Our immigration laws actually *keep* people undocumented by shutting off routes to lawful status. And this is the fault of the anti-immigrant groups (read: the #TantonNetwork) who, in their zeal to make life as hard as possible, make more people undocumented.

They broke the system, and then whine that it needs reform, and needs to get tougher because there are so many undocumented people. You'd think that if you're against illegal immigration, you wouldn't be trying to dedocument as many as possible.

Who's "they"? Let me spell it out:

@FAIRImmigration
@CIS_org
@NumbersUSA
@IRLILaw

oh, and a few others: https://plotagainstimmigrants.com/network/ 

Congressmen who call for tougher laws need to be called out on this. They stupidly assume deportation (with all the terrible family destruction that carries) is the only solution.

No, it's not. That's never been the law.

In 1996, these groups authored the most draconian overhaul of the immigration law in recent history: IIRIRA. With it, Pres. Clinton birthed the modern deportation machine as we know it.

#Fix96

As of 2015, if the same percentage of immigrants left the US to legalize their status before IIRIRA as after, today there would be 5.3 million fewer undocumented immigrants. Yet the response is to spend more money detaining and deporting them. It’s madness.

It's their fault there are 11M+ undocumented people in the United States.

IT'S THEIR FAULT.

There's only one explanation for those who want the law to never work for a non-citizen: Xenophobia.