Most Ignant thing you've heard in class/anywhere

[I.A.S.K.]

Originally Posted by mccoyred

To cross the US-Canadian border is even easier.....And we have TWO borders with Canada (think Alaska)!

Though we do have multiple borders with Canada they are not hot beds for illegal immigration. A report by PEW Hispanic Center (2005) Claimed 57% of illegals were from Mexico, and 24% from other Latin American countries. While 6% were from Europe, 9% from Asia, and 4% from other places.

Statistically, it seems that if we successfully dealt with the border with Mexico we could eliminate or decrease about 81% of illegal immigration. Thus, the most effective way to curtail illegal immigration would be to deal with the Mexico border. There are not that many people illegally immigrating to America via Canada. I'd bet that at least half of the 19% of illegals who are not identified as Hispanic/Latino immigrated to the US directly (via a visa) and have stayed in America and thus become illegal immigrants.

While I do understand your point that Mexico is not the only place from which people come illegally, the US-Mexico border is a much larger concern than any other border. It would be hugely ineffective to focus our efforts on any other area of concern. Since at best we could only decrease about 20% of illegal immigration. Of course this is based on the assumption that people immigrating from Mexico and other Latin American countries (the PEW report claims that non-Mexican Latinos immigrate mostly from Central America) use the US-Mexico border.

Some people are being moronic and fixating on the US-Mexico border to avoid coming up with real solutions for the immigration issue, but on the whole I do not find it ignorant to focus on the US-Mexico border because it is the major point of contention and concern when it comes to illegal immigration.