Immigration and Emigration

 The New York Times.

Updated: Sept. 17, 2010
From the time of the nation's founding, immigration has been crucial to the United States' growth and a periodic source of conflict. In recent decades, the country has experienced another great wave of immigration, the largest since the 1920s. However, for the first time, illegal immigrants outnumbered legal ones. The number of illegal immigrants peaked at an estimated 11.9 million in 2008, and a 2010 study shows that the figure dropped to about 11.1 million in 2009, the first clear decline in two decades.
Republicans and Democrats have agreed for years on the need for sweeping changes in the federal immigration laws. President George W. Bush for three years pushed for a bipartisan bill before giving up in 2007 after an outcry from voters opposed to any path to legal status for illegal aliens. Since then the issue had in effect been dormant, as both parties were wary of the divisive passions it can arouse. But immigration reform came back to life in April 2010 after the passage of a new Arizona statute that is the nation's toughest on illegal immigration.
On July 28, 2010, one day before the law was to take effect, a federal judge blocked Arizona from enforcing the statute's most controversial provisions, including sections that called for officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws and that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times.
The judge, in response to a Justice Department lawsuit filed on July 6, found that the law was on the side of the Justice Department in its argument that many provisions of the Arizona statute would interfere with federal law and policy.
Although the federal ruling is not final, it seems likely to halt, at least temporarily, an expanding movement by states to combat illegal immigration by making it a state crime to be an immigrant without legal documents and by imposing new requirements on state and local police officers to enforce immigration law. About 20 other states are considering similar laws.
In September, Democrats put forward legislation that would grant legal status to some students who are illegal immigrants. The measure is meant to bolster support among an important voter group going into the midterm elections and beyond: Hispanics, the largest minority in the country.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immi