From the CIS article:

According to President Obama, the allegedly record-breaking deportation numbers released this week by ICE Director John Morton are “a little deceptive.” I agree. They give the impression that this administration is enforcing the law more than, say, the previous administration. But other ICE numbers suggest that immigration enforcement is declining, not increasing.

via Obama: Deportation Numbers ‘Actually a Little Deceptive’ | Center for Immigration Studies.

From the CNS News article:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that under the administration’s policy of exercising “prosecutorial discretion” in the enforcement of the immigration laws, her department is currently authorizing some illegal aliens to work in the United States.

via Napolitano: DHS Authorizing Illegal Aliens to Work in U.S. | CNSnews.com.

Immigration policy is often discussed in sweeping, over-simplified terms. Beyond the op-ed commentary is the complicated reality of how an illegal alien travels from point A, their first contact with law enforcement, to point B, their country of origin. Discretion, logistics, and copious paperwork by law enforcement and judicial officials separate the two points. 
A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies, “Deportation Basics: How Immigration Enforcement Works (or Doesn’t) in Real Life,” discusses the ground-level process of what is now called ‘removal proceedings’ and the issues that surround it. The report is available at http://www.cis.org/deportation-basics.

Among the findings:

• A large percentage of aliens flee from removal proceedings – perhaps as many as 59 percent of all those released to await hearings. On a cost basis from the alien’s perspective, this makes sense. If you are in proceedings and have little chance of relief, why not treat the bond money (if it’s even required) as the cost of having been caught, and then flee, hoping to stay under the radar for as long as possible, perhaps until the next amnesty?
• Though fashionable in the Obama administration, the exercise of “prosecutorial discretion” is problematic for ICE field officers. If the alien that they decline to remove goes on to commit a heinous act, they could be subject to lawsuits from victims and will be held accountable by their own agency (even if agency leadership encourages them to use the tool).
• Even in today’s technology-driven world, charging an alien with immigration violations is a paperwork-intensive, cumbersome process that requires agents to fill out nearly 20 different forms each time.
• ICE officers are supposed to consider two key factors in determining whether to detain or release an alien in proceedings – if the alien is a flight risk and if he is a risk to the community. The latter factor obviously is given serious consideration, but it is equally obvious from the large number of absconders that officers don’t give the same weight to the likelihood of flight, especially considering the scarcity of funded detention space.
• The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides for several types of due process for aliens, depending on their circumstances of arrival and stay. The law does not require that all removals be ordered by an immigration judge.
• The option of Voluntary Return, where the alien requests to be returned home in lieu of formal removal proceedings, is not really “voluntary,” but is beneficial to the alien because it carries fewer consequences if the alien returns illegally. It also has become subject to overuse or misuse in recent years as a tool to increase the volume of removals, at the expense of more formal methods of removal that have more deterrent value.
• Immigration law provides for seven ways to remove an alien, which are explained in the report. Four of these options are relatively efficient, but used less frequently. If ICE chose to expand their use, the workload of the immigration court could be reduced and the immigration enforcement system would be less dysfunctional.
• The total number of apprehensions of illegal aliens by immigration enforcement agencies is less than half of what it was five years ago. For instance, the drop in apprehensions by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is often explained by improvements in border security; however, this rationale is suspect, as has been pointed out by the Rand Corp. in a study of border metrics. But ICE apprehensions also have dropped steeply, although there has been only a modest drop in the size of the illegal population inside the United State.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith recently introduced H.R. 2164, which requires all employers to verify the legal status of their new hires. Rep. Smith argues that the bill will reduce the employment of illegal immigrants. He also argues that there are plenty of less-educated Americans available to fill jobs vacated by illegal immigrants. Smith’s bill stands in stark contrast to President Obama’s approach, recently repeated in El Paso, that would allow illegal immigrants to remain permanently in their jobs and increase the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country each year.

To shed light on these differing approaches, the Center for Immigration Studies is publishing a detailed analysis of the employment situation for less-educated workers in the first quarter of this year – workers who are the most likely to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs. The report is online at http://www.cis.org/no-need-for-more-immigrant-workers-q1-2011.

Among the findings:

• In the first quarter of 2011, the standard unemployment rate (referred to as U-3) for U.S.-born workers who have not completed high school was 22 percent.
• Using the broader measure of unemployment (referred to as U-6), that includes those who want to work but have not looked in the last four weeks and those forced to work part-time, the rate for U.S.-born workers who have not completed high school was 34.6 percent.
• The U-6 unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers who have only a high school education, but no additional schooling, is 21.5 percent. The situation for younger workers with only a high school education is even worse.
• Looking at all less-educated U.S.-born adults (ages 18 to 65), 26.9 million were not working in the first quarter of 2011. Less-educated is defined as having either failed to complete high school or having only a high school education.
• If we include all less-educated adult citizens, both U.S.-born and naturalized, 28.7 million were not working in the first quarter of 2011.
• If only one-fourth of the less-educated adult citizens currently not working took a job, it would equal the roughly 7 million illegal immigrants currently estimated to be holding non-farm jobs.
• The above figures do not include the 7.2 million American teenagers (16-17) not working. It also does not include the 17.1 million working-age citizens with some college, but not a bachelor’s degree, who are not working.

Discussion

Rep. Smith’s recently introduced bill (H.R. 2164) would for the first time require all businesses to verify the legal status of workers using the online E-Verify system. The bill seems likely to pass the House, and has already been endorsed by key business associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Home Builders, and the National Federation of Independent Business. Those who oppose the bill argue there are not enough American workers available to fill the estimated 8 million jobs held by illegal immigrants, 90 percent of which are non-agricultural. In a recent blog for The Hill newspaper, Rep. Smith argued that a very large number of potential workers are available and that passing H.R. 2164 would be helpful in putting some of them back to work.

Smith’s views stand in stark contrast to President Obama’s views on the issue, which were most recently outlined in his May 10th speech in El Paso. In that speech the president argued that because the border was more secure, it is now time to legalize illegal immigrants and to increase the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country. The president stated that amnesty and more legal immigration are needed for both humanitarian and economic reasons. The president seems to assume that jobs are plentiful.

The findings of this analysis indicate that the employment situation for the less-educated Americans, who are the most likely to compete with illegal immigrants, is bleak. An enormous number of less-educated workers are current looking for work and cannot find it and many more have given up looking for a job altogether.

Data and Methods

The data for all the Tables in this study come from the public-use files of the January, February, and March 2011 Current Population Surveys (CPS), which are collected monthly by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Each CPS includes about 131,000 respondents. The government publishes employment statistics that are both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted from the survey. The figures in this analysis are seasonally unadjusted because they are computationally simpler and easy for other researchers to replicate. Seasonal adjustment impacts the data only slightly. In general, BLS does not provide separate estimates for the foreign-born (immigrants) and the native-born broken down by characteristics like education, race, and age. However, all CPS respondents are asked these questions. The Census Bureau defines the foreign-born as persons who are not U.S. citizens at birth, which includes naturalized citizens, legal immigrants who are not citizens (green! card holders), temporary visitors and workers, and illegal immigrants.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States.

The program quickly confirms 99.5% of work-eligible employees. Even though E-Verify is not mandatory, many employers willingly use the program. More than 250,000 American employers currently use it, and an average of 1,300 new businesses sign up each week.

Immigration: E-Verify helps employers weed out illegal hires – latimes.com