…for the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University…
It is sometimes said that the hallmark of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This maxim succinctly describes the U.S. government’s long-standing approach to the problem of undocumented immigration. Since the mid-1980s, the federal government has tried repeatedly, without success, to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants to the United States with all sorts of immigration-enforcement initiatives: deploying more and more agents, fences, flood lights, aircraft, cameras, and sensors along the southwest border with Mexico — increasing the number of worksite raids and arrests conducted throughout the country — expanding detention facilities to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants apprehended each year — and creating new bureaucratic procedures to expedite the return of detained immigrants to their home countries. Despite the enormous fiscal, economic, and human costs of these measures, they have yet to make a demonstrable dent in the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country…
