Essay on "Argument on Illegal Immigration"

Essay 5 pages (1770 words) Sources: 4 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Illegal Immigration

The United States have dealt with numerous waves of immigrants over the years as a result of the seemingly flourishing American life. As the country began to shape itself, immigrants continued to flow over its borders, both by legal and illegal means. Despite the fact that the number of foreign born American citizens held a constant pace in the first half of the 20th century, the number of illegal immigrants has grown to disturbing proportions over the last few decades. The United States was in a situation with no precedent and the government had big difficulties handling the circumstances. The only plausible remedy to the crisis would be for the U.S. government to pay more attention to the drastic situation and to try to recover in good time.

The illegal immigrants that enter the U.S.A. every year come from various parts of the world and have a variety of reasons for leaving their countries. Their means of entering without being spotted by the border guards are numerous and very inventive, with people trying almost everything to enter the U.S. The illegal immigrants spread all across the country after crossing its borders, but the greater part tends to reside in the states which are already inhabited by a large number of illegal foreign born people. California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas are the states with the highest rate of illegal immigrants. The majority of foreigners using illegal methods of crossing the border during the last years come from South America and mainly from Mexico.

About 75% of undocumented immigrants arrive across the U.S. southern border with Mexico, and hail from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia and other Central and South American countries. The bulk...about 50% of all illegals....are Mexican-born people. "(White)

South Americans risk their lives trying to cross the border dreaming of the U.S. As be a safe haven and a place with unlimited job offers. They usually prefer to work with false identification papers in low class jobs that require physical strength. The wages they get are extremely small compared to those of the average American worker and of the legal immigrants.

The fact that Mexicans are most commonly captured at the border and they hold the majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has caught the public attention. Mexico is known to be an undeveloped country with a high rate of unemployed and poor people. Because of the desperate situations people find themselves in, they are basically ready to subject themselves to any kind of torture in an attempt to help their kin live a better life.

Ironically, Americans are somewhat responsible for the poverty in Mexico. During the eighties, the Mexicans encountered difficulties as the local currency lost power and people started to work for lower wages. The Americans seized the opportunity of taking advantage of the cheap labor costs and built factories from companies within the U.S. In Mexico only to desert them a few years later in favor of the cheaper labor costs in Asia. The episode left Mexicans with one option only: that to illegally cross into the U.S. To continue working for low wages. The situation in Mexico is worrying, as people are living in poverty with their options limited to try a border crossover into the U.S.

Generally, Americans have a distorted picture about Mexicans and about how they affect the American life by illegally crossing over the border. Mexicans are pictured either as criminals and convicts that came to do their evil by robbing and killing people, either as poor people that came to work like robots for low wages in order to take jobs from the honest American citizen. but, again, the Americans are to blame in most cases for the lowering of wages, as the employers would frequently rather hire a man that is illegally residing in the country in favor of a well experienced resident that is legally entitled to a bigger income.

Illegal immigration into the United States is a highly profitable proposition for both employers and the U.S. government, and it also benefits Mexico, which is the largest source country of undocumented immigrants into the U.S." (White)

Deborah White is also claiming that the two governments are tacitly encouraging poor Mexicans to come illegally to work in the U.S. The Mexican government is comfortably escaping the solution people are expecting from its policies of creating more jobs and rising the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the U.S. government is getting cheap labor for its economy. (White) reasonable solution for the employers that are devoted to hiring cheap labor would be for them to move their businesses to Mexico in order to develop their dealings in a legal manner and to contribute in the mean time to the interests of their country. The cause would also benefit if employers were to think about methods of getting more low-skilled natives to be interested in working for them and solutions of lowering the demand of low-wage working illegal immigrants. "...mechanical harvesters -- and the higher skilled (and higher wage) workers to operate them -- would replace low-skilled, low-wage workers. [...] the higher wages would attract more lower-skilled American workers (including teenagers) to these jobs." (Chiswick, 2006)

While the object of blocking illegal immigration stays in trying to stop people from crossing the border illicitly, people should also aim to fight it from inside the country as suggested by Barry R. Chiswick. (Chiswick, 2006).

The Americans got to picture Mexicans as bad for their society mostly because of the fact that the latter are easily inclined to commit felonies because of their social statute. Most Americans are naively likely to ignore illegal immigrants if they are not directly affected by the felonies caused by the latter as stated by classicist and historian Victor Davis Hanson. (Hanson) an illegal immigrant would evade a court sentence easier by simply running away from an incident he caused since he didn't have any ID or another form of being legally traced, such as a security number etc. It might seem easier for one to commit a crime if he or she was already considered a criminal because of his illegal crossing of the border. Mexicans and South Americans generally, are renowned for being intensely involved in the drug and flesh trafficking in the U.S., on the other hand, while they claim that immigrants ruin the American system, the Americans consecutively enjoys the benefits that come from cheap illegal immigrant labor.

Besides the conditioned support they get from their American employers, illegal immigrants also receive help from other institutions. In addition to the fact that those Americans willing to help an immigrant are already scarce in number, the American government is about to propose a bill that forbids any kind of cooperation with the foreign born that reside illegally in the U.S. "The proposed Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control bill, which was approved by the House of Representatives in December and is expected to be taken up by the Senate next week, would among other things subject to five years in prison anyone who "assists" an undocumented immigrant "to remain in the United States." (Mahony, 2006)

One of the main institutions that assist illegal immigrants is the Roman Catholic Church, which is dedicated to helping those in need, whether or not they are legal residents. As a cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony is determined to continue his work as support for illegal immigrants with no regards to the consequences. The Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control bill would indeed deter the current immigration situation because people would remain insensible to any kind of punishment they would be subjected to. The means of crossing the border illegally would be among the only things that the bill would modify.

Recent studies show that there are over 10 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., while the unofficial number revolves around 20 million. Despite the deficiency in the Border Guard system, the Bush Administration decided not to enforce the Border Patrol sufficiently. A feasible solution for the number of those coming illegally into the U.S. through the U.S.-Mexico border would be for the U.S. To commence a heavy reinforcing of the boundary.

The Bush Administration seems to have apprehended lesser companies holding illegal workers than the previous Clinton Administration. There were little cases of eminent companies getting caught hiring illegal immigrants and when they were caught, the fines they got were relatively insignificant for the crime.

In March 2005, Wal-Mart, a company with $285 billion in annual sales was fined $11 million for having untold hundreds of illegal immigrants nationwide clean its stores." (White)

The government is not taking immediate action because of the benefits that are coming from illegal workers. The government is reluctant to trying to stop mass illegal immigration because the fact that immigrants might bring important votes to the party that takes no offensive action towards the illegal workers. Another reason for the… READ MORE

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