Census 2000 results indicate that there between 8 and 11 million illegal aliens living in the United States in 2000. The Center for Immigration Studies has reported that Census Bureau stats show that 700,000 to 800,000 new illegal aliens were settling in the U.S. during the late 1990s and that around 1 million settled in the most recent year of record. Far more than that enter illegally each year, but there is a lot of back and forth. The 1 million represents illegals who truly settle in for at least a couple of years, and usually much, much longer.

Mass illegal immigration is NOT inevitable

No nation can ever totally stop illegal immigration.

But MASS illegal immigration is NOT inevitable -- certainly not at the level that produced the extraordinary population of illegal workers and their families over the last decade.

The United States has mass illegal immigration because successive Congresses and Presidents have decided they want it. In one action after another over the last decade, they have declined to approve measures known to be effective to slow the illegal flow, they have decided to end various kinds of enforcement that had been effective, and they have approved a series of rewards to those who violate immigration laws.

NumbersUSA provides the nation's only complete record of what each Member of Congress has done to encourage or limit illegal immigration. Check out their votes.

Undermining U.S. environmental, labor, health and safety protections

A presence of 8 million to 11 million illegal aliens in this country is a sign that this country is losing control of its borders and the ability to determine who is a member of this national community. And a country that has lost that ability increasingly loses its ability to determine the rules of its society -- environmental protections, labor protections, health protections, safety protections.

In fact, a country that cannot keep illegal immigration to a low level quickly ceases to be a real country, or a real community. Rather than being self-governed, such a country begins to have its destiny largely determined by citizens of other countries who manage to move in illegally.

The division in Congress

Nearly all Members of Congress believe that we should have a fairly vigorous Border Patrol to make it difficult for people to enter this country illegally.

But a large percentage of Congress -- a majority on certain measures -- also believe that virtually all illegal aliens who get past the guards at the border or who enter legally and overstay their visas should be allowed to remain in the United States forever. Since 1997, Congress and Presidents have several times decided to give various groups of those illegal aliens the right to U.S. citizenship as a reward for their resourcefulness in evading our Border Patrol and immigration laws.

Not surprisingly, news of these rewards has spread globally and enticed hundreds of thousands more to become resourceful illegal aliens.

In Congress, there now is a serious debate about whether the nation should even try to enforce its immigration laws. The debate is between "national-community Americans" -- those who continue to believe in the idea of a separate, self-governed nation -- and those who have a "post-American" vision. The post-American vision is for (1) America's workers to be "allowed" to compete directly with every worker in the world who makes the effort to move to this country and for (2) the quality of life of a local community to be determined by global forces rather than by democratic self-determination.

'Interior Enforcement' divides 'post-Americans' from 'national-community Americans'

One of the quickest ways to discover which philosophy is guiding a federal official is to learn his or her stance of re-establishing "interior enforcement" in this country. That is, do they support the Immigration and Naturalization Service using all the tools now available to them through law to detect, detain and deport illegal aliens who have crossed the border and moved into the interior of the country?

And do they show openness to new ideas and funding to help the INS further disrupt the illegal immigration industry?

NumbersUSA testified before the House Subcommittee on Immigration about some of the steps that Congress and the INS can take to beef up interior enforcement and begin to turn the tide against mass illegal immigration. (Read testimony)

In closing, the testimony noted that the chairman of the Commission on Immigration Reform, the late Barbara Jordan, testified before this committee on Feb. 24, 1995. She said:

"Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave."

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA.com, went on to testify:

"This committee's oversight task is an incredibly important and challenging one because the INS currently is making virtually no effort to ensure that those who should not be here are required to leave.

"And because of that lack of interior enforcement, our amplified efforts on the border to ensure that 'those who should be kept out, are kept out' are failing. Around the world, the word is out: if you can succeed in evading the U.S. Border Patrol on your way in, and if you do not commit an aggravated felony once you travel a few miles into this country, you have virtually no chance of ever being forced to leave. With that kind of incentive, would-be illegal aliens around the world will do almost anything--including risking dying in the desert--to outmaneuver our Border Patrol.

"The general spirit of lawlessness in which so many communities find themselves tends to create a cycle of behavior that only moves the communities further toward anarchy. A leader of one group of citizens lamented that quiet homeowners after repeated frustration with the INS turned to the streets in public demonstrations outside their general experience: 'Citizens are forced to the streets to protest their own government because of its constructive abandonment of its duties to its citizens. Citizens are arrested while illegal aliens go about their business freely and act contrary to the law, with impunity.'

"On the border, citizens have drawn national news coverage for taking up arms and taking the law into their own hands as they defend their property from an invasion of sometimes a hundred illegal immigrants a day. These developments presage darker impulses that could be stirred. The abandonment of the enforcement of the law by the INS fans the embers of vigilantism that seem never to be fully extinguished in the spirits of human beings seeking a society of order over disorder.

"If this committee does not find a way to help the INS re-institute credible interior enforcement, the amount of money provided in the INS budget is of no particular consequence--except for the amount of the taxpayers' dollars that are being wasted."