Ongoing amnesty for illegals

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views September 9, 2002]

“No matter how overcrowded many of our schools are becoming. No matter how many emergency rooms and public health care facilities have to be closed because of a dramatic rise in uninsured immigrants. No matter how it affects wages, jobs, affordable housing or the environment, there appears to be no limit to the willingness of our political leaders to pander to ethnic voting blocs and to cheap labor interests,” stated Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He was responding to the latest immigration data that indicate that illegal aliens adjusting their status drove "legal" immigration levels to more than one million in Fiscal Year 2001. With the exception of a one-year spike caused by the illegal alien amnesty of 1986, this is the first time in nearly a century that immigration has exceeded the one million mark and the 1,064,318 people admitted represent a 65 percent increase in just two years.

FAIR reports:

The new data, released just prior to the start of the Labor Day Weekend--presumably to minimize attention to the dramatic increase in immigration levels--reveal that some 215,000 illegal aliens living in the U.S. were granted legal status during FY 2001. Even more startling than the number of illegal aliens granted permanent residence under adjustment programs like Section 245(i) is the revelation that an additional 970,000 adjustment cases are still pending.

Provisions in the law such as Section 245(i) have proven to be a massive and ongoing amnesty program for illegal aliens. One in five people who became legal U.S. residents in FY 2001 were people who had either entered the country illegally, or remained here after the expiration of a temporary visa.

“When it comes to immigration, the American public has been lied to more often than the shareholders of Enron,” commented Stein. “We were told by the previous administration that immigration levels--already excessive in the eyes of most Americans--were likely to decline. That assurance turned out to be untrue. We were told that Section 245(i) would benefit only a small number of people who had fallen “out of status” because of bureaucratic delays in completing their paperwork. It turns out that “small number,” in FY 2001 alone, was actually equivalent to the population of Akron, Ohio, and that there are nearly another million such people in the pipeline.

“In light of the latest data, it is time for some explanations out of Washington,” Stein continued. “The president and Congress need to explain to the American public why immigration levels of more than one million people a year, one-fifth of whom have broken our immigration laws, is beneficial to the country. How is the average American, who is not an immigrant or an employer of immigrants, better off as a result of a 65 percent increase in immigration levels? And, after the tragedy of last Sept. 11, how are Americans made more secure by massive amnesty programs that grant hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens legal status in our country with only the most cursory of background checks?”

To keep up to date with current immigration news, visit the FAIR website.

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