Hasn't happened. You are buying into a myth
No it has happened, it's effect is just so small it's nearly futile. The number of illegal immigrants we are capturing coming across the border is up considerably. However, we either just send them back with no jail time and they just come back again, or the fight deportation through making an asylum application and we don't have the room to detain them, so they are released and they don't show up in court for their hearing.
We're detaining more, but it's not making any difference.
We could have ten times as many border patrol agents on the border, and the end effect would make little difference regarding the vast majority if the illegal immigrants.
Detaining more people does improve border security in that it gives us a better chance of catching dangerous people we are looking for, and it gives us a better chance of capturing contraband being brought into the US.
We are getting better at that, but with the number of people coming into our country illegally, our border patrol is stuck with concentrating on dangerous criminals and smuggling, or not concentrating on those and risk letting them get through because of not concentrating on them.
We need more prison space to toss those illegally entering our country in jail to punish them so that they are less likely to return.
We need Judges that treat immigration violations seriously.
We need legislation that makes it harder for people to bog down our court system with invalid asylum applications and appeals.
We also need to give our border patrol the manpower and the proper tools to detect and apprehend illegal immigrants. However they can already catch more than the system can process. More agents can help provide better border security if they are used to concentrate on more dangerous criminals, however they aren't going to help us address the overall problem of illegal immigration until we have the means to punish those who break our laws, and convince them to stay out when we toss them out.
The executive branch can't fix this. Bush can help fix it or he can fight fixing it.
He did seem to fight fixing it when he took office. He now seems to be actually trying to fix the problem of illegal immigration while at the same time providing for legal immigration.
I do agree with most people here that we simply cannot afford another mass amnesty.
We cannot allow immigrants to come into our country that cannot support themselves and do not provide positive benefits to our country except in the rare cases where it's reasonable that we offer asylum.
Much of the criticism on how this administration first addressed the issue of illegal immigration when Bush took office is well justified. However, the evidence is there that Bush is listening. The evidence is there that Bush does realize now that illegal immigrants are bankrupting our country through entitlement programs.
Hare working immigrants can provide a real benefit to our country, but by allowing unrestrained illegal immigration we are doing more harm than good to our economy. We are also allowing criminals easy access to our country, and our relative wealth is very attractive to such criminals.
We need to fix this problem. However, it won't be fixed by idiots who like to blame everything on Bush to score political points.