Illegals Starting to Self-Deport
All it took was a bit of enforcing the laws:
PHOENIX (Reuters) - Mexican illegal immigrant Lindi sat down with her husband Marco Antonio in the weeks before Christmas to decide when to go back to Mexico.
She has spent three years working as a hairdresser in and around Phoenix, but now she figures it is time to go back to her hometown of Aguascalientes in central Mexico.
“The situation has got so tough that there don’t seem to be many options left for us,” Lindi, who asked for her last name not to be used, told Reuters.
The couple are among a growing number of illegal immigrants across the United States who are starting to pack their bags and move on as a crackdown on undocumented immigrants widens and the U.S. economy slows, turning a traditional Christmas trek home into a one-way trip.
In the past year, U.S. immigration police have stepped up workplace sweeps across the country and teamed up with a growing number of local forces to train officers to enforce immigration laws.
There is also, as noted later in the article, the economic factor - with our housing bust, there is just not as much demand for Mexican labor in American construction. Two years ago, large numbers of Mexican nationals - likely heavily illegal - were spread across the Las Vegas valley as new developments sprung up over night. Now, things are different; builders are delaying projects. For a while, I saw the illegals hanging out on street corners looking for day work - but they are becoming scarcer. Still, even with the economic factor, I believe that it is mostly the enforcement aspect which is driving this wave of self-deportation.
Employers are likely a lot more wary of employing illegals; illegals, themselves, are probably feeling under the gun - as noted in the article - and are taking off for home rather than risking arrest, deportation and a much harder time coming back in at some later date. As we conservatives were saying for years, if we’d just enforce the laws we’ve got on the books, the problem would largely be solved.
106 comments December 26th, 2007
