Russell Pearce, the state senator who authored Arizona Senate Bill 1070, has proclaimed that neighborhoods in the state will be safer when all undocumented immigrants are labeled by statute as criminals. His bill sought to help ensure that, but the heart of 1070 was stymied by U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton in a ruling that is certain to be appealed.
Law enforcement authorities, including Phoenix police chief Jack Harris, think 1070 will make it even harder for cops to do their jobs. Already, the victims of smugglers are reluctant to report crimes to police. If all of 1070 goes into effect, even more violent crime will operate under the radar of law enforcement.
Inside a Phoenix drop house where coyotes held more than two dozen illegal immigrants hostage.
This "torture closet" was used to brutally abuse a Phoenix kidnapping victim whose family could not pay his ransom.
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A report published in October 2009 by the Immigration Policy Center think tank, "Breaking Down the Problems: What's Wrong With Our Immigration System?," highlights some of the major problems with federal immigration policy, including arbitrary caps on visas and an enforcement-only approach that doesn't provide practical legal alternatives for entering the United States.
For example, Congress places equal limits on the number of U.S. visas available to each nation. That means that a country like Mexico, where more than 1 million people have applications pending, has the same quota as Belgium. Also, on paper, federal authorities say that one of the goals of immigration policy is to reunite families by admitting immigrants with relatives in the United States, but deep backlogs mean that it can take twenty years or longer for immigration officials to review an application for a green card.
U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes U.S. permanent-residency applications, is just now working on applications filed in 1994 by Mexican nationals seeking visas or green cards. These people, who followed the rules, have already waited sixteen years.
That's too long for immigrants to endure, says Phoenix immigration attorney Jared Leung, when they need employment to feed their families or are desperate to reunite with loved ones already here. "Everyone is for family unity, whether you are pro-immigration or anti-immigration. It is our nature to want to be with our families," Leung adds. "But for some people, getting family unity [means] almost a twenty-year wait.
"Whether it's parents wanting to be with children who were born here, or parents bringing in children they left behind," Leung says, "no law is going to be strong enough to keep them apart."
Federal law allows 26,260 people from Mexico to receive visas each year. There are more than 1.1 million Mexicans on a waiting list.
An application process to become a legal U.S. resident that can take two decades to get processed, Leung argues, isn't a practical alternative to hiring a coyote. He says the federal government has created no incentive for immigrants to follow the rules.
Until changes are made at a federal level — not with a patchwork of rules that merely shift illegal immigrants from state to state — the opportunities that the United States offers immigrants will be too strong a force for border agents to overcome, critics of U.S. border policy, like Leung, believe.
"People are going to search for a way to feed their families, for work to support their families," Leung says.
"A poor father from Guatemala will find a way to support his family. If he has to choose between breaking the law and putting food on the table, he's going to put food on the table. Any father would choose to put food on the table."
