Essay Example on Immigration Issues in the U.S.A

The U.S. has long been viewed as a beacon of hope for people who seek to escape hunger, poverty, war, and murders against humanity in their own nations. Nevertheless, the topic of immigration in the United States has become a contentious one since the aftermath of 9/11 attacks on September 11, 2001 (Howell 19). Contemporary, immigrants in the United States face so many hurdles and challenges as they try to acquire legal documents to become American citizens in a post 9/11 attacks world. One of the positive impacts of immigrants in America is they improve the economy and expand culture by introducing new ideas and customs. However, the main focus will be on how thousands of new illegal immigrants find their way to the U.S. through either Mexican border, the Pacific Ocean, and they do not pay taxes thereby hampering the American economy.

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Immigration in the U.S. is increasingly becoming unbearable. Every year there are thousands of undocumented migrants enter the U.S. via the Mexican border (Howell 19). According to the "U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service," the overall figures of illegal immigrants in the country augments by 278,550 each year (Hines, Annie and Peri 4). Currently, the U.S. has approximately an unlawful inhabitant of eight to twelve million people who mainly are from Mexican or Hispanic origin. The main problem is that these illegal immigrants take on opportunities such as jobs, welfare benefits, education, and unemployment compensation without having legal documents at the expense of legal American citizens. Most of them get lucrative jobs without official documents and use that as an escape route to avoid paying taxes.

Currently, there are more than ten million illegal works in the country. These illegal workers are densely populated in California and Texas states. As a whole, there are about three quarters who enter America after "crossing the US/Mexico border" (Lempres 52). Unfortunately, any of these illegal immigrants are employed as US illegal employees, and the reason why they get such opportunities is that they can be paid less than minimum wage. These foreign workers are mostly employed in the "farming, industrial, and building" sectors however they evade from paying taxes and end up being protected by the Fourth and Fourteenth amendments respectively (Lempres 53). For this reason, there should be strong immigration reforms in place to make it harder for undocumented illegal workers to access jobs, and for those with jobs already to find it hard to cheat the government through not paying taxes.

Another problem with the increasing number of illegal immigrants in the United States is they access entry-level jobs without official work permits instead of legal citizens (Meissner and Julia 23). The overall cost of teaching illegal immigrant children in "special assistant programs" is proving to be costly on the legal taxpayer citizens since the illegal immigrants evade from paying taxes and still want to enjoy the services offered by the government. They also lag the other students behind as tutors focus more on getting them familiar with the American education system before they start the coursework on their respective programs (Meissner and Julia 20).The illegal immigrants in the United States enjoy benefits of affirmative action which should be fully granted to documented foreigners who pay taxes, levies, and another form of government deductions. It enables them to get equal opportunities to workplaces and education at the expense of registered American citizens.

These illegal immigrants enjoy the medical programs, insurance covers which enables them to get treatment at a cheap or no cost. It is done at the expense of middle-class American citizens who do not get opportunities to access better and cheap health care services. Since most of these illegal immigrants do not get good jobs they result in burglary, crime, and terrorism which endangers the lives of people living in "black states" (Hines, Annie and Peri 2). They do so with the aim of trying to extort cash from American citizens as a survival technique to meet their daily expenses (Green, Thomas and Ciobanu 203). Once the crimes have been committed it is difficult for prosecutors to track and interdict the perpetrators. They are lured into terrorist activities through good compensation packages, and they are used as the spies by these terrorists' groups to find a weak-link on how they may execute their acts. Most of them result in being drug-peddlers since that area has a lot of cash that is acquired easily (Hines, Annie and Peri 21). They sell these drugs to rich American kids who buy and use it illegally in the nation. Hence illegal immigration has enormous social, economic, and even cultural disadvantage in the United States, stringent immigration laws should be implemented at the U.S. border lines to ensure they do not access the country.

Despite the fact that immigration in the U.S. is illegal and negatively impacts the country, there are a number of benefits in reality. It is through immigration issues that the economy improves through the entrepreneurship skills and hard work of the immigrants. A group that experiences criticism from the Middle East and North Africa are playing a role in starting businesses in America (Foner 180). So even if immigration issues are illegal, entrepreneurship plays a critical role in spurring economic development and influencing economic mobility of workers entirely. The entrepreneurship activities help the country to generate enough income that is responsible for economic and infrastructural development. Therefore, the notion that the U.S. has a fixed number of jobs that attract immigrants lacks credible evidence and is a rhetoric that does not match the statistics. In fact, the immigrants create jobs by themselves a complete slot that enhances economic growth. Congress can create reforms that can favor immigrants in order to help the economy to grow.

Issues of immigration have helped expand the American culture by introducing new ideas and customs. They keep the demographic country young and enrich the United States culture by adding productive ideas that match with the innovations in the world. They provide business links and contacts with the rest of the world enabling the American market to invest in the developing global economy. Foner highlights that the issues of immigration keep the economy flexible by allowing producers to adjust their prices with the focus of responding to the demand in the market. Moreover, on the issue of jobs, immigrants do not push way the Americans from their own jobs. In contrary, they fill the jobs which Americans are not willing to do, for instance, in farms, hotels, domestic service, light industry to mention but a few (Foner 171). Therefore, it is these immigrants who represent the human capital in the economy hence making the entire economy productive. Immigrants create new employment opportunities for millions of unemployed youth in the United States.

Consequently, immigration issues fund government activities and helps utterly all citizens. Immigrants benefit the government through taxes they pay and spend their money on consumer goods and services. Research asserts that immigrants pay taxes like any other citizen in the country (Yglesias n.p).They cover the cost of public services in the process benefiting all Americans. For instance, security tax, federal income tax, state income tax, among others, help to benefit the government and the community at large. According to statistics, immigrants paid $329 billion tax in 2014, something that is considered an economic boom for the country (Yglesias n.p). The trend is continuing to intensify, for example, to immigrant youth who come to America for education. Overall, individuals with higher education will earn more hence pay more taxes, which are a benefit to economic growth and development. At the same time, immigrants who graduate from Universities help to modernize the economy, particularly in activities such as running courthouses, improving schools, and building roads. By saying that immigrant issues should be illegal will be a major loss to the American economy.

Immigration issues connect America with the rest of the world. Yglesias avows that the world interconnects each day through the sharing of cultures, ideas, and global commerce. People create friendships with immigrants of different backgrounds hence expanding their knowledge of how the world works and how different activities are done by different people. The interconnectedness fosters global progress by solving issues like poverty, hunger, gender inequality issues among others (Foner 179) When people are interconnected, they reason together to solve problems that affect the majority of the members and provide solutions that benefit all of them. As immigrants move across the borders, they spread progress, exchange cultures, and become more knowledgeable by studying the causes that keep some countries lagged behind when it comes to development among other issues. They also study the educational patterns in the U.S. and their homes countries and as the skills tend to rapidly expand, they enrich other people by helping them to see the importance of interacting with others. What is trues is that immigrants help create a more dynamic society. There are many indirect benefits that immigration issues account to the United States, which enhance social and economic development.

However, other people contend that that immigration issue is a problem that should be a country concern. Immigrants crossing the Mexico border are growing out of control and illegally filter into the United States (Hanson 57). The rate of immigration is increasing each year posing a threat to the citizens. For centuries, the immigrants move to the U.S. to look for jobs or opportunities with the belief that the country will guarantee a golden door to their problems. They consider the U.S. as a land of freedom and opportunities. They flood the country since they have no place to reside thereby negatively impacting the economy. For instance, Ellis Island, a place that symbolizes American immigrant heritage houses immigrants who get disappointed when they fail to garner opportunities and jobs (Hanson 69). Immigrants are affecting the employment sector in the United States; they take jobs that should belong to unemployed U.S. citizens. On the other hand, illegal immigrants receive more benefits as compared to the taxes they pay. They take advantage of the taxes, for instance, they have many children who benefit from public education more than the Americans.

Conclusion

In conclusion, illegal immigration has significantly risen over the past decade even after the nation was hit by twin 9/11 attack in 2001. These illegal immigrants despite having benefits such as promoting cultural enrichment, and them not enjoying employment benefits as legal American citizens. They also bring a lot of problems in the nation and should not be permitted to access the country. The main problem is they evade paying taxes, it is hard for the American authorities to implement total security to decrease the figures of undocumented settlers who enter the country and end up being protected by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. They also hamper the economy as most of the salaries these immigrants earn is sent to their homes in their own nations. When there is a lot of capital outflow the economy will stagnate. Finally, putting more focus on how to curb unlawful traffic means and interdiction can be an effective strategy to halt undocumented settlers from accessing the United States.

Works Cited

Foner, Nancy. "The immigrant family: Cultural legacies and cultural changes." The new immigration. Routledge, 2012. 171-180.