Border fence incentivizes illegal immigrants remaining inside a country

Support

Washington Post 3/22/06 Emily Messner *[1] – “A wall would create a strong incentive for the illegal immigrants already here to stay here; once an immigrant has crossed illegally into the United States [or legally on a visa], he would be much less likely to leave, knowing how hard it would be to get back in.”
Scholar Wayne A. Cornelius wrote in Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Control Policy – argues that the increases in border security since 1993 have been “discouraging unauthorized migrants already in the US from returning to their places of origin.”[2] *Public Policy Institute of California Study “Holding the Line: The Effect of the Recent Border Build-up on Unauthorized Immigration” 7/17/02 – “Unauthorized immigrants are staying longer once they arrive in the United States. Data from a 1992 survey in Mexico indicate that of the people who moved to the United States in the two years prior to the survey, 30 percent returned to Mexico within a year. By 1997, this proportion declined to 22 percent. By the time of the Mexican 2000 Census, only 11 percent returned to Mexico within a year.”