On the first hand, there are the American citizens who believe that illegal immigrants are an ever-increasing burden on America. They are taking jobs and homes away from Americans and creating strains on the American health care and Social Security Systems. These Americans also believe that illegal immigrants are slowly taking over our country’s American Heritage and crime rates would significantly decrease, because immigrants would not have to live their lives “underground.” The cons to allowing illegal immigrants into our country seem endless.
The most prevalent of these topics, would be the predicament that illegal immigrants are taking jobs away from American citizens. Most people would assume that the country they are citizens of would be the ones to obtain worthy jobs, but this is increasingly not the case. According to the Illegal Immigration Counters website, 10,255,246 illegal immigrants are currently holding skilled jobs in America. That is roughly ten million jobs going into the hands of illegal citizens. Not only does the fact of illegal immigrants obtaining worthy jobs upset the public, but imagine how much money is then wired out of America. Once again, consider the Illegal Immigration Counters website. By using the latest in government and private information, they are able to create a real-time data counter. Over the past year, illegal immigrants have wired somewhere around $44 billion dollars to Mexico alone. Not only is this an alarming amount of money, but the value climbs by the thousands every few seconds.
Not only is wiring money out of the country an issue, but stealing money from American health care and Social Security systems also creates chaos. A copious number of American citizens are currently supporting illegal immigrant families without even realizing it. Immigrants realize that they need to support their families with undetected money, so they secretly sneak their way into American Accounts and thrive off our savings. Social Security funds may be running low for Americans in the near future, but illegal immigrants will surely be thriving well until then.
Another issue to allowing a surplus of illegal immigrants cross our borders is that America is slowly losing its heritage. Yes, numerous immigrants may have founded America, but it also flourished off a variety of immigrants and not specifically from one location. Hispanics are gradually taking over America by crossing into Texas and other southern states from Mexico. By better enforcing border patrol, the number of illegal immigrants would greatly decrease. Immigrants from various countries are continually welcomed into America through legal processes, but America will not be able to handle the constant surpluses of illegal immigrants coming in from the southern border. Some say that illegal immigrants from Mexico are only coming to America to escape their dwindling country, but America needs to ensure that our country will stay afloat with the surplus of new people before deciding to help other citizens. These are only a few of the cons considered when the topic of allowing illegal immigration arises.
On the second hand, there are the Americans who believe that immigrants improve American society; therefore, they should be allowed to unreservedly come into America. These Americans believe that immigrants are beneficial to the country because of various reasons such as American citizens are growing older and living longer, while American families are producing fewer children. Immigrants can fulfill this decline of the working class. Another number on the decline is the number of people willing to farm. Americans are less and less likely to put extensive amounts of effort into farming for such small wages. This also leads into the subject that immigrants take away jobs from American citizens, when in generalization they are mostly taking jobs that American citizens do not want. Another influencing factor to letting immigrants into America is, is the fact that they are risking their lives just to find a job to support their families. Lastly, Mexico is a poor developing country that cannot currently support its citizens. Some people think that America should come to their aid and once Mexico has stabilized, immigrants will gradually return to their home country. As previously stated, the pros to allowing immigrants into the nation also seem endless.
The first of many pros to allowing immigrants into America is to fill in the working class gap. With improved health care and equality between men and women, American citizens are living longer and both parents are more than likely working now; therefore, American families are producing fewer children. Because of these events, America is slowly coming into an age where there will not be enough working-age people to support America. There will be an unbalanced majority of unworkable elderly, to working adults. With this in mind, allowing immigrants into the country will actually keep American businesses from crashing. By keeping American businesses from crashing, our economy will not suffer.
When looking at the job aspect of things, it is also generalized that immigrants take the lower class jobs that most Americans would refuse to work. America is becoming increasingly advanced with technology and increasingly less people are willing to work in the fields for farmers. By allowing immigrants into America, farming work is often the first job they will look for. Farmers hire immigrants because they are willing to work for lower wages, which in turn provides American citizens with less expensive food. The reason immigrants look towards farming jobs is that they are often in rural areas where they are able to hide their families and farmers are not going to report them to the authorities because they are working for reduced wages. Immigrants not only fulfill the lower-level jobs that Americans refuse to work, but they also deliver cheaper prices to the public because of their decreased wages.
Another consideration to allowing immigrants into America is how can we deny people when they are risking, or maybe even losing their lives in attempts to get here? Numerous Mexicans cannot support their families in their own country, so they go out searching for a better job and location to raise their families. Consequently, America happens to be the country they flee towards. People would not risk their lives, crawling for days in tunnels and strand themselves in American deserts if they were truly not in need of help. America can help these immigrants in need by allowing them into the country to find supportive jobs and safe places for them to raise their families. We have always looked out for others when they are in need and yet we have people dying trying to get into America. These examples show that immigrants can be very beneficial to America.
The problem still arises that even though both sides know their reasoning, America still faces the double-sided sword. Immigration laws cannot be fully enforced to make the first hand happy, as well as, immigration laws cannot be completely dropped to fulfill the second hand’s views. With this in mind, a compromise must be made.
One solution to the problem would be to enforce immigration laws, as well as increase the speed of the process it takes to become a legal citizen. If the process were not so time consuming and disorganized, then more people would be able to legally fulfill their dreams by becoming an actual American citizen. Immigrants would no longer have to hide from authorities, because they would be legal citizens. With this idea, the effects of immigration could be watched more closely. The borders would be better concealed, therefore greatly reducing the unknown side of statistics where nobody knows exactly how many illegal immigrants live in the United States. This compromise works equally both ways. People who are opposed to illegal immigration get their wish by enforcing border patrols and immigration laws; while people who think immigrants are beneficial, get an improved and more effective process for becoming a legal citizen.
This compromise may not effectively satisfy everyone on the opposing sides, but it does greatly reduce arguments. It proves effective in several perspectives. If we, as Americans, make it easier for immigrants to become legal citizens and provide them with safe places to raise their families, than they will greatly improve our economy and society. If their families are here with them in the states, then imagine the billions of dollars that will stay within the United States as opposed to being wired out of the country. As legal citizens, they will be paying into their own American health care and Social Security Systems, instead of preying off American accounts (ImmigrationCounters.com) if they were living illegally. This may be an elementary approach to such an adamant problem, but it is considerable, and it would greatly solve a majority of problems caused by illegal immigration.
Sources:
Websites:
· "Illegal Immigration." Center for Immigration Studies. 14 November 2007.
· ImmigrationCounters.com. 1 December 2007. 1 December 2007
· Sullivan, Bob. "The Voice of Identity Theft Victims." 31 March 2006. The Red Tape Chronicles. 14 November 2007.
Newspaper Articles:
· Pinkerton, James. "ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN; Zero tolerance, major impact; End of 'catch and release' on border strains courts and jails, but proponents applaud effort." The Houston Chronicle (Houston, TX) (Nov 20, 2007): 1. Custom Newspapers (InfoTrac-Gale). Gale. Clemson University. 3 Dec. 2007
· Waldmeir, Patti. "Home-baked solutions to illegal immigration LEGAL COUNSEL Patti Waldmeir. (BUSINESS LIFE)." The Financial Times (June 13, 2007): 12. Custom Newspapers (InfoTrac-Gale). Gale. Clemson University. 3 Dec. 2007
Books:
· Long, Robert Emmet. Immigration to the U.S. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1992.
· Fairchild, Henry Pratt. Immigration, a world movement, and its American significance. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913.
Scholarly Articles:
· Hebel, Sara. "McCain Reverses Position on Immigrant Tuition. (John McCain)(Brief article)." The Chronicle of Higher Education 54.11 (Nov 9, 2007): NA. Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. Clemson University. 3 Dec. 2007
· Church, George, and Laurence Barrett. "Send back your tired, your poor...." Time 21 June 1993: 26.
