The great immigration debate: there's general, agreement that America's immigration system needs fixing--but that's where the consensus ends.

AuthorSmith, Patricia
PositionNATIONAL - Cover story

Five years ago, Ruben Arita journeyed from his native Honduras and crossed into the United States illegally. Last month in Washington, D.C., he joined hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in cities across the country, calling on Congress to offer legal status and citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

"We want to be legal," said Arita, 30, a construction worker. "We want to live without hiding, without fear. We have to speak so that our voices are listened to and we are taken into account."

The United States may be a nation of immigrants, but that hasn't prevented immigration from being a hot-button issue for much of the nation's history. The debate is especially intense now.

Since 2000, it is estimated that 850,000 unauthorized immigrants have entered the United States each year. There are currently more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., mostly from Mexico and other Latin American countries, but also from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Canada. (See map, facing page.)

"It says something about our country that people around the world are willing to leave their homes, leave their families, and risk everything to come to America," President Bush said in an April radio address. But, he later added, "No one is served by an immigration system that allows large numbers of people to sneak across the border illegally."

Congress is currently considering a broad overhaul of our nation's immigration system, which almost everyone seems to agree is broken. There are, in effect, two broad approaches to dealing with illegal immigration.

CRIMINALIZATION

The first is a get-tough approach, embodied by a bill passed by the House of Representatives in December. It would authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border; institute a crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants; and make it a federal crime to live in this country illegally, turning the illegal immigrants in the U.S. into felons, ineligible to win any legal status. It would also make it a crime for anyone, including American citizens, to give assistance to illegal immigrants. (For example, if you were to give an illegal immigrant a ride, you'd be committing a crime.)

The other approach--which seems to have more backing, both Democratic and Republican, in the Senate, and is sup ported by President Bush--is to create a guest-worker program and put most illegal immigrants on a track to citizenship, once they have paid fines and learned English.

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