There may have been as many as 11 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States last year, according to a study by Northeastern University, but the federal government, charged by the Constitution with regulating immigration and defending the nation's borders, deported only about 1 percent of them.

The rest were allowed to stay and -- if liberal Democrats have their way -- may someday be given amnesty and allowed to become full-fledged U.S. citizens, and thus voters.

17 congressional districts

They would equal the total population of 17 congressional districts and amount to about 20 times the difference in the popular vote in last November's presidential election.

Following the 2000 Census, the U.S. Census Bureau originally estimated there were 6 million illegal immigrants in the country as of last year. But last month the bureau said it was revising that estimate, and might increase it to 9 million. Meanwhile, researchers at Northeastern University have released a report arguing that the real number of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. is 11 million.

In fiscal 1999, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other agencies intercepted at or near the border and deported approximately 1.6 million people trying to enter the country illegally or found ineligible for entry.

But once illegal aliens get past the border, enforcement of U.S. immigration laws virtually stops. In 1999, the INS managed to deport only 72,000 illegal aliens who were willing to leave voluntarily, and another 47,000, who left involuntarily after proceedings. That total, 119,000, is only about 1.08 percent of the total number of illegals that Northeastern estimated are now living in the United States.

Furthermore, according to the Census Bureau, each year about 400,000 new illegal immigrants sneak across our borders and settle permanently in the country.

U.S. immigration laws, in other words, have become a dead letter. They are completely meaningless -- at least for people who are wealthy enough, or geographically close enough to the United States, to make it here without a legitimate visa.

"Our Interior Enforcement units have limited resources," said an INS spokeswoman. "There are civil liberties issued involved in trying to identify illegal residents. Very often their employers protect them because they want inexpensive labor. But we have stepped up our targeting of employers since the 1996 immigration reform." She noted that the number of immigrants ruled inadmissible or found and deported, despite being minuscule in absolute terms, was a record for the period since 1965, when the current system of immigration laws was largely put in place.

"The INS's budget has doubled in the last five years," countered a staffer for outgoing House Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, R.-Texas, who counts himself an illegal-immigration hawk. "The INS has not been enforcing the law against illegal immigrants, especially the provisions in the 1996 bill that make worksite enforcement easier. We need an INS commissioner who will aggressively enforce the law at the border and everywhere else. … And as the congressman has said many times, President Clinton's proposals for amnesties just encouraged more people to enter this country illegally."

Kent Wissinger, spokesman for incoming subcommittee Chairman Rep. George Gekas, R.-Pa., said, "Congressman Gekas hasn't come to a conclusion on what needs to be done yet."

It was over 45 years ago -- from 1953 to 1955 -- that the INS conducted the last comprehensive push to root out illegal immigrants in the United States. "Some 2.1 million, mostly Mexican, illegal aliens were removed between 1953 and 1955," wrote David Simcox in a paper for the Center for Immigration Studies, which he chairs. "While abuses marred the effort, illegal immigration stayed under control for more than a decade."

The INS says that alien-smuggling is now an $8-billion-a-year industry and that smuggling rings are a top focus of its law enforcement efforts.

"We believe this is a good way to target our limited resources and if we make it unprofitable for the smugglers, fewer people will come," said the INS official. She noted that the daily average detention population of the INS has grown to 20,000 detainees, up from 8,200 in 1997. "Our enforcement efforts have increased tremendously," she said.

Illegal aliens who reside in the country have the right to legal representation during deportation proceedings. The average case time has dropped since the 1996 reform and is now four years.

The INS's budget doubled from 1995 to 1999, when it reached $4.3 billion.

Robert Bach, who served as executive associate INS commissioner under President Clinton, said, "If there is one idea that comes out of looking at these numbers, it is, as we have said many, many times before, that over the past two decades or so the country has had insufficient resources and attention to the illegal immigration problem … and it has accumulated to where it is now a large and substantial issue."

-- Scares the (shit@outta.me), March 26, 2001

Answers

"The rest were allowed to stay and -- if liberal Democrats have their way -- may someday be given amnesty and allowed to become full- fledged U.S. citizens, and thus voters. " Did anyone else find this paragraph funny?

-- Dr. Pibb (dr.pibb@zdnetonebox.com), March 26, 2001.

You better be scared! We're going to rob you blind, then slit your throat.

-- (liberal @ illegal. aliens), March 26, 2001.

Dr. Pibb sir, the humor was lost on me. We need a government funded program to educate these folks on chad punching.

-- So (cr@t.es), March 26, 2001.

Socrates, Actually we need to make sure the Democratic candidate is the only one who shows up on the ballot.

-- Dr. Pibb (dr.pibb@zdnetonebox.com), March 26, 2001.

11 million illegal immigrants

...and probably some of the damned-hardest workers in the US of A.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 26, 2001.

This game is over. Better to learn how to deal with the coming dynamics than fuss about their source. Something to keep in mind maybe is how a few blowjobs could so effectivly divert attention from the important shit. I don't think he was that smart but he might fool a fella.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), March 26, 2001.

"Better to learn how to deal with the coming dynamics than fuss about their source."

Yes, as long as they're here we might as well use them for slaves like I did. Just ignore what American citizens say about stealing their jobs, these folks work for peanuts! Also you don't have to pay any taxes or give them any insurance, so they are a real bargain!

-- Linda Chavez (bush@cabinet.appointee), March 26, 2001.

Was talking politics. Green Card guys get some time Chavez but I don't employ illegals. Still, if they feel too exploited in the US the solution seems pretty simple. Never heard of anybody being arrested for walking home.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), March 27, 2001.

You're rather dim. The illegal aliens don't feel expolited, they're happy to be here. How is an unemployed American citizen supposed to "walk home" if he is already there?

-- (carlos @ not. bright), March 27, 2001.

Another article that fits in perfectly:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62054-2001Mar26.html

A Magnet for Illegal Immigrants, Surge in Undocumented Population Swamps Area Service Providers By Mary Beth Sheridan and Peter Whoriskey Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, March 27, 2001; Page A01

They are hiding in plain view. At the parking lot off Route 50 in Fairfax County's Culmore neighborhood, where scores of jeans-clad men cluster seeking day jobs. At the Latino center in Takoma Park, jammed by Salvadoran immigrants signing up for a new legal work program. In the capital's restaurant kitchens, construction sites, day-care centers.

[b]New census data suggest that there are far more undocumented immigrants in the United States than previously thought, experts say. But if this phantom workforce has been invisible to policymakers, it hasn't been to many community workers in the Washington area. Those who teach, counsel and heal low-income immigrants say they are struggling to help a group that has swelled beyond official estimates. [/b]

"We can't provide all the services to the people. Every day, more and more people come," said Gustavo Torres, director of Casa de Maryland, a nonprofit agency in Takoma Park that helps Latino immigrants.

No one knows how many undocumented workers are in the Washington area. A hidden population by definition is extremely difficult to count. Schools and social-service agencies rarely ask for evidence of legal residence. But experts agree that the region, with its thriving service economy and surging communities of legal immigrants, has become a magnet for undocumented workers in a way that it wasn't decades ago.

Even crude estimates reflect the region's transformation. Virginia, Maryland and the District rank in the top 20 in undocumented immigrants, according to 1996 estimates of the 50 states, plus the District, by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Virginia is ninth, with 55,000; Maryland is 12th, with 44,000; and the District ranks 18th with 30,000, the INS estimated.

Rosario Gutierrez, head of the D.C. mayor's office on Latino affairs, said the city government is pouring millions of dollars into health and education programs aimed at Latino immigrant families. But she doesn't know how many are illegal.

"Undocumented people aren't going to say they're undocumented. They send their kids to school, and no one will know," because it is illegal to ask a student's immigration status, she said.

But she said the city's Latino population is probably much larger than the latest Census estimate, from August, of about 38,500. In fact, she said, community agencies working with immigrants estimate that there are 80,000 Latinos in the District, including legal and illegal immigrants and the native born. The Census Bureau will release its racial and ethnic population totals for the District this week.

The theory that there are more undocumented immigrants than previously estimated has emerged from the 2000 Census, which counted millions more U.S. residents than the Census Bureau had forecast it would. Census officials believe they underestimated the immigrant population by up to 3 million people, many of them undocumented. They hope to have a more conclusive answer by fall.

The factors driving people to emigrate may be as simple as that expressed by Alex, one of the young workers who gather each morning in several informally designated parking lots throughout Northern Virginia, waiting to be picked up for day landscaping or construction jobs.

"There's no money in Guatemala," said Alex, who declined to give his last name. He interrupted the interview to jump into a truck with an employer who had just materialized.

Economic decline or warfare at home are among the key "push" factors driving immigrants to the Washington area. But there are also important "pull" factors: the region's dynamic economy, which has created thousands of entry-level service jobs, and the growing communities of foreign-born legal residents.

"We have a critical mass of Latinos here" legally, said Carlos Manjarrez, a research associate at the Urban Institute who has studied the local Latino community. "That makes this a site for people [in other countries] to come to, to rejoin their families, to find the same kind of work their brother found a few years earlier."

According to INS estimates, the majority of undocumented people are Latinos. But experts caution that illegal workers in the Washington area aren't all peasants who sneaked across the Rio Grande.

Nationally, the INS estimates that 40 percent of illegal residents are "overstayers," who arrived with tourist or student visas, often at entry points like Reagan National Airport, then remained.

The Washington area is a magnet for such people, who are often more educated and better off financially than those who came without visas, experts say. The "overstayers" may have skills needed by the large white-collar economy as well as contacts in the city's diplomatic and international organizations.

"We're not talking about Guatemalans who are busboys and doing household domestic chores. These are people who have college and high school degrees and computer proficiency. They fit more easily into a high-tech service environment," said Robert D. Manning, a sociologist at the University of Houston Law School who has studied the immigrant community here.

Such immigrants may be middle-class Argentines working in malls, Irish running pubs or Indians working in firms that serve the high- tech industry. They are often less visible than poorer immigrants who may cluster in ethnic neighborhoods.

Immigrant activists have recently gotten a vivid glimpse of the pool of undocumented workers in the area. On March 2, after two devastating earthquakes in El Salvador, President Bush agreed to grant 18-month work permits to Salvadorans who are in the country illegally. Since then, nonprofit Latino groups have been inundated by Salvadorans seeking to fill out the paperwork for the program, known as temporary protected status.

"In the past month, these people have been coming in alarming quantities to community organizations to legalize," said Torres, of the Casa de Maryland. His agency, which helps about 15 Salvadorans a day through the process, is so swamped that applicants must wait until May for an appointment.

Torres said his agency also is struggling to help a growing number of immigrants -- some of them illegal -- with English classes, legal services and employment training.

Jorge Figueredo, executive director of the nonprofit Hispanic Committee of Virginia, said he couldn't estimate the size of the area's undocumented population. But he said the upswing in Latino immigration overall has overburdened agencies seeking to help people with affordable housing and transportation.

"Is this population being served? No. And the reason is that the numbers of immigrants has been growing so fast," he said.

Some believe the 2000 Census has picked up many more people in part because of greater efforts to count illegal immigrants. Maria Gomez, who runs Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care, a nonprofit agency in the District's Adams-Morgan neighborhood that aids Latinos, believes many people simply were missed in earlier counts.

"There was no outreach in the community," she said.

That changed with last year's census. The bureau hired people trusted by immigrant communities, such as workers at local clinics. Census workers gave lectures to English as a Second Language classes. They homed in on neighborhoods where immigrants lived. They approached people as often as possible in their own language.

And yet, the counters still missed some undocumented residents.

Among those who believe they weren't counted is Eric, a 19-year-old construction worker from Guatemala who did not give his last name. He was living in a Falls Church apartment with his brother and five friends when the census form arrived.

None of the seven men were counted, he said, because they threw the form away.

"My friends were afraid that it would cause trouble with immigration," Eric said. "When the census people called, we said it was in the mail."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Fair use purposes cited.

-- Heres Some More (no.thankyou@not.at.this.time), March 27, 2001.

Let them go back where they came from, I say. Them spics and gooks don't deserve to live anyway. Them gooks can't even see straight-you can't trust them driving with them slanty eyes. And those wetbacks can't keep themselves clean-what a smell. Let them go back where they came from. Do you think I care if they may be imprisoned for life or even murdered by political factions? Do you think I care if their families starve to death? That would just decrease the surplus population. Why should I care if some stupid low-life has to suffer under crippling oppression, or if their daughter is sold into prostituion at the age of 8 because there is no other income and nothing in the way of social services?

The italians, germans, and irish at the turn of the 2oth century were the RIGHT kind of immigrants. This country is great because we let the right kind of people come here. Enough of this pond scum we have these days. Let them go back to their country so I can continue to enjoy the clothes I wear that their child labor can make. Let them go back where they get paid $100 a month to work 12 hours a day so I can enjoy MY standard of living.

Get the hell out of my country.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), March 27, 2001.

Mr. Shock, I enjoy your satire but I think you know the reality of this most serious problem facing our country. In comparing the past immigration groups with the present you failed to address the most important issue, in one word ‘LEGAL’. Do you support illegal immigration into the United States?

If so, we have nothing more to say on this subject.

If not, how do we get control of this run-a-way train?

-- So (cr@t.es), March 27, 2001.

Just a simple question here, but how exactly do illegals get hired these days without a social security CARD? I emphasized the CARD because I've been able to find work for years just by giving my social security NUMBER. NOW, folks want to see the CARD!

My daughter was asked for her card to be accepted as a candidate recently, so I E-mailed my ex-husband, because he kept all that stuff in a safety deposit box. I'd interviewed with someone the previous day who ALSO wanted to see the card. [I thought I lost the card when I was 16, but I knew I could write SS and get a new one.] He sent her card, and a few days later, I got MY card in the mail from him. I'd forgotten that the name on my card had changed when we married, and he found it looking for some other stuff.

With recruiters and employment agencies requiring documented proof of citizenship [or even a green card], I'd have to believe employers are the ones "looking the other way" regarding requirements of employment.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), March 27, 2001.

It's a simple thing to get a fake SS card, green card, or other ID. 99% of employers simply fill out the I-9 form, file it, and forget about it. If the INS spot audits your company and finds out you hired an illegal alien, you might be in for a fine, but probably not since, hey, they produced a green card.

It is actually a very simple thing to check a social security number to see when and where it was issued. All you have to do is link to the Social Secuirty Administration. Most background checking companies will do this, and tell you where, when, and to whom the number was issued (so you can be sure you're not hiring an illegal). It literally takes a matter of minutes. This database also prevents illegals from getting public benefits, such as welfare. If someone in his mid-twenties named Jesus y Maria Gonzalez hands you a SS card with a number issued to Lillian Winterhaven in 1948, that's a big tipoff, even for a public employee.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), March 27, 2001.

Soc, I follow the rules as regards employment but the real truth regarding immigration is that the game is over. Sovereign nations were once measured by their borders. No more. Best to adapt and whatever you don't get too attached to a flag.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), March 27, 2001.

Anita:

Interesting. Actually, I have never been asked for my SS card. Good thing, because it dissolved when, showing my usual grace, I fell in a Washington river salmon fishing in the 60's. As I recall, no one has asked to see my diplomas or transcripts. None of the 5 grad schools that I applied to requested my GRA's [and I was accepted at all 5]. This includes both universities and industry. I suppose that things have changed. I also hope that I can find my diplomas if anyone needs to see them.

Best Wishes,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), March 27, 2001.

Ah Mr. Carlos sir, your learned words of truth are a bitter pill to swallow. In my soul that reality has been accepted but my mind still seeks those elusive solutions that may never exist. History has shown us many major shifts of power and one can only speculate what the cards may hold for this country.

-- So (cr@t.es), March 27, 2001.