Illegal Immigration Cost 18b

08 Jan 2013

The US has spent a whopping $18 billion to secure its borders against illegal immigration in 2012. Still the Republican opposition is not satisfied with the good work done by the Barack Obama administration and harps on what they call `backdoor amnesty' by the administration in regard to Hispanics.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department has run an account of $18 billion on its immigration enforcement programs. The budget was billed as higher than those of the FBI, Drug enforcement, and Secret Service put together.

Paradoxically, it was President Ronald Reagan who in 1986 signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, legalizing more than 3 million illegal immigrants. Since then, the government had spent more than $187b on immigrant enforcement, raising what is described as a formidable machinery.

The Republicans point out that while the budget has risen, the number of arrests of illegal immigrants last year actually came down and only 327,000 arrests were made in 2011, the fewest in 40 years. Homeland Security statistics, however, point to 410,000 people being removed from the country in 2012 as against 396,906 in the previous year.