to apply for deferred action, granting them protection against deportation and the ability to get work authorization.
Notwithstanding these efforts, in the absence of lasting solutions that fix our broken immigration system, state legislators have passed a wide array of immigration measures, ranging from Arizona’s famous “papers please” measure that has risen to the U.S. Supreme Court, to immigrant-friendly DREAM Act measures.
Our borders are safer than ever
- 81 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border meets one of the top three levels of “operational control” by U.S. enforcement officials. The remaining 19 percent covers the most remote, inaccessible, and inhospitable stretches of the border. And according to 2010 FBI crime reports, there has been a 40 percent decline in violent crime rates in Southwest border states in the last two decades.
- Border Patrol has 100 percent “eyes on the border” in high-density urban areas, meaning that they can view every attempted border crossing in real time.
- Undocumented immigration levels of Mexicans are at net zero. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States from 2005 to 2010, while approximately 1.4 million Mexicans moved from the United States to Mexico in that same period of time.
MORE: The Facts on Immigration Today.