There are approximately "40 million illegal immigrants" living in the United States, making up "12.9 percent of the total population" (Ku and Bruen 2). Even with the chance of being deported, each year thousands of immigrants persevere through the journey and successfully make it to the United States. While the government has made "coming through the front door exceedingly difficult, [they] have left the back door completely wide open" (Snyder 3). With the negative effects of illegal immigration completely outweighing the positive, a plan must be carried out in order to stop this growing problem. .
More than "60,000 illegal immigrants" flood into the U.S. each year by train, foot, and bus (Winter 1). These aliens, the majority of which originate "from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala," depart in groups generally "up to twelve composed of friends, family, and strangers met along the way" (Winter 2). "The Beast," the cargo train that "travels from the southern Mexican town of Arriaga up to Mexico City," is the most well-known and effective of these three transportation systems, carrying over ten thousand immigrants annually (Dardick 1). This effective transportation system is the main source which carries "the vast majority of the Central American children [who would] simply give up and return home" without it (Dardick 1). However effective this system may be, the most prevalent force that drives these aliens into the United States is the media in their native countries. According to Fox News, "many illegal immigrants tell Border Patrol and Texas state authorities they learned from the media in their home countries that if they crossed the border to the U.S. right now, they'd be given papers and allowed to stay" (Winter 2). This fact alone is enough to persuade tens of thousands of immigrants to leave their homelands in hopes of the brighter future they were promised in America.