Over the years, immigration legislation has mandated that the federal government establish safeguards within the immigration system. Repeatedly, these safeguards have been delayed or simply ignored jeopardizing the safety of Americans. This list details those laws and what the government hasn't done.

Are massive legal immigration and massive illegal immigration related? If so, how? Many in policy circles hold a view of "Legal immigration, good; illegal immigration, bad." The logical extensions of such a simplistic perspective are to assume that the overall level of legal immigration does not matter and to underestimate any correlation to illegal immigration. But the facts show a distinct connection exists... Many aliens who receive a permanent resident visa each year have spent years living in the United States illegally... "Anchor babies" and "chain migration" provide opportunities for many aliens to plant roots in the United States. Those aliens might not otherwise have done so.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose sanctuary cities and 50% believe that the policies lead to an increase in crime.

Sixty-five percent of the respondents say they follow news stories that involve sanctuary cities; 28% say they follow them very closely. When asked about the creation of sanctuary cities, only 13% of respondents favor their creation.

Forty-nine percent of Americans support cutting off federal funding to sanctuary cities, while 33% oppose a cutoff.

A Gallup poll released on August 5, 2009 shows that 50% of all Americans believe that immigration should be reduced.  This number is 11 points higher than the figure from an identical poll conducted last year.  Only 14% of Americans say immigration should be increased (down from 18%) and 32% say immigration levels should remain the same (down from 39%).

Fifty-one percent of Arizona voters say it is more important for Congress to pass immigration reform than health care reform.

By a 65% to 20% margin, Arizona voters believe enforcing the borders is more important than legalizing the status of those already living here. Half of the state’s voters (50%) think it is possible to put an end to illegal immigration, while 34% do not.

A new Rasmussen poll shows that 66% of likely voters believe that the government should improve border enforcement and reduce illegal immigration.  However, only 32% of America's "Political Class" agree.

The poll also shows that 77% of likely voters believe that illegal aliens should not be able to receive driver's licenses and 73% of Americans believe that police officers should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when that person is pulled over for a traffic violation. 

Sixty-two percent of state residents oppose granting illegal immigrants some type of limited driver's license, according to a Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll.

Only 32 percent said children of illegal immigrants deserved in-state tuition rates, while 20 percent favored the lower rates for illegal immigrants themselves.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of U.S. voters believe that a police officer should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when the officer pulls that person over for a traffic violation. Only 21% disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters also say that if law enforcement officers know of places where immigrants gather to find work, they should sometimes conduct surprise raids to identify and deport illegal immigrants. Twenty-four percent (24%) oppose surprise raids.

In a Washington Post/ABC Poll released just before Barack Obama's inaguration, respondents ranked immigration No. 10 on a list of priorities for the administration. The economy, Iraq War, foreign policy and education were all ranked ahead of immigration. Twenty-one percent said that it was the highest priority, 48 percent said it was high priority, while 29 percent said it was low priority.

When asked about what governments should do to address illegal immigration, 83% of respondents supported stronger border controls, 74% supported cracking down on employers, and 68% supported deportation.

Only 32% of Obama voters considered his support for amnesty as a factor in their decisions to vote for him. 67% said it was either not a factor at all, or they voted for Obama in spite of his stance on amnesty.

60% of voters said reducing illegal immigration and cracking down on employers who hire them is important to them, while only 21% supported "legalizing or creating a pathway to citizenship" for illegal aliens.

57% of voters stated that amnesty would harm American workers and further strain public resources, while only 26% believe amnesty would aid economic recovery and ease public burdens.

Twenty-six of respondents are angry over immigration policy in the United States.

Sixty-two percent say gaining control of the borders is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers.

Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA, which calls for reduced immigration, criticizes the shifts, saying they will lead to fewer arrests of illegal immigrants. "The message is, if you come here illegally, you can get a job, you can stay under the radar, don't commit a crime and you'll be fine," she says. "It's essentially a de facto amnesty."

Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations at Numbers USA, believes there is an ulterior motive behind the Obama administration's move to expand the program.

"This administration, including the secretary of Homeland Security, believes that if they can shift the focus of all immigration enforcement to just 'criminal aliens,' then they will be able to look like they're being tough on enforcement without actually affecting the vast majority of illegal aliens in this country," she states.

Immigration control advocates hailed the slowdown, saying it would ease pressure on schools, hospitals and other public services, and open up wider job opportunities for U.S. citizens. "Any decline in immigration is good for most Americans and especially good for Hispanic Americans and black Americans," said Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, an immigration control group. "There will be less competition for jobs and less pressure on natural resources and public infrastructure."

"Since the landmark raid, an economic squeeze has destroyed several businesses. Postville's population has shrunk by nearly half, to about 1,800 residents, and townsfolk say the resulting anxiety -- felt from the deli to the schoolyard -- has been relentless.

"It's like you're in an oven and there's no place to go and there's no timer to get you out," said former Mayor Robert Penrod, who, overwhelmed, resigned earlier this year....

Roy Beck, head of the Washington-based NumbersUSA group that advocates for reducing immigration, argued that Postville invited its problems by relying so heavily on a plant many suspected was violating labor and immigration laws.

"The situation should have never gotten to that point," he said. "If you don't enforce the laws steadily, then when you suddenly enforce them, there is more collateral damage....""

He's a major proponent of E-Verify, the voluntary government program that allows employers to certify whether prospective workers are legally authorized to work in the United States. During the debate over the federal stimulus bill in February, Sessions led a failed bid to add amendments that would have forced federal contractors receiving stimulus funds to use the E-Verify program.

"Now we have the No. 1 champion for the American workers on immigration issues being the ranking member," said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, an immigration-reduction advocacy group.

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which views illegal Immigration as damaging to the U.S. economy, said he was hopeful there would be even more raids under the new guidelines and that the new focus would deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants.

Ahead of President Obama's trip this week to Mexico City, the administration will name a border czar to coordinate U.S. efforts to fight illegal immigration and handle the growing problems related to the drug war in northern Mexico.

An administration official confirmed Tuesday that Alan Bersin, who held a similar post in the Justice Department under President Clinton, will be named this week by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to oversee border issues.

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which favors stricter controls on immigration, said illegal immigrants had no right to be here and should be removed regardless of their criminal records.

"They don't need to have committed a crime at all," he said. "They still should be deported."

"Some Christian leaders and organizations voiced support for President Obama's indication that he plans to address immigration reform this year, a move that has riled opponents who argue that he should first focus on fixing the economy.

"Christians throughout the United States are energized and encouraged by the courageous steps taken by the Obama administration to prioritize reform of our broken immigration laws," praised Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) in a statement released on Thursday....

"It just doesn't seem rational that any political leader would say, let's give millions of foreign workers permanent access to U.S. jobs when we have millions of Americans looking for jobs," said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that supports reduced immigration, to the New York Times.

Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, a nonpartisan group advocating a return to "logic" in immigration policy and practice, was interviewed by RadioAmerica.org.

A ring accused of helping people from the Middle East obtain student visas by taking their proficiency exams and classes has exposed vulnerability in the nation's security tracking system for foreigners who attend U.S. schools, experts said Tuesday.

The bust unsettled immigration authorities and federal lawmakers who implemented the sophisticated Foreign Student and Exchange Visitor Information System after learning one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had entered the U.S. on a student visa.

A ring accused of helping people from the Middle East obtain student visas by taking their proficiency exams and classes has exposed vulnerability in the nation's security tracking system for foreigners who attend U.S. schools, experts said Tuesday.

The bust unsettled immigration authorities and federal lawmakers who implemented the sophisticated Foreign Student and Exchange Visitor Information System after learning one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had entered the U.S. on a student visa.

Federal immigration authorities had alerted Gebbers Farms that a number of its employees' hiring forms were suspect. Unless those employees could prove they were in this country legally, the company would let them go.

Many couldn't. Like the vast majority of America's agricultural work force, they were illegal immigrants who used fake documents to get jobs picking and packing fruit, in this case in and around this small town on the Columbia River north of Wenatchee.

Five days later, the company dismissed an estimated 550 workers — equal to about a quarter of Brewster's population. It was the biggest firing of its kind ever seen in Washington. And former workers say the letters and firings are still coming.

A report that America's illegal immigrant population declined by almost 1 million in one year is fomenting hot debate about why it is happening, whether the statistics are correct, and how the numbers should affect US immigration reform.

The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States dropped to 10.6 million in 2009 from 11.6 million in 2008, the sharpest decrease in 30 years and a second straight year of decline, according to a Department of Homeland Security report released this week.

Some immigration-control groups say the decline is happening primarily because of a buildup of border patrol and surveillance and that the buildup should thus continue to further reduce illegal immigration. Other groups claim it is a result of the poor economy. Some say it is both, and still others doubt the statistics altogether.

Gov. Rick Perry tried to shore up his border security credentials Monday as he campaigned for re-election by calling for a Predator drone at the Texas-Mexico border and highlighting a transnational gang initiative.

Perry, a Republican seeking his third full term as governor, said he has asked the Defense Department to deploy an unarmed drone to the Texas border to assist in border security and provide "real-time" data. "Why not fly them from Brownsville to El Paso?" Perry said in remarks at the Irving Police Association Hall.

The unforgiving terrain of the Sonoran Desert, south of here, whose searing summers and frigid winters claim hundreds of lives each year, has long been a favored avenue of entry for illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. But in the last year, the authorities say, smugglers have increasingly capitalized on a much more lucrative business — trafficking Chinese citizens into the United States.

The number of Chinese immigrants arrested while illegally crossing the border into Arizona through the busiest smuggling corridor in the United States increased tenfold in the last fiscal year, according to the United States Border Patrol in Tucson.

Federal prosecutions reached a record high in the 2009 fiscal year, with the surge driven by a sharp increase in cases filed against immigration violators.

The 169,612 federal prosecutions were a jump of nearly 9 percent from the previous year, according to Department of Justice data analyzed by a research center at Syracuse University in a new report. Immigration prosecutions were up nearly 16 percent, and made up more than half of all criminal cases brought by the federal government, the report said.

Immigration agents arrested 280 people in California in their biggest push yet to round up suspected illegal immigrants with criminal records, authorities said Friday.

More than 400 agents and local law enforcement officers fanned out across the state in the three-day search led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"These are not people who we want walking our streets," ICE director John Morton said. "We're going to focus on those people who choose to pursue a life of crime in the United States rather than pursue the American dream of education, hard work and success."

Still, Homeland Security officials praised the aircraft as a safe and important tool that over land has contributed to the seizing of more than 22,000 pounds of marijuana and the apprehension of 5,000 illegal immigrants. ...

The program has its critics. The union for Border Patrol agents has criticized the drones as costly and inefficient and has suggested the money would be better spent on adding workers and equipment on the ground.

PHOENIX (AP) | Government officials overseeing the construction of a "virtual fence" along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border hope to turn over the first segment to the Border Patrol in January, while beginning construction on a second stretch in coming weeks.

Although the government has plans to extend the network of cameras, ground sensors and radar along most of the border, officials said they will draw on lessons from the first two segments in southern Arizona as they contemplate whether and where to build more sections and how fast to complete them.