Should there be amnesty for illegal immigrants ?

Introduction

Amnesty for illegal immigrants is characterized as the governmental pardon for violating policies related to immigration. Immigration amnesty would encompass the federal government pardoning individuals for using false documentation such as social security numbers, identification cards, and driver's licenses, in alignment to gain paid work in the U.S. and extend to remain in the country. Amnesty would allow illegal immigrants or undocumented aliens to gain permanent residency in the United States. (Daniels,98)

Current Issues and Policy

The Obama administration calmly announced last week that it would overturn one of the harsh immigration enforcement measures enacted by the Bush administration next the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The measure is the latest in the string of little-noticed initiatives by the Obama DHS to reconsider some of the most controversial enforcement policies of the past decade. The administration in August launched an overhaul of the immigration detention system, which had developed out of command as the number of detainees increase two-fold in just five years to more than 440,000 annually. Some of those were simply lost in the system, while others dropped sick and past away due to poor medical care, and the administration has promised to stop such abuses. That same month, it shifted families out of the notorious T. Don Hutto immigrant detention facility in Texas, which had become the national disgrace after revelations that pregnant women and small young children were being held there in prison-like conditions.

The administration has also largely halted workplace raids that resulted in jailing, deportation and even criminal charges for many unauthorized workers, and is focused instead on in-depth audits of companies suspected of chartering those workers. And DHS has constrained the authority of state and local policeman forces to demand immigration documents from anyone stopped for secondary offenses like traffic violations, saying that such checks should be finished only for those jailed on criminal charges, particularly for serious criminal offenses. To propel dwelling the issue, DHS in October stripped the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona of federal authority to make immigration-related arrests.

The administration is walking the narrow line. The White House believes it must contain strong on enforcement if there is any wish of assembling the political coalition in Congress to pass comprehensive immigration restructure next year. Janet Napolitano, the DHS secretary, says the administration has finished what Congress sought on everything from the U.S.-Mexico boundary barrier to the E-Verify system for authorizing workers, and that the time has arrive to enact other elements of restructure, encompassing the legalization program for many unauthorized immigrants. If Congress does not accept as factual her claims on enforcement, the rest of the package will probable be dead on arrival.

But at the same time, the administration wants to demonstrate that it's possible to be strong without being unfair and inhumane. The treatment of asylum claimants is just one example of where the United States had gone awry. Under guidelines enacted in 1997, one time an arriving individual had shown immigration officials the “credible fear” of ...