Reducing Immigration Through Strict Enforcement

Immigration control is important in many factors: it must protect national security, maintain the rule of law, strengthen citizenship and benefit the economy. The overall effect must be to reduce illegal immigration into the United States. Although border security receives more attention, serious enforcement of current laws is starting to be a more used strategy to reduce illegal immigration.

At the moment, there are roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Some people believe we should enforce existing laws to try and make illegal immigrants leave the U.S; however, the enforcement of current laws is not the right approach because it creates new problems. First of all, a strict enforcement of existing laws will hurt the economy because it shuts down businesses. Secondly, the enforcement costs a lot of money, which could be much better used to stimulate the economy. Finally, the strict enforcement actually has some unintended consequences such as: illegal’s who get arrested and send back to their home country leave their legal children behind, it is unclear how local enforcement can force illegal’s out of the country and the enforcement of illegal’s could lead to ethnic tensions.

To start with, a strict enforcement is not good for the economy because it forces firms out of business. Michael Chertoff, who is a Homeland Security Secretary, told the New York Times that "there will be some unhappy consequences for the economy out of doing this" (Krikorian 15). In the current economy, shutting down businesses seems not the right thing to do. However, businesses and firms have been shut down since several counties decided to strictly enforce current laws. Norman Gonzalez, who owns a restaurant at Prince William County says in The Washington Post that “business at his restaurant, Cuna del Sol, has declined 50 percent” since the county adopted a new enforcement effort targeting Hispanics (Miroff A01). Another thing that we definitely do not want to happen because of strict enforcement is the shut down of vital public services. Yet, according to Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, vital public services will be shut down because the laws of enforcement are so narrowly written: “without any exclusion for vital public services, she said, a hospital or power plant could be shut down for hiring undocumented workers” (Broder).

Furthermore, the enforcement costs a lot of money, which could be much better used to stimulate the current economy. It costs a lot of money to enforce all the current laws and to make sure ‘all’ illegal immigrants get arrested and eventually transported back to their home countries. Money that is much needed in the current economic downturn. An article from The Washington Post stated that:

At a time of intense budgetary pressure in Prince William, the crackdown on illegal