Your Opinion: Why don't we enforce immigration laws?

Dear Editor:

I am more disgusted every time I hear that nothing can be done about the illegal alien situation until we have "comprehensive immigration reform." Why is it that every president we have had since the great amnesty of the '80s has refused to enforce our immigration laws?

We had comprehensive immigration reform in the late '80s, the federal government's refusal to enforce the law since then has directly led to 11 million illegals in our nation today, compared to four million before the last amnesty.

The '80s Amnesty Law isn't much different than what is being proposed today. It didn't work then and won't work now. We didn't get border security then and we won't get it now, unless we get it before another amnesty law is passed. Even NPR (National Proletariat Radio) admits that the '80s immigration law is perceived to be a failure. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/30/in-1986-congress-tried-to-solve-immigration-why-didnt-it-work/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303672

Josh Ernst, Obama's mouthpiece, continues to blame illegal alien problems on Republicans. In part that is true. Since the last amnesty we have had 15 years of Republican presidents and 14 years of Democrat presidents who have all refused to enforce our immigration laws. Is there any responsible US citizen who believes we should not have/enforce immigration laws

The problem is not confined to just the illegals who have crossed the Mexican border to get into the US. 40-50 percent of today's illegals came here with legal visas, and just stayed. The incompetents who run our nation apparently have no way to know if someone stays here illegally after their visas expire. The visas of three of the 911 hijackers had expired and no one bothered to throw them out of the US.

ICE says that there are 168,680 convicted criminal immigrants here who have had final orders of deportation. It seems they can't find them. In 2003 the USDA was able to track down a cow with mad cow disease to Canada. Perhaps we need to put the USDA in charge of deporting illegal aliens.