Why Is Immigration Reform So Contentious?

immigration status without having to leave the United States.

Further, the United States has shifted its enforcement focus to border security and detention of undocumented immigrants. According to the American Immigration Council, in fiscal year 2024, Congress provided $3.43 billion to immigration detention centers alone. GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two main private companies that run the detention centers in remote areas in the United States, made $1.05 billion and $552.2 million in revenue from contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, respectively. Further, the Department of Homeland Security is now the biggest federal law enforcement agency in the United States, with over 80,000 employees focusing on apprehension, detention and removal of immigrants from the country. By contrast, according to the latest statistics compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, there are 3,716,106 pending immigration court cases as of September 2024, and there are not enough immigration judges to adjudicate their cases in a timely manner. Congress appropriated only $840 million for the entire immigration court system in fiscal year 2024.

Why is the issue of immigration more politicized compared to other issues?
Immigrants are an easy target. Politicians demonize them because many Americans are not very well informed about the contributions that immigrants make to the country. There is a lot of misinformation about immigrants and immigration and many people believe that immigrants are in the United States without lawful status because they “choose” to not get papers rather than because immigration laws are restrictive or because pending applications are backlogged. Further, political candidates routinely are more interested in blaming each other than in finding humane solutions for the millions of immigrants who are in the United States without lawful immigration status. Instead, what we hear from some candidates is that we should be afraid of immigrants because they are “animals,” “rapists,” “criminals,” or “lazy,” not to mention eating our pets. The failure to acknowledge the humanity of immigrants and the root causes that spur their migration means that a false narrative dominates the news.

How is immigration impacting the election? Or how could it impact the election result?
Immigration is often the boogeyman of choice of politicians. While both presidential candidates are trying to secure votes by promising to provide more financial resources to secure the southern border, one in particular has adopted the tactic of dehumanizing immigrants, making us look like savages who are overtaking the country. This