A year ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deputy director Kumar Kibble told Congress it costs about $12,500 to deport an undocumented immigrant. 

However, a 2010 report by Center for American Progress and Rob Paral and Associates took a close look at all the budget appropriations for ICE and broke down the costs per person for each one of the four stages of deportation process: apprehension, detention, legal proceeding and transportation. The whopping cost of deportation per person that they came up with is $23,480. 

The report states that ICE and US Customs and Borders Protection budgets have increased by 80% since 2005, amounting to $17.1 billion in FY2010. If US were to undertake a mass deportation campaign its cost over five years would be $285 billion, which ”would mean new taxes of $922 for every man, woman, and child in our country. $5,100 fewer dollars for the education of every public and private school student from prekindergarten to the 12th grade.”

Romney said, however, that he would support granting children of illegal immigrants some form of residency in exchange for military service. “I’m delighted with the idea that people who come to this country and wish to serve in the military can be given a path to become permanent residents of this country,” he said, according to CNN.

So according to Romney, risking your life for your country isn’t quite good enough to qualify you for citizenship. Interesting.

jeevermadness:

There is so much wrong with this article. I don’t know where to start.

I won’t even get into the ridiculous stereotyping and dehumanizing language of the article. What’s especially frustrating is that the author didn’t even try to engage with the issue of asylum claims. Though the question of whether Gujarati Muslims, for example, qualify for asylum is obviously a contentious and divisive issue, this issue can foster an interesting discussion about minority citizenship and emigration. I just wish this article had been willing to productively ask more about why Indian immigrants are increasingly crossing borders.

I don’t know what horrifies me more, the casual comparison of human lives to smuggled drugs or the dismissive attitude it takes toward asylum seekers. This entire article is one big “are you kidding me?”

One of my biggest problems with it is the way it perpetuates the idea of that all undocumented immigrants are “border-jumpers” who come in illegally across the U.S.-Mexico border: “The influx has been so pronounced that in May, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate committee that at some point this year, Indians will account for about 1 in 3 non-Mexican illegal immigrants caught in Texas. Most of the border-jumpers are seeking jobs, even though India’s economy is growing at about 9 percent per year. Once safely inside the U.S., they fan out across the country, often relying on relatives who are already here to arrange jobs and housing.”

The article doesn’t take into consideration the fact that a number of undocumented immigrants actually arrived in the United States legally but, for whatever reason, are unable to renew their papers in time and thus become “illegal.” Oh no, if they are detained for being undocumented, they must have snuck in! It’s lazy and frankly dangerous journalism. Articles like this only detract from productive and meaningful discussions about the true problems with our immigration system.

soupsoup:

In April 2008, I was part of a Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings a year earlier. Lolo died a year earlier, so it was Lola who called me the day of the announcement. The first thing she said was, “Anong mangyari kung malaman nang tao?”

What will happen if people find out?

I couldn’t say anything. After we got off the phone, I rushed to the bathroom on the fourth floor of the newsroom, sat down on the toilet and cried.

Required reading for the day.