I read that illegal aliens are overrepresented in federal prison because most are in prison for the sole reason of being caught being in the country illegally, even if they've not committed another crime. This doesn't make any sense. Why would the government bear such a burden on the prison system when they could send them back to where they came from? God its so much simpler here in Australia!
Not internment camps, but detention centres. They are offshore and not the same as prisons. Many of these people are legitimate refugees who try to come to Australia by boat and have been denied entry.
The idea in the U.S. is to give them some punishment before sending them back to their country of origin, to make them think twice before thinking about trying to come back. I started a thread about this here: illegal immigration and punishment I agree with you though, it would be better to just immediately send them back. Another aspect to this, for a long time there has been a lack of will to deport them. Undocumented migrants were jailed by many state governments for other crimes, and afterwards not deported. The idea being that deportation was too harsh of a punishment, since many of them had started families in the U.S. The text in the immigration laws is pretty tough, but it was being inconsistently and spottily enforced.
