Failed Immigration Policy

One issue any type of immigration reform must address is the inadequate number of persons responsible for implementing immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws.  Fences - real or virtual - won't do.  Paths to citizenship won't do.  Driver licenses won't do.  If you want to encourage legal immigration, you must put forth an immigration system that allows immigrants to enter and stay in the country legally while ensuring that those documented immigrants are not a threat to national security.

This must be done to avoid a mess like this:
 

Exactly one year after federal agents burst into a New Bedford factory and arrested 361 immigrant workers, about half of those arrested are still here, an outcome that is raising concerns on both sides of the heated immigration divide.

The raid whiplashed the city, drew criticism from state and federal authorities, and captured national attention for separating some parents from their children. Now, the plodding aftermath is prompting new questions about the effectiveness of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's raid.

Emphasis added.  How many are still in the U.S.?  About 200.  Why?

Most of those who remain are fighting deportation, but 10 have been allowed to stay for various reasons.

Federal officials said that they had sent 165 people back to their homelands, mainly Guatemala and El Salvador, and that 12 of those went voluntarily.

The nation's top immigration official, Julie Myers, defended the outcome of the raid during a press conference in Boston yesterday, saying it was "perfectly appropriate" for immigrants to fight their cases in court.

Sounds reasonable enough.

"I'm confident that at the end of the day, once the immigration judges make their rulings . . . that those individuals will then be removed," Myers said.

But lawyers for immigrants say they believe dozens of people will qualify for asylum or other relief, some because they fear political violence or gangs in their homeland. Over the past year, lawyers said, they have interviewed the detainees, mostly women, and unearthed chilling stories of assaults, rapes, and killings that occurred during the decades-long conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Emphasis added.  Now, you know there's something wrong with the immigration system when it cannot even adjudicate cases that appear to warrant consideration for asylum.

Because hearings are being scheduled into next year, many former Bianco workers are struggling to scrape by as they wait. Some are living with friends or relatives.

So these people will be in legal limbo for two to three years.  I'm not advocating immediate residency for immigrants, documented or otherwise, but the system must move faster than this.

Some of those who were deported have slipped back into the United States illegally to rejoin their families. . . Some immigrants caught at Bianco have simply gone back to work elsewhere.

Hardly a "happily ever after" ending.

We're way past due on having comprehensive immigration reform.  Otherwise, we'll keep throwing good money after bad relying on a useless system to enforce our immigration laws.