Last Thursday, the U.S Senate passed a bill that would allow documentation to be granted to the millions of illegal immigrants that currently exist in the country. It is thought this could naturalise over 11 million people currently living without documentation, whereas currently they would face deportation if they went to the authorities. This represents a Democrat victory in the senate, where they have been attempting to overhaul a law introduced in 1986.
Unusually, the issue caused divisions within the Republican
Party. The majority of Republicans are opposed to the bill which they view as
an amnesty for criminal illegal immigrants. As Reuters points out:
“Any bill in the Republican-controlled House is expected to focus heavily on border security and finding immigrants who have overstayed their visas”
However in the Senate, 14 Republicans voted in favour of the
bill, demonstrating a multi-party support of its introduction into law. There
are number of possible reasons for this, such as the potentially unrealistic
task of tracking down every illegal American, or the party’s difficulty in
winning the votes of the country’s legal immigrants. Many of these immigrants
view the hard-line immigration laws as already being overly restrictive.
It is noted that there could be great difficulty in passing
the bill through the largely Republican Lower House.
In an attempt to ease
this, the Senate also approved a border security amendment that promised to cut
illegal immigrants. This would spend 46 billion dollars over 10 years to place
20’000 more agents on the U.S-Mexico border, construct a 1’125km fence on
portions of this border and retrofit surveillance equipment in the area.
Critics of this bill have pointed out that this measure would put huge pressure
on the already strained American taxpayer. The largest industrial manufacturing city in
America recently went bankrupt, and the country is still struggling with the
serious risk of a budget deficit.
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