Ilegal immigration and deportation

Today I received a call from a man that has had a deportation order issued, earlier he had his political asylum approved and was working using a valid social security number as issued by the U.S. he applied for residency and that triggered a deportation order. These situations get much more complicated as time goes on and many times there is more to the story on many of these situations.

Most of the time these people have US Citizen children living here in the US and deporting them takes their financial and family support system away causing more of the burden to be put on the federal government and the States. The situations are sad and heart wrenching as you see families torn apart. President Obama has deported more people than any other president so far and although he stated he was going to concentrate on criminals about half of all deportations are non criminals.

1. Lawyers are very expensive, a good immigration lawyer with experience normally charges at least $250 per hour. Many of these people feel that lawyers take advantage of them whether they can be helped or not.

2. Coming across the border without permission is not criminal offense but it is a civil infraction and the government can pursue it as a criminal offense although most of the time they do not unless it is combined with drugs or human trafficking.

3. The Immigration system has many challenges because we have rules in place for a reason and it is not fair that all of the people that come in without permission get in line ahead of anyone that has applied legally.

4. Every one of these cases being individual has a story and many of them are very compelling. ICE has one job and that is to deport people and if they don't deport their quota of 400,000 per year they have their budget cut so they have exceeded their goals. USCIS processes the applications and our lawyer told us ICE denies and lawyers reapply. I have written letters to USCIS back in 2009 that have still not been answered. I wrote my senators and congressmen and even the President knowing full well that my letter would go into a stack of thousands of letters. USCIS will only process a piece of mail it appears if it has a check attached to it and a formal application. When I understood that I began filing one application per month and most of them were denied.

5. The current proposals have ideas both from the Republicans and from Democrats and any way you look at it, it won't be an easy fix. I have some ideas that I feel are reasonable although you can never please everyone.