Canada might be doing better because the nation has a policy of aiding immigration, according to Tomás Jiménez, professor of sociology at Stanford University.

But, he said, it’s a different story when it comes to the U.S.

“We have a laissez-faire approach,” Jiménez said. “We let labor markets take their course and integrate economically, and we think full integration will follow.”

Jiménez said Canada has a set of programs that allows for French and English language acquisition, and policies of multiculturalism. Canada also has a program that matches volunteers with new Canadians to help them find their way around communities.

“Two facets of immigration policy help to explain Canada’s success,” writes Vigdor, a Duke University professor of public policy and economics. “In distributing visas, Canada emphasizes skills and education rather than country quotas and family reunification. Just as important, Canada permits dual citizenship and allowing naturalization after only three years.”

But why doesn’t the U.S. have such programs?

“Part of it is precedent,” Jiménez said. “We [the U.S.] did some of it in the 19-teens, and some people didn’t like spending money on ‘illegals,’ so we have a huge undocumented population.”

But Edward Allen, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, said that the U.S. and Canada are difficult to compare, especially due to the nations’ differing populations.

“There’s no single dominant ethnic or racial group in Canada the way Hispanics are [dominant] in the United States,” he said, also noting the different model Canada has for assimilation.

Vigdor is also a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. In May, the institute released his report: Comparing Immigrant Assimilation in North America and Europe.

“It’s the single most controversial program of this administration,” said Edward Allen, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Allen was a guest at “A Round Table on Deportations and National Security” at Princeton University in March.

“The administration’s position is that they intend to maintain the level of deportation that was set in the last couple of years,” Allen said, “but they want to increase the [deportation] percentage of people with criminal records.”

The way to increase the deportations of immigrants with criminal records is to “dumb down” the notion of criminality, Allen said. Some of the immigrants may have “very modest criminal offenses,” yet are still defined as criminals.

And this, skeptics of the Criminal Alien Program say, could lead to racial profiling.

“There is some evidence that Latinos are being disproportionately pulled over and arrested,” said Tomás Jiménez, professor of sociology at Stanford University. “The arrest rates are incredibly high among Latinos especially among minor infractions.”

The University of California, Berkeley Law School published a study in September 2009 called Racial Profiling in the I.C.E. Criminal Alien Program. The study says it offers “compelling evidence that the Criminal Alien Program tacitly encourages local police to arrest Hispanics for petty offenses.”

As a part of the Criminal Alien Program, I.C.E. screens 100 percent of all federal and state prisons. But it only has access to about 10 percent of the more than 3,000 local jails in the U.S., according to a fact sheet. This is where the Secure Communities program comes in, where I.C.E. develops a relationship with local law enforcement.

 “If people are committing crimes and they are being arrested then I think it’s non-controversial,” Jiménez said.

But if local police are racially profiling Hispanics, it’s an entirely different story, Jiménez said.

The Hispanic population grew by 43 percent in the past 10 years, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, and many argue the increasing Hispanic population signifies a political shift.

POLITICO published an Op-Ed piece by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), entitled Hispanics like law and order, too. Smith wrote that immigration reform is not an anti-Hispanic movement. Rather, he said, “it is pro-rule-of-law.”

But this ‘law and order’ Smith refers to appears to be divided among political parties.

 “For Hispanic U.S. citizens, there’s a certain amount of resentment of illegal immigrants,” said Edward Allen, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. But Allen said the White House is hoping to mobilize the same Hispanic support it did in 2008.

In May, President Obama spoke at the Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. “One way to strengthen the middle class in America is to reform the immigration system,” President Obama said, “So that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everybody else.”

Tomás Jiménez, professor of sociology at Stanford University, said politicians understand the necessity of addressing immigration reform during the campaign. He believes that’s why President Obama went to El Paso, to let Latinos know he is keeping “his eyes on the ball.”

“[Immigration reform] is important for Latino households because they come from immigrant families,” he said. “So anyone who wants to attempt to win over the Latino vote will have to say something about immigration.”

But it has yet to be seen whether immigration will be at the forefront of the 2012 campaign. Jiménez thinks not.

“For Republicans, at least in primary season, they’re moving strongly away from immigration reform and are hoping to appeal to Hispanics in other ways.”

The word “illegal”
“My sense is that [immigrants] don’t like the term illegal,” said Tomás Jiménez, assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University. “I think there’s a sense that the term has first become associated with Latinos and Mexicans, and there’s a feeling that it can take on a racial connotation.”

Jimenez said the word “illegal” may overstate the violation the immigrant has committed and doesn’t explain the sum total. “If we apply to it the same kind of criteria to describe people who receive traffic tickets, we don’t call them illegal drivers.”

Society often associates the word illegal with prostitution, drug use and murder, said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University.

The word “alien”
“[The word] dehumanizes the individual, which can serve multiple purposes—bureaucratic, political, or ideological,” DeFrancesco Soto said.

Jiménez said the word “alien” goes back into immigration history and is often used in a legal sense, but is often used with the word “illegal.” The word is also the official term used by the U.S. government in describing status in immigration laws and congressional acts.

Word choice
Both Jiménez and DeFrancesco Soto said they make conscious decisions when addressing their audiences or students.

“I have to make a pretty strategic decision,” Jiménez said. “When I write for a public audience, I use the term illegal immigrant in my writing … you have to ask yourself who your audience is.”

“I go between undocumented person and illegal immigrant, especially when I am teaching,” DeFrancesco Soto said. “I need to be sympathetic to the fact that some are immigrants.”

Political implications
DeFrancesco Soto said word choice varies among political parties and the audience political -hopefuls are addressing. “If they’re speaking to an anti-immigration crowd, they’re probably going to use ‘alien’ or ‘illegal,’” she said. “If they’re speaking to progressive parties, [the politician] will probably use the word ‘undocumented.’”

She said the implications go further. In the 2012 presidential election, DeFrancesco Soto said President Barack Obama needs the Latino population to clinch the vote, and his word choice will reflect that in immigration reform debates.

Port security — which includes such x-ray technologies — has increased by 700 percent since Sept. 11, 2001. In the 2005 fiscal year, the Department of Homeland Security spent $1.6 billion on port security, according to a DHS fact sheet.

While the United States will not comment officially on what happens outside its domestic border, a spokeswoman with Department of Homeland Security said security coming into the U.S. is seen as a layered approach.

On the U.S. side of the border, imaging systems are used primarily for cargo inspection, according to Jenny Burke with U.S. Customs and Borders Protection. If a secondary inspection is necessary, that’s when a large scale x-ray is used. It looks for anomalies in the density of the container.

That may be when customs “expects something and sees another,” Burke said.

Canine alerts, cargo shipment risk information, radiation alerts or officer observation are all signs that could lead to a second inspection.

But, Burke said, discovering immigrants in cargo via the x-ray system is not its intended use.

“With the non-obtrusive inspection we are looking for other illegal things that might be present, such as narcotics,” she said. “We don’t intend to see people in the cargo container, but sometimes they are found.”

The imaging system only creates a silhouette of those inside the vehicle being scanned, such as a driver.

“The system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, gender or age of persons inside the vehicle,” according to a U.S. Customs and Border Control fact sheet.
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Such systems are only one aspect of port security — the ‘cutting edge’ technology aspect, according to U.S. Customs. The other aspects are: Screening and Inspection, Container Security Initiative (CSI), 24-hour rule, Customs Trade Partnership against Terrorism and Canine detection teams.

But what explains the increase in deportations if illegal immigration has decreased? Thomas Boswell, professor of geography and regional studies at the University of Miami, said the lack of a proper system that keeps track of immigrants in the United States is to blame.

The current estimate of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is 10-11 million.

“There are a lot of [illegal immigrants] here, so as the ICE becomes better and more adept at catching [them], it could mean there are plenty of them to catch, and they are being more effective.”

Boswell said that although the ICE’s skills at “catching” immigrants have increased over time, the lack of a proper tracking system skews the actual numbers. He said they are not reliable.

Many contend that the increase in deportation signifies that more illegal immigrants are being turned out of the U.S. whether or not they have committed crimes or pose a threat.

Others feel that enforcing the law should be of higher importance than simply catching immigrants.

“Obviously our nation needs immigration enforcement,” said Brian Griffith of the Center for immigration Studies. “You’re not going to be able to let everybody in who wants to get in.”

While illegal immigration into the country is controversial, the deportation of those immigrants also stirs contention.

“The majority of the illegal immigrants are probably law abiding,” said Boswell. “We don’t know for sure because we don’t have reliable statistics.”

Boswell stressed the importance of the lack of statistics and data regarding immigrants and the impact they have once they enter the country. He said there are myriad implications, ranging from economic to agriculture, many of which fall under the umbrella of employment and job security.

The law, which draws parallels to that of Arizona’s anti-immigration bill,  and, for example, would allow law enforcement to inquire about a suspect’s immigration status when pulled over for speeding.

“That clearly gets in the way of the civil liberties of immigrants and their rights,” said Anthony Orum, professor of sociology and political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “There are no other laws that permit officers to do anything like that.”

Thomas Boswell, professor of geography and regional studies at the University of Miami, said the law isn’t necessarily an attack against a different race.

“Probably 90 percent or more of the illegal immigrants who come to Arizona are Hispanic,” he said. “So, if 90 percent of the people they stop are Hispanic, it doesn’t necessarily imply racial profiling.”

States like Arizona and Georgia have been making steps toward preventing illegal immigration, and experts say it is likely other states may follow suit—especially states on the Mexico border.

Boswell said the immigration laws should be more consistent and regulated by the federal government.

“[Federal laws] would be uniform, and you wouldn’t have some states having stricter laws that just chase illegal immigrants into other states, thereby creating problems for other states,” he said.

But Orum believes the issue may be one of state-to-state politics.

“There’s a great deal of variation [across the United States] in terms of the number of immigrants and immigrant sentiment,” he said. “I don’t think a federal law will work.”

The proposed law targets illegal immigrants specifically, and there is debate whether illegal aliens have rights in this case.

“Mostly it comes down to the illegal immigrant community,” said Brian Griffith, of the Center for Immigration Studies.  “Folks who are here legally are within the bounds of the fed government, and they won’t be affected by this law.”

Boswell said illegal immigrants come to the United States knowing full well that they are breaking the law, and therefore shouldn’t be provided any amnesty.

“What kinds of civil rights can people expect to have who break the law and come to the U.S.?” he said.

“These countries are all responding to demands coming into the United States,” said Edward Allen, senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. “The question of where the threat is greater or lesser is entirely our enforcement strategy.”

The article questions whether the federal government’s efforts to spike border security have come at the expense of drug smuggling prevention.

Up to 90 percent of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana smuggled through the Mexico border is passed through land ports, according to the USA Today article.

“From 2006 to 2010, the number of Customs and Border Protection officers who inspect people and cargo crossing through the ports of entry along the southwest border increased by 15%, while the number of CBP Border Patrol agents who patrol the rugged terrain between those ports increased by 59%, according to CBP figures.”

Legal ports of entry have become a weak link because border patrols at illegal ports of entry have increased substantially.

“As a result of the upset in Arizona over high levels of illegal immigration and drug smuggling, the U.S. has really bolstered [security efforts],” Allen said. “As long as you address nothing for the demand, there will always be weak links.”

In the 1990s, cocaine was a prevalent drug smuggled through Mexico, according to Allen. Customs agents became skilled at identifying smugglers, and the traffic then moved to Arizona – hence the contemporary crisis.

Allen said drug cartels are now using sophisticated methods of smuggling to transfer drugs across borders such as the Mexico-Texas border.

“There’s no way to seal a country successfully,” he said.

In March, President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa met at the White House to discuss foreign policy between the two nations. President Obama pledged to fight the drug cartels that plague the border.

According to World Policy Intitute’s  World Policy Blog, President Obama also addressed the “demand side” of the problem, “As part of our own drug control strategy, we are focused on reducing the demand for drugs through education, prevention, and treatment,” Obama said.