Illegal Immigration In America

There has been a frightening increase in illegal immigration in the U.S. The amount of illegal immigrants, in America, is a major concern to our citizens and government. About 11.7 million immigrants are living in the United States illegally and the numbers continue to climb, according to the Pew Research Center Hispanic Trends Project. In order to control this, greater measures must be taken to control the amount of illegal immigrants that enter the U.S. The existing immigration laws alone is not a good solution to refuse illegal immigration.

In order to fully comprehend issues caused by illegal immigration, its history in America needs to be taken into account. When Americans first started to take the census, in 1850, there were 2.2 million immigrants which was 10 percent of the population, at the time. From then-on until 1920, immigrants were, at the highest, 15 percent of the U.S population. This was mainly because of Europeans entering America. Between 1930 and 1970, there was a large decrease in immigrant population in the United States. It was at an all-time low of about 5 percent, due to the Restrictive Immigration Legislation cause mostly by World War II. New Admission Laws were made in 1965, which caused the immigrant population of South Americans, and Asians to enter the U.S. Ever since then the amount of illegal immigrants has increased with the years. Almost 41 million immigrants lived in the United States in 2012.

This is the most common path into American residency. More than 25 percent of green cards issued in 2007 were spouses of American citizens. Between 2006 and 2007 there were more green cards issued to spouses of U.S citizens than there were issued to immigrants granted for work reasons. Marriage fraud, for the purpose of immigration gets little notice because less can be done about it. State department and Department of Homeland Security have no resources to fight this issue. If people come to America just to be gold diggers off of the American man, which means it is just as easy for maybe a terrorist to do the same. Petitions for bringing foreign spouses or fiancés are usually approved, even though the couple may not speak the same language or may have met off of the internet. A significant number of illegal immigrants ordered removed from the illegal alien list and are marriage based green card applicants. Most of these people possessed criminal records. When deciding who does/does not receive a green card, photographs, documents, and records are taken into consideration. Since 1998, more than 2.3 million foreign nationals have obtained green cards through marriage to an American citizen (according to the CIS immigration marriage study). The steps taken for the U.S resident, and the immigrant for getting a marriage grant is: 1) The American files a