What to Do on Immigration.

Online debate between Steven Camarota, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research, and Tamar Jacoby, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute Council on Foreign Relations web site, June 19-23, 2006

http://www.cfr.org/publication/10910/what_to_do_on_immigration.html

EXCERPT: Steven Camarota: ''On Ms. Jacoby's main point that we are not letting in enough people legally, she misunderstands how migration works. Legal immigration has roughly doubled in the last two decades. Yet we have more than twice as many illegals as in 1986. Most of the top illegal-alien-sending countries are also the top legal sending countries. Legal immigrants are the ones who often provide illegals with jobs and housing. The presence of an ever-larger legal immigrant population is the basis of the social network that draws in illegals.

''Finally, she still seems to be saying that it's okay to debate the issue, but in the end we must accept that foreigners will break our laws if we don't accommodate them. This kind of determinism must be rejected. We can enforce our immigration laws. The problem is that we have never tried. ''