‘Shameful’: Legal immigrants face uphill battle amid ongoing border crisis
Catherine waited in Colombia for nine years before her immigration application was approved, allowing her to join her siblings in the United States. Two years later, she said she's still waiting for her husband to be allowed to join her in her new home in Colorado.
She gets upset when she thinks about the tens of thousands of people flooding across the southern border each month who didn't wait like she did.
"If you try to do [it] in a right way, you need to wait a long time. You need to pay fees," she told Fox News Digital. "And some people just cross the border for free and that's it."
"It is shameful that we have illegal migrants here that are cutting to the front of the line and not going through this process," Castle Rock town councilman and state Rep. Max Brooks, a Republican, told Fox News Digital.
Illegal immigration is among the political issues that drove President Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election. Trump vowed in his inaugural address Monday to "end the practice of catch and release," and signed a slew of day one executive actions that included an order authorizing the military to draft a plan to "seal the borders," and another ending the use of the CBP One app to process migrants.
Trump's attention turned to Colorado after a viral video showed alleged Venezuelan migrants carrying guns inside an Aurora apartment complex.
Ahead of inauguration day, Fox News Digital spoke with Catherine and her sister Zully in Castle Rock, a town about 30 miles south of Denver, about immigration and Trump's deportation plans. Both agreed the country needed strict border security.
"Although most people come with the intention of working, helping the city grow, and growing personally, there are many who slip through who are not good people," Zully said. She added that it's important for immigrants to "receive an education in civic culture so that we all behave as we should."
Zully and Catherine felt that the wave of illegal border crossings slowed down the process for legal immigrants.
But David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, pushed back on the notion that illegal immigrants have any effect on wait times for legal immigrants because Customs and Border Protection doesn't process immigration applications.
"It's handled by a separate agency," he said. "So if someone crosses the border illegally, that is not going to directly affect anyone in the legal immigration system who is trying to come through the legal process."
Bier also argued that the delays plaguing the system, caps on green cards and tight restrictions on eligibility make legal immigration "nearly impossible."
"It's a guilty until proven innocent system. And the only way you can prove your innocence or your eligibility to immigrate is if you fall into very narrow exceptions," he said.
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U.S. law currently allows officials to grant up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas each year across certain categories, according to the American Immigration Council. Priority is given to non-immediate relatives of U.S. citizens (there is no cap on green cards for adult citizens' spouses, parents or children) and relatives of lawful permanent residents. Skilled workers, highly-educated individuals and "persons of extraordinary ability" in the arts, science, athletics or other fields may also qualify.
"The exceptions are so narrow that really only about 3% of all the people who were trying to immigrate legally last year actually got a green card and were able to become a legal permanent resident," Bier said.
He said efforts to strengthen border security are less likely to deter illegal immigration than addressing the incentives — primarily economic — for entering the U.S.
"The benefits of coming to the United States are enormous," Bier said. "You can make it more expensive for people to come in, but as long as the benefits keep rising to immigrating here, you're going to see people pay more, find ways around whatever restrictions are imposed, and lead to more chaos and disorder at our borders."
Bier argued that removing or increasing caps on immigration and making it easier for employers to sponsor workers "would ameliorate a significant part of the problems that we face at the border."
"When I talk to Border Patrol agents, they really want the people who are coming for peaceful reasons, for work purposes or family reunification, to apply at the consulate so we can focus on our job of securing the border against threats, criminals and other people who we want to keep out of our country," he said.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, State Rep. Brooks said he would support an "expedited system" to process illegal immigrants who wish to become lawful residents, but that they should have to leave the country to go through that process.
"Get them back south across the border and get the paperwork started for them if they wish to naturalize," he said. "But right now, if you are an illegal migrant in this country, you need to be removed."