A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reports that the number of illegal immigrants that
have been caught has risen for the second straight year. During the past eleven
months, border patrol agents have caught 388,422 immigrants trying to enter the
US without proper documentation. This number is already higher than the 34,768 caught
during the twelve month period before September 2012 and there is still one
month left during the current period. Before 2012, the number of illegal
immigrants caught had been declining for six years. A bill that was passed by
the Senate in June 2013 proposed $46 billion to strengthen efforts on the
US-Mexico border. The bill did not include any particular strategy to
strengthen efforts on the border. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi is
planning on releasing a bill that does not strengthen border security. Representative
Michael McCaul from Texas opposes Pelosi and explains that the government has
already spent over $75billion on the border without any success and that a
proper plan to strengthen the border is greatly needed. I agree with McCaul
that there needs to be a proper resolution to stop increasingly large waves of
illegal immigrants. A plan that creates proper border security with new fencing
and more patrol agents is needed to stop incoming waves of illegal immigrants.
This plan would greatly decrease the number of illegal immigrants entering into
the US through Mexico.
I would agree with you and Representative McCaul that a plan to stop illegal immigration needs to come up before we continue to throw blind money with no real plan. However, I would disagree with you in that building the fence and increasing border agents would solve the problem. That would just be more blind money spending because, as the article said, there already being a quintupling of border agents with the partial fence construction, and yet numbers still rose shows I think that as the economy seems to be getting better to the outside world that immigrants will continue to come in increasing numbers. The possible answer to this would be changing our own immigration laws and then spending money more against the cartels and smuggling or it could be more negotiation with Mexico and the Central American countries. I can't say for sure but I think that this is where Federalism in its purest form needs to come about because not only is it a national problem, but each state has its own individual problems with illegal immigration. Only through full state and national governments hammering out a policy together will this be resolved.
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