Should America be so
lenient toward illegal immigrants? No. If you want to come to this country,
then you need to go get a green card. In other countries, illegal immigrants
are severely punished for going to the country ILLEGALLY. America on the other
hand, hands out jobs to those who don’t even pay taxes. Why? Because we like
cheap labor. Well cheap labor is awesome when you’re hiring actual citizens of
this country. Why should the poverty stricken people of this country stand by
and allow illegal immigrants to take American jobs? They shouldn’t. If somebody
wants to come over to America and be a part of this country, he or she needs to
take the necessary actions to become a citizen. I do realize that attaining a
green card and all of the requirements to become a citizen is difficult. But if
you really want to live in a better place and have more opportunities, is some
paperwork really that much to ask? In 1993,
Carlos Salinas de Gortari, then president of Mexico, said that NAFTA would
allow Mexico to “export goods and not people.” This promise has obviously
not been kept.
I
believe that America needs to enforce stricter laws against illegal immigrants
coming into this country. If a person is discovered to be illegal, more action
needs to be taken rather than just getting deported. I am not saying that we
should throw every illegal immigrant into jail, that is also for American citizens.
I am saying that anyone discovered to be illegal needs to be not only deported,
but also heavily fined. This will hopefully make people think twice before
illegally crossing that border. Along with fining the illegal immigrants,
officials should also fine their American employers. There are laws and fines
that have been created for the purpose of reducing the amount of illegal
immigrants being hired. I do not think that these laws are enforced strongly
enough. Employers are still continuing to hire illegal immigrants in order to
have cheap labor. This labor should be made not so cheap by increasing the
fines and consequences for hiring those without citizenship. Every state should
follow Arizona and have harsher laws. In Arizona, officials can stop anyone
suspected of being an illegal immigrant. Although harsh, this law has helped.
If
illegal immigrants continue to enter this country, the consequences need to be
raised. If the consequences are worse, people will think twice about coming to
America and not going through the process to become a citizen.
I agree that illegal immigration is a problem that needs to be dealt with, but at the same time, I feel like many of the people who are crossing the border are coming over to try to make a better life for themselves. It is true that they take jobs away from American citizens and work for cheap, but there must be a reason why they though life would be better here than it was where they came from. I feel like we need to work on both sides of the border to fix this problem. We can’t just deport them all or throw them in jail. There will always be more people who want to come over if things are changed in their homes.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in saying that there need to be modifications made to the laws regarding illegal immigration, but a lot of what you've suggested I disagree with. Fining the employer of the illegal immigrant makes sense, as that person is an American citizen who broke the law, but in regards to fining the illegal immigrants themselves, what exactly is the intention here? What grounds of enforcement do we have to guarantee that the fine is actually payed? In many illegal immigration situations the reason why the immigrant came illegally is out of a desire to put themself in a better situation to succeed in life and provide for their families. This almost 100 percent of the time means to get more money. If these individuals are lacking money, do we honestly think that we can fine them and get what money that they don't have? Sure we can fine them and take what little money they do have, but at the end of the day, I feel that doing that actually puts ourselves in a worse situation because it puts the people dependent on the illegal immigrant who was caught in a place where they would have to go to means like illegal immigration themselves to "take the place" of the person who was caught. Another thing that I feel is often lost on the general public that cries for harsher illegal immigration penalties is the fact that in a decent amount of these cases, the job conditions that illegal immigrants are working under are ones that we ourselves simply refuse to work under ourselves. Some job conditions include no set wages, no healthcare benefits, no vacation pay, no retirement benefits, and no sick leave. I think that by looking at these things you can fairly accurately say that we’re not losing “cutthroat” jobs that the public would be so much better off with Americans manning them. By looking at the jobs that have these kinds of benefits, which is about ¾ of the jobs held by illegal immigrants, you’ll make quite an interesting discovery. By having jobs that have these kinds of benefits, illegal immigrants have money taken out of their paychecks which is entered into government systems that they later will actually never be able to cash in on because in being illegal they are unable to provide the necessary documentation to collect it. In simpler terms, illegal immigrants are actually pumping money into the American economy and government, not taking away from it. Estimates put the amount of money that has been introduced in to the U.S. Social Security system alone by illegal immigrants that will in almost every case never be collected at close to $240 billion! TBC…
ReplyDeleteComing from Fremont, where an adaptation of the Arizona illegal immigration law was recently voted into place, I can say firsthand that the means set up in this legislation is not the way that we want to deal with the problem. Looking past the fact that it is unconstitutional in that it allows for, and even promotes in my opinion, racial profiling (i.e. racist officers pulling over Mexican individuals because of the stereotype that all Mexicans are illegal), the legislation is something that makes a big deal out of something that quite honestly isn’t as big of a deal that many people who are “pro-harsh illegal immigration punishment” would have you believe. According to statistics taken by the DHS, there are an estimated 10.8 million illegal immigrants living amongst just under 311.6 million Americans. Doing very simple math, you can calculate this to be approximately 0.033% of the individuals residing in the United States. While I’m in no way condoning the act of illegal immigration, the fact of the matter is that there really aren’t that many illegal immigrants in the U.S. I personally feel that, yes, there are many things that can be done to advance our fight against illegal immigration, but we need to sit down and realize that these persons human beings just like ourselves, not some lesser person. Also, I think it would do us good to look back over the last 300 years, where we as Americans have been illegal immigrants to the land that we now call home, and the means by which we came to calling this land home. They are ones that are both extremely unethical and ones that would be harshly punished by the standards set in place today. I really feel that if we stand back and let that soak in we’ll be much less harsh to these individuals and seek out a more civil, and logical solution to the problem.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we should not be so lenient towards illegal immigrants. If it is worth it for them to come into the United States and live illegally, then it should be worth it to go through the process of getting a green card to become legal. I believe that there should be other punishments for illegals besides simply being deported; however, a hefty fine is not the way to go. If they are deported and have a fine to pay, the fine would most likely never be paid. Then what? We are supposed to spend time and money trying to track them down for more punishment? The fining of employers is also the wrong thing to do in trying to help solve this problem. Unemployment and the number of available jobs is another issue for the U.S. but if we fine employers for this, they could become directly related. Most employers that hire illegal immigrants are probably smaller companies doing physically draining labor. Therefore they shouldn’t be fined for hiring those people because a fine could result in firing of another worker or pay cuts.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, to Brit, they are about 3.3% of the people in America (you forgot to multiply by 100.) Now to the real topic. I don’t think immigrants should be here illegally. On the other hand, the process of becoming a citizen is extremely difficult from what I have seen of it. A few years ago, my cousin married a woman from Peru and she applied for citizenship. Although I wasn’t devoting a lot of attention to their talk with the guy who was helping them apply for her citizenship because I was playing the Legend of Zelda, I did get the impression that the process is very long and difficult seeing as I didn’t understand hardly any of it. I think that the government needs to make citizenship easier to obtain so that the illegals can become legal.
ReplyDelete--Posted on behalf of Cody Dreier
The process of becoming a citizen is very lengthy and I remember for my government class in high school we took the test and over half of my class failed. I think it is the goal of many people who do cross illegally to become a citizen it just never becomes a reality. Many of the laws you propose about fining employers are already in place. Also, sometimes the employers don’t always know that the worker is not a legal citizen. They can write down a fake social security number and it takes around six weeks for the company to realize that the number is invalid. So, theoretically the worker can work for around six weeks and collect three paychecks then quit before the employer ever knows. Then companies that know their employees are not citizens do get fined and sometimes go out of business from these fines. In no way am I condoning crossing the border illegally it is just hard to combine every group of illegal citizens without knowing their reasoning for crossing. Many laws are already in place it’s just hard to regulate laws on people that have no records on living here.
ReplyDeleteThanks for noticing that one for me Cody! And yeah, I definitely agree with you when you say that there needs to be a simpler way to get into America by legal means. A big part of why many illegal immigrants try to come to the country illegally as opposed to going through the legal process (according to many persons I know from back in Fremont with first-hand knowledge on the topic) is because it's so much faster than going through the process of getting their citizenship/work visa/student visa/green card. Looking solely at the things individuals are required to know to pass the American citizenship test is astounding. Many of the things on there that they are required to know I myself haven't the first idea about. Like I said earlier, I'm not promoting illegal immigration in the slightest, but I think that there are many things we have set in place, like the arduous process of the necessary paperwork to come over legally, that are not doing ourselves any favors, but are actually in a sense encouraging people to come illegally. I feel that if we want to really attack the problem head on we as a country need to stop going half-heartedly at the problem and look at all aspects of what's being done, and what needs to be done, then make some swift, brash, decisive, and most importantly, in my opinion, rational actions if we are to actually see the changes that we want to see.
ReplyDeleteIllegal immigration is something I feel strongly about. I'm not quite sure why but I just do. Perhaps part of the reason is that I am tired of people from countries that shall remain nameless coming into our country and then complaining that we're not nice to them or don't give them the benefits they deserve. The fact of the matter is, they don't deserve any benefits from our country! They haven't done anything for this country! Some people, who shall also remain nameless but I will say they are in this class, would say that we need to help them because they have only come to America to make a better life for themselves and/or their family. I simply say that that is a very generalized statement. There is a large portion of the illegal immigrants in the United States that have come here to escape prosecution for crimes they have committed in their home country. Should we give other country's criminals the "benefits they deserve?" No; we need to send them back where they came from. If they want to be a citizen of our country, they need to follow the most basic of our laws and come in to the United States the legal way.
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