Deport all illegals? Not in 100 years

http://www.floridatoday.com

You've probably grasped that the only correct answer to any immigration question during this presidential campaign is, "First, secure the border." Even Democrats say that now.

But that begs the question: Then what? If you think the only answer is to find and deport all the illegal workers and their families, you're in for a very long wait.

Consider the numbers in Florida.

On Tuesday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (an investigative arm of Homeland Security)announced a 77 percent increase this year in arrests of "fugitive" illegal aliens -- those who have been convicted of crimes or have refused orders to leave the U.S. This year's crackdown netted 2,579 arrests in Florida in the 2007 fiscal year.

But that's only part of the picture from this year's federal efforts.

The U.S. Border Patrol, meanwhile, also stepped-up efforts and apprehended 6,193 illegal aliens in Florida during the same fiscal year, the agency told Brevard Watchlist Wednesday. It's unclear how many of those immigrants later became the fugitives busted by ICE. But let's be optimistic and assume (because it makes the math easier) that the two agencies snared a combined 8,772 illegal aliens.

That amounts to .86 percent of the 1.01 million illegal immigrants working and living in Florida, according to fresh estimates by the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies. Assuming no further illegal immigration, it would take more than a century to catch and expel that many people at that rate.

Actually, the job would take much more than a century, when you look deeper.

Consider that nearly two-thirds of the people apprehended in Florida by the Border Patrol -- 3,914 of them -- were Cubans, almost all of whom wanted to be caught after washing ashore. Among the first things undocumented Cubans do when they land is alert law enforcement so they can call for political asylum.

Subtract the Cubans, and U.S. immigration authorities (working harder and smarter, with that whole, distracting Department of Homeland Security reorganization behind them) nabbed fewer than .48 percent of the illegal immigrants among us here in Florida.

At that rate, it would take more than 200 years to nab 1.01 million illegal immigrants.