Editorial
Fort Worth Star Telegram
Aug. 10, 2010
If dealing with the thousands of youths in the U.S. illegally were a midterm exam, there's hardly an answer the Obama administration could give that would be seen universally as the right one.
If Immigration and Customs and Enforcement follows a strategy of "deport them all," the agency runs into situations such as former University of Texas at Arlington student Saad Nabeel's. He came to the United States as a preschooler and graduated from high school in Frisco, but he and his family were deported to Bangladesh. Nabeel and his friends are using Facebook and YouTube to blast the administration and try to facilitate his return here.
If ICE picks "let them stay" and instead spends its finite resources on removing criminals, there's a buzz saw of criticism for not shipping out every person who is in the country illegally. And the complaints churn despite figures showing that more noncitizens are being deported than ever before.
Policing illegal immigration is a complicated, multifaceted operation, and priorities have to be set on how best to use funds and manpower.
Despite public misperception that immigration laws aren't being enforced, removal of illegal aliens has increased each year since 2005, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan project at Syracuse University.
In fiscal 2005, ICE removed 195,000 people, and that grew to 389,834 in fiscal 2009, the clearinghouse reported on Aug. 2. The number was more than 279,000 for the first nine months of fiscal 2010 (through June).
The clearinghouse found that, from 2005 through 2009, the increases resulted largely from catching people who entered the country illegally or overstayed visas.
But, during the last part of 2009, ICE appeared to switch its enforcement strategy to target "individuals who had committed crimes while in this country," the clearinghouse reported. That's resulted in a record number of criminal alien deportations. ICE and the border patrol are also referring more cases for criminal prosecution.
Those efforts haven't appeased administration critics upset about a New York Times report that officials aren't deporting students living in the U.S. illegally after being brought in as children.
Those students personify a conundrum that persists because immigration reform efforts have failed.
By and large for these students, the U.S. is the only home they know. They've spent their lives pursuing the American dream: staying in school, staying out of trouble, preparing for the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship -- but it's a citizenship they don't have and can't acquire. There are about 700,000 of them.
In April, Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, sponsors of the DREAM Act, asked the Homeland Security Department to defer student deportations while they try to move their bill forward. It would create a mechanism for students who came to the U.S. before age 16 and have spent five years here to move toward legal status.
Officials didn't declare a moratorium but appear to have put one into practice.
Some Republicans have called it selective enforcement and legislating from the White House.
No president should get to cherry-pick laws in defiance of Congress. But that's not what this looks like. Immigration agencies indeed are enforcing the law against illegal aliens who pose a danger to communities. Congress is trying to find a rational solution to the problem of students whose only offense is that they were brought here illegally.
Focusing limited border enforcement resources where they can be most effective is good practice and smart policy -- and the best answer available until Congress does the hard work of improving the immigration system.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/08/10/2396339/deporting-students-isnt-the-best.html#ixzz0wOLTEsIB
