Immigration In America Essay, Research Paper

Immigration in America

American National Government

Immigration

I. Introduction

A. Problem of Immigrants in the U.S.

B. Numbers that are Immigrating into U.S.

II. Stands on the Issue

A. Democrats Stand

B. Republican Stand

C. Candidates Stand

D. Special Interest Groups

E. Local Citizens

F. My Stand

III. Ways to solve the problem

A. Quotas

B. Standardized Tests

Immigration is an increasing problem in the U.S. making the issue a minor detail to be concerned about in the year?s upcoming election. Because of increased immigration a variety of problems have resulted. The first is education. When an immigrant comes into this country he or she doesn?t have to have any knowledge of

English and they need to do is stumble through some papers and they are in. This means that their children don?t know how to speak English, so they are going into public schools with no knowledge as to what they rest of the students are saying or doing. This creates a conflict and a disruption to the rest of the class. There are two ways to solve the problem, they can either educate teachers in several different languages, which in order to do they would probably have to increase teachers salaries by an extremely good portion, or they can slow down the rate of immigration. Figures show that the U.S. population grew by almost 2.5 million people last year. Of that number one million of those people were immigrants. These are just the legal ones. There is no way of telling how many illegal ones made it across the U.S. and Mexican Border.

This problem doesn?t stop here. The economical effects are bad too. The workers coming in are willing to work for less money and do the same amount of work as the rest on the American citizens are willing to do. This means that either the American citizens are going to have to accept lower wages in order to keep their jobs or they are going to have to find new jobs. This problem only effects those that do manual labor jobs and jobs that don?t require lots of training and skills. Furthermore, the problem reaches the people at the top of the pay scale as well. People have found a way to sneak across the border and get themselves put on welfare. This dips out of the taxpayers? money and takes away money for legitimate government programs and also gives critics of the welfare program more ammunition to eliminate welfare.

Many different groups have many different sides on the issue. The Democrats seem to be in favor of immigration. They encourage immigrants to come into the U.S. and become permanent citizens. They complain about how the Republicans are against immigration and try to blame the countries social and economic problems on the immigrants. The Republicans on the other hand don?t want to see immigration continue and they would like to see quotas placed on the numbers that are allowed to come in. The two candidates seem to be very quiet about the issue. This only makes sense because ticking off the minorities this close to election could be fatal. Al Gore does however comment on how the border patrol?s over use of power needs to be stopped and to keep things from getting out of hand. Basically he is saying let the Mexicans hop the border and invade our whole country.

At the time of the Iowa Caucuses, I was surprised at the number of ads there was in various newspapers that I read addressing the issue of immigration. They all seem to be coming from the same point of view and that was to stop immigration into this country to prevent the country from being over run by immigrants who don?t care about our way of life.

One of the more frequent ads I saw were those put out by Negative Population Growth, Inc. They talked about the different ways that the immigration problem was affecting us as a nation. This group seemed to be hard-core about trying to keep the immigration members to an absolute minimum. Their website talks about all of the negative effects of immigration and they show all of the effects of immigration. These effects include the economy, social, lifestyle, and etc. The website doesn?t seem to have any information that seems to degrade any minority or any information that seems to be false. The site serves basically two purposes. The first is to serve as a source of information and inform people about the problem. The second purpose is to encourage people to get involved.i This is good because we have too many groups today that whine about problems, yet they can?t seem to figure out a way to try and solve them. This seems to be the only group that is interested in actually taking action to do something about the problem.

I have talked to several people in my area and they have all said the same thing. We have a problem and we need to get it under control. Lucy Hough comments, ?Everyday I teach, I see someone who can?t speak English and I have several students who, after several years in this country, still can?t speak English.? Lucy implements a program on contract from Omaha Public Schools, therefore she travels throughout Omaha and goes to various schools. Nick Benzing also commented, ?? Nick is a high school social sciences teacher and is very active in the Democratic Party and in the National Education Association.

I feel that this is a serious problem that needs a serious solution. People immigrate from other countries to escape their problems. What they don?t realize is that they don?t escape their problems, they just seem to bring the problems into our country. As a direct result of doing this paper, I have decided on joining the NPG and trying to do something about our immigration problem.

There are many solutions to the problem at hand. On the issue on illegal immigrants, my friend Greg Elliott comment, ?If we armed the border patrol with assault weapons and gave the order to kill upon conformation of an illegal trespasser, then the problem would be taken care of very quickly instead of us always sending them back just so they can try again.? This solution is a little on the outrageous side. Another solution is to put quotas on the number immigrants into the U.S. this would help limit the number from one million to whatever the Congress decides. This is the method the NPG prefers to get accomplished. The last solution is standardized tests. This solution would give any person who wants to get into this country a chance. Under this system, every immigrant would be given a test that included questions about the English language and about some basic aspects of American Government. This is my solution to the problem and I think it might work, though creating a test might prompt some anti-immigration officials to create a test so hard that not even the sharpest American could pass it.

In conclusion, I have shown you the immigration issue and how it affects Americans and what can be done to stop it. I have also showed what other people feel about the issue as well and what national groups are out there trying to stop immigration.

Hopefully, you can form your own opinion and feel free to look at any of the sites below if you want to see more information about immigration and what the stand is.

Bibliography

Negative Population Growth, Inc.- http://www.npg.org/

Democrat National Committee- http://www.democrats.org/

Republicans.org, (Republicans official homepage)- http://www.republicans.org/

Interview, Lucy Hough

Interview, Nick Benzing

Interview, Greg Elliott

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