After being in office for just under a year, Barack Obama seems to be making important progress for US immigration procedure.

This week his office has announced that it is to overhaul the US immigration detention system, a massive step away from George W. Bush’s administration.

At the moment people without the necessary US visa requirements are held in prison like centres, most times actual prisons until they come in front of US immigration to argue their case for staying in the country. The problem with this is that most of the people being held haven’t actually committed any crimes, yet are being held in prisons.

Obviously this should have happened a long time ago, on a human rights violation, but with the Bush administration they clearly had other priority’s, after all how many failed asylum seekers or immigrants are then going to challenge the super power that is the US on how they were held before being deported?

It’s worth noting that there is a vast number of people coming through these detention centres every week, there are 30,000 beds and 370,000 immigrants are held each year, so each immigrant is being held for approximately a month.

What makes this worse is that most of the people being detained have often been working in the country for a significant period of time, paying taxes the whole shebang, all they want to do is conform to the conditions set and hopefully remain in the country, these people are highly unlikely to not go to court. Granted a small minority are actual criminals but a difference needs and hopefully will be made.

The new plans are to start using re-purposed hotels and nursing homes as places of detention, new measures would be drawn up to allow detainees many more civil liberties than they currently receive. This will also have the added advantage that it will save the American Government $86 per night, per detainee. I’ve put the figures all out for you as I’ve worked it out and I don’t quite believe it myself.

One bed for the year- $86 x 365 = $31,390

There are 30,000 beds being used all year- $31,390 x 30,000 = $941,700,000

So when you put it into this context is Obama fighting for the human rights of the detainees or has his Government found a way they can re-coup some of the money they bailed out the banks with?