Controlling Immigration Essay, Research Paper
Controlling Immigration to the U.S.
With the many different groups of people coming to this
country in search of a better life, we should cut back on who we
should allow to have citizenship. There are thousands of immigrants
coming to the U.S. every day. A lot of these immigrants are illegal
aliens coming to the U.S. to find jobs. Whenever we catch illegals
crossing our borders, we should send them right back and that would be
the end of the story. Instead we are bringing them to camps to wait
until the government finds out what to do with them. With so many
immigrants coming over everyday, the U.S. lets people out of these
camps and let them into our society so we can fit the new people who
are coming over here in the camps.
It is estimated that 4 million illegal aliens are living in
the U.S. right now. That means that the government has no idea who
these people are or where they are. “Nobody knows who these people
are,” said a Brownsville, Texas trailer-court owner Bob White. “They
could be terrorist, or bandits, or typhoid carriers” (Lamar 14). This
is why the U.S. government needs to spend more money and stop
immigrants at the border. If the United States didn’t let any of these
people in this country, we would still have people without jobs. So
its not like we need these people in our country. In Mexico 60 percent
of its labor force is unemployed. So a lot of these people think that
there are jobs for them in the U.S., but there aren’t.
In the first 4 months of 1988 400,000 illegal aliens were
caught trying to cross the border. That may sound like a lot, but
300,000 slipped through without being caught. That means that over 40
percent of the people that try to get into this country illegally,
succeeded. If we get more agents on guard by our borders we could cut
that number to a tolerable level.
Some immigrants that come to this country legally that have a
good education and can work well are not a problem. The problem is
that there aren’t very many of these kind of people that are trying to
get into this country. Many immigrants are poor and just want jobs to
keep themselves alive or to support there family.
It is hard for illegal immigrants who can’t prove that they
are legal workers to find jobs. Some employers know from the start
that the person they hired is illegal and just hire them because they
will work for minimum wage or even less. To try to get voluntary
compliance to not hire illegals, the INS contacted 800,000 employers
and gave warnings to only 2,200 of these employers. Then out of the
800,000 employers who got contacted, the INS only fined 100
businesses. Only one
numbers, why didn’t the other thousands of people get fined. Since it
is hard for poor legal immigrants to get jobs, they sometimes have to
take hard, long, gardening type of jobs. A lot of immigrants will do
just about anything so they can eat and there family won’t starve.
Sometimes illegal aliens get fake I.D.s and the employer never
knows they aren’t allowed to work. The Center for U.S.-Mexican studies
at the University of California in San Diego says that a quarter of
illegal workers have purchased fake I.D.s.
The main problem that lets all of these immigrants come to
this country everyday is that we aren’t doing much to stop them. But
there is also another reason that these people come to this country.
Other countries are letting tens of thousands of people out of there
country and most of these people are coming over to the U.S. Moscow’s
emigration policy lets out 50,000 people a year. Over the last seven
years 100,000 Irish natives have come over here on tourist visas and
stayed after the time was up. Even though this is a problem that these
countries let out so many people a year, the U.S. should still just
say no when they arrive. As Mayor Bill Card says, ” We have not been
able to get the cooperation and attention of the Federal Government”
(Lamar 15)
When all of these immigrants come over to this country in
search of jobs and can’t find any, sometimes they turn to crime.
Deportable illegal aliens make up 26 percent of all inmates in Federal
prisons. 1 out of 4 illegal immigrants are in our prisons and we have
to pay for there stay there. If we get more security and never let
these people get into the country, it would save the government a
bundle because they wouldn’t have to pay to keep building more
prisons. The World Trade Center bombing just a couple of years ago had
immigrants linked in some way. This terrible incident would have never
happened if they were told to go back where they came from.
There has been argument though on how to get people to go back
home. “We [the U.S.] have no population policy” (Lamar 14) as a state
department official commented. These are the things America is going
to have to work on over in Washington. The country would be a lot
better off if no one was allowed in. Though it is probably not
possible to stop all illegal immigrants to come, we can lower the
number tremendously. Crime, the economy, and unemployment would all
benefit from keeping everyone out. ” In some fashion we’ve got to
ignore the promise of the Statue of Liberty,” Congressman Romano
Mozzoli says. ” The U.S.’s moral responsibility to accept immigrants
is not unlimited” (Lamar 15).