Impending elections in US may provide relief to illegal immigrants

As the date for November 2008 presidential nears, the Democrat and Republican Party candidates are softening their tone in national debate over illegal immigration.

Immigration has been one of the hottest issue in past three years in US. Besides cheaper imports from China, Immigrants, especially from third world countries are being blamed for poor job market conditions in US.

Here are some facts:

- As per figures released by Government statistics, an estimated 12 million people, or in other words, 5% of the country’s employee are illegal immigrants.

- Some 880,000 people were arrested crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2007, most of them from Mexico and Central America, down from 1.1 million a year earlier. This is because of the fact that the U.S. government had built 284 miles of fencing along the 2,000 mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border by the close of 2007, and aims to have constructed roughly 670 miles by the end of 2008. This brought down the rate of illegal crossing.

- To curb illegal immigration while at the same time not to lose the immigrants vote, President George W. Bush proposed an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws, offering a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants, together with a guest worker program, and tougher border and workplace enforcement. This proposal was killed by Republicans in Congress, most of whom backed tougher border security and measures to punish employers of illegal immigrants but opposed granting them the possibility of becoming citizens.