Peter Slavin surveys what’s actually happening to immigration policy in the United States:
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush’s final year in office.
The effort is part of President Obama’s larger project “to make our national laws actually work,” as he put it in a speech this month at American University. Partly designed to entice Republicans to support comprehensive immigration reform, the mission is proving difficult and politically perilous.
My guess is that there are approximately zero people currently residing in the United States who place a high premium on deportations of illegal immigrants and who are aware of this information and have therefore become enthusiastic backers of Barack Obama. By contrast, there are many people in the United States who are concerned with undocumented workers and their families who are aware of this information and have therefore become less enthusiastic about Barack Obama.
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