ants receive more benefits then they deserve. The reality of illegal immigration is that it has been an increasingly difficult problem to solve. For three decades now our government has been trying to find ways to alleviate the number of illegal immigrants in the nation. One attempt was the Amnesty program in the mid-90's for those who had been in the country since 1992 (Suro 40). However, this covered only about 60% of the illegal population and drew much debate from California. Which is ironic seeing as how California is often at the forefront of the campaign against illegal immigration (Suro 40). Illegal immigration has become a familiar part of American society and will not likely see much improvement in the next millennium.Our government has tried to curb the flow of illegal immigrants with such actions as the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA], which is expected to reduce illegal migration from Mexico (U.S. Immigration . . . 5). The problem is the timing of such policies; NAFTA is expected to work only after a decade in which Mexico can produce the jobs needed. The INS also reported that by the year 2000, the population of prime labor age in America would drop by 8.5 million (U.S. Immigation. . . 5). That is a large loss of labor and can only be offset by the immigrant population. The key is to make sure that the legal immigrant population offsets this decrease. That is what the government attempted to do with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (Marley 880). The intent was to cut back on crime, terrorism, and welfare fraud. However, they fell short of their intent because the inadvertently clumped all immigrants together, both legal and illegal (Marley 885). America will continue to allow immigrants to enter the country for numerous reasons; such as those who take up a common cause against a foreign foe, as a gesture of shame after some foreign debacle, for economic reason...
