Immigrants Awaiting Deportation Are Not Given a Public Defender

In the United States, if you commit a crime and go to jail and can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you if you so choose. It is universally accepted that providing lawyers to criminals is overall beneficial for everyone involved, otherwise it would have been done away with years ago. This, and it is part of the Bill of Rights. Even though there is proof that having lawyers provided to people who cannot afford them, immigrants awaiting deportation have not yet been granted this privilege.

Many illegal immigrants that come to the U.S. do not speak English. Nor do they have knowledge of the laws that apply to them in terms of immigration. A recent study released shows that having a public defender system for immigrants would essentially pay for itself. Giving illegal immigrants that are awaiting their deportation sentence someone that is familiar with the laws and knows what is going on would greatly speed up the process of deportations. Firstly, for people that have dependents that are in the foster care system because they are awaiting their sentencing, providing a lawyer would get that person back to their family, back to work, and back to paying taxes. Now, not only are the taxpayers not having to pay for that person to sit in a detention center day after day after day, but the person, if they are granted residency, is back to working and contributing to society. And, for the cases where the person facing deportation has no legal ties to the country, and they truly are awaiting deportation, having a lawyer would speed up the process so that taxpayers don’t have to support the person in a detention center until they are finally granted their sentence.

Implementing a system that gives illegal immigrants someone to represent them is far-fetched. There would be an incredible amount of opposition, especially from republicans. Republicans are not going to support anything in which their tax dollars help immigrants, but this is something that would save them money in the end.