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 question comes to mind when you think about these

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).