304 PART FouR • PolicymAking
those migrating from Mexico, constitute the majority of individuals entering the United
States without permission. In addition, many unauthorized immigrants enter the country
legally, often as tourists or students, and then fail to return home when their visa status
expires. Naturally, the unauthorized population is hard to count, but recent estimates have
put the number of such persons at about 11 million.
A major complication in addressing the issue of unauthorized immigrants is that they
frequently live in mixed households, in which one or more members of a family have law-
ful resident status, but others do not. A woman from Guatemala with permanent resident
status, for example, might be married to a Guatemalan man who is in the country illegally.
Often, the parents in a family are unautho rized, whereas the children, who were born in
the United States, possess American citizenship. Mixed families mean that deporting the
unauthorized immigrant will either break up a family or force one or more American citi-
zens into exile.immigration legislation
Some people regard the high rate of immigration as a plus for America because it offsets
the low birthrate and aging population. Immigrants expand the workforce and help to
support, through their taxes, government programs that benefit older Americans, such
as Medicare and Social Security. Critics, though, fear that immigrants may take jobs away
from American workers and alter the nature of American culture.
The split in the public’s attitudes has been reflected in differences among the nation’s
leaders over how to handle the issue of illegal immigration. Most Republicans in Congress
have favored a harder line toward illegal immigrants than have most Democrats. There
have been exceptions. Republican president George W. Bush was a strong—if unsuc-
cessful—advocate of immigration reform. By Obama’s first term, however, Republicans in
Congress were substantially united against reform.state immigration laws. In April 2010, Arizona’s governor signed the nation’s
toughest- ever bill on illegal immigration. The law criminalized the failure to carry immigra-
tion documents, and it required police to stop and question anyone suspected of being
in the country illegally. Opponents contended that the act would lead to harassment of
Latinos regardless of their citizenship status. Arizona had earlier passed the nation’s tough-
est law penalizing employers who hired undocumented workers.
In June 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Arizona could not make an
immigrant’s failure to register under federal law a state crime, could not make it a felony
for illegal immigrants to work, and could not arrest people without warrants if they might
be deportable under federal law. The Court did not block police from investigating the
immigration status of anyone they might stop. It left the door open, however, to future
challenges to this law based on equal protection principles.^1
In 2011, Alabama adopted a new law aimed at illegal immigration that was in many
respects even tougher than the Arizona legislation. Much of the law is currently blocked
as a result of federal court rulings, however. Since 2010, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina,
and Utah have also passed laws similar to the ones in Arizona and Alabama.immigration and the obama Administration. During his campaign, Barack Obama
supported reforms that would give illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship. Reform
was put off to allow Congress to concentrate on health-care issues, however. Obama- Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. ___ (2012).
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