Put in simple terms, illegal immigration refers to crossing the international border into the territory of another nation in violation to its laws. In modern world, illegal immigration has been a huge cause of concern for most of the states who have poorer or weaker neighboring countries with whom they share borders. Even mighty world powers like the USA are troubled by increasing numbers of illegal entrance across their borders. The immigrants usually look to cross the borders if their own state cannot provide them the means of livelihood. The movement, then, is from a poorer to a richer country and is called a ‘œpush-pull’ incentive in economic parlance. It is a major problem in most of the developed or developing countries who have comparatively weaker neighbor countries in terms of financial stability.

Although the states and their governments lose their sleep over illegal immigration in countries like India and USA, few common people are aware of the actual gravity of the matter. Some lesser known facts are presented here to make people more acquainted with the issue. These are as follows:

• The term ‘œillegal immigrant’ does not belong in legal parlance. In fact, there have been proposals to use the term ‘œundocumented’ instead of ‘œillegal’ in popular terms.

• According to a study conducted by economist George Borjas, the real wage of US workers have declined by 9% in two decades from 1980 to 2000 as a result of immigrant workers flocking the market.

• One of the major reasons of illegal immigration is the overpopulation in poorer and under-developed countries where the state fails to provide the basic necessities of life.

• Sometimes, wars and conflicts in one country can make its population look for security and result in illegal immigration. For example, the numbers of Colombians migrating to Spain and USA have increased to 244,000 and 141,000 respectively by the beginning of 21st century.

• El Salvador has the highest population (one in every three) living as illegal immigrants. The nation actually contributes as the largest per capita source of immigrants to the USA.

• Not always are illegal immigrants at fault of crossing the borders into another state, the classic example being Myanmar where the military junta stripped its Rohingya population of all civil rights and rendered them illegal immigrants in their own state.

• Because of the nature of entry into the destination state, the immigrants are always in danger of losing their lives at the hands of the border security forces. The death of illegal immigrants from Mexico trying to cross into USA was estimate at around 2000 between 1998 and 2004.

• Sometimes legal outsiders staying in a country can overstay after the expiry of their visas and be termed as illegal immigrants. Canada is a classic example.

• The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, dealt with the restriction of immigration laws.

• The article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has actually declared it legal for a person to leave his/her homeland although it did not mention about entering another state.

These are just some of the interesting facts about illegal immigration. Curbing illegal immigration is quite difficult for any nation, be it developed or developing. Even after so many years, most countries have failed to do so.