Faith in Immigration Enforcement Is Misplaced | Alex Nowrasteh | Cato Institute

Faith in Immigration Enforcement Is Misplaced | Alex Nowrasteh | Cato Institute: "This administration has deported, on average, 3.5 percent of the total unauthorized immigrant population annually. President George W. Bush’s deportation rate during his eight years was a mere 2.4 percent. In 2009, the first year of Obama’s administration, the government deported 3.6 percent of all unauthorized immigrants — a big jump from the 3.1 percent during Bush’s last year in office. Obama has deported an average of over 400,000 people a year, 150,000 more people a year than Bush did.

Much of this increase in deportation has been done through the Secure Communities program, which forces local law enforcement officers to act as immigration agents when they arrest unauthorized immigrants."

"When Obama took office, less than one percent of all law enforcement jurisdictions participated in Secure Communities. Since then, the Obama administration has extended Secure Communities to over 97 percent of all such jurisdictions in the U.S. — a whopping 22,000 percent increase in enforcement reach."

"About one percent of legal American workers, according to audits, are falsely identified as illegal and unable to get a job — beginning a costly bureaucratic journey to correct information in government databases. The support for E-Verify by people who favor restricting immigration is even more mystifying because it fails to identify a majority of unauthorized immigrants."

"Currently, for most prospective immigrants, [a legal pathway] does not [exist]. More green cards for lower-skilled workers, a large and flexible guest worker program, or a combination of both will make effective enforcement possible — not faith in big-government immigration enforcement."