The Undocumented in the U.S. Illegal Immigration has become a nationwide epidemic in the U.S. with an estimated 11.8 million undocumented immigrants in 2007 and accounting for 3 percent of the population. (Hoefer 1) Over the years the debate over whether or not to allow illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States has become a lengthy struggle for some that are trying to obtain citizenship legally. As an industrialized nation, the U.S. depends on these immigrants to provide a work for hire service for cheap during economic turmoil. There are several advantages that stem from illegal immigration that should be pointed out.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) argues that illegal immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers more than 100 billion dollars every year. They say this is because of a variety of different reasons. First of all, illegal immigrants are undocumented workers which the government pays, but they don’t pay the income taxes back. The director for FAIR says that "The study of the fiscal effects of illegal immigration clearly demonstrates that it is a burden on the American taxpayer”. He also says that if more forceful implementation of immigration laws were put in, each U.S. household could save in the neighborhood of a couple thousand dollars per year (Fahmy, 1).
It is estimated that there are around eleven million people in the United States illegally. As much as sixty-two percent of all the immigrants here illegally are from Mexico (Salamon 3). Even though not every illegal immigrant is from Mexico, if the United States is able to close down the border and prevent more foreign people from entering, the problem would be over sixty percent solved. The fact that there isn’t more action taken against illegal immigrants is astounding. The economy today is far worse off than it should be.
It is believed that there are tens of thousands anchor babies born to immigrants every year (Galewitz, 2013). FAIR feel that these women giving birth in the United States may think that it will help them gain legal status due to the infant being a citizen. The director for FAIR feels that the focus in saving this money is to prevent illegal immigration from happening in the first place. Information collected from seven states believed to have the highest illegal immigrants show that emergency services are delivered to more than 100,000 people a year (Galewitz 2013). Out of the $2 billion a year for emergency Medicaid California receives about half of this amount.
Illegal Immigration in the United States By Charles B. Illegal immigration has not only become a major concern, the overall impact in the United States is rising. Within the last five to ten years, we’ve detected thousands or even millions of immigrants, specifically Hispanics; migrating into the United States without passports, visas, or proper documentation. Illegal immigration has become a great fear in the United States because it creates a higher financial deficit due to supporting the immigrants who do not invest back into our country. Studies acknowledged that, on average, the costs that illegal-immigrant households bear on the federal government are less than half that of other households and that many of those costs relate to their
Henry Ford instituted a forty-hour workweek, with the minimum salary being five dollars per day. All of the 26,000 workers in the factory were guaranteed the right to earn this payment. Many other companies and manufacturing plants adopted similar policies, which gave hundreds of thousands of people an opportunity to increase their quality of life. To this day, the forty-hour workweek that Ford set is still in place in most of the United States’ industries. With low prices from the massive jump in factory efficiency, a middle class citizen could now purchase the latest and greatest piece of technology in decades.
From 1900 to 1930, immigrants made up between 12% and 15% of the population, and similar spikes occurred in the 1850s and 1880s. The U.S. successfully absorbed immigrants during those periods, and there is no reason to believe that we are being overrun today. Of the 36 million immigrants in the U.S. today, two thirds (24 million) are here legally, and half of those with legal status (12 million) are U.S. citizens. There are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Half (6 million) of these people entered the country legally as tourists, students
These high levels of incarceration have in turn made sending people to prison profitable. Mass incarceration is not only a huge problem within itself but it has additional negative effect on productivity both economic and societal, and parental availability to their children. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) reports that from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled-from roughly 500,000 to 2.3 million people” (“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet”, n.d.). According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “The United States imprisons more people—both per capita and in absolute terms—than any other nation in the world, including Russia, China, and Iran” (“Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration”, 2011). When a nation begins to incarcerate that many of its citizens people begin to question what exactly is causing this trend?
Illegal immigration is a big problem In the United States. According to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States rose from 8.4 million in 2000 to 10.3 million in 2004. Illegal immigrants take advantage of the system put in place to assist natural born or naturalized Americans. Illegal immigrants use the educational and economic programs for their own ends at the cost to taxpayers and Americans who actually need them. Americans work hard too and it doesn’t seem right that illegal immigrants can come and use up all of the benefits that were supposed to go to hard working Americans.
Considering agriculture is such a huge industry here in Montana I found this articles importance and relativity worthwhile. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture over half of agricultural employees in the United States are undocumented workers, a majority of these workers came from Mexico (Goodman, 2014). “Any potential immigration reform could have significant impacts on the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry. From the perspective of National Milk Producers Federation in 2009, retail milk prices would increase by 61 percent if its immigrant labor force were to be eliminated (Goodman, 2014).” Not only would deporting these immigrants overwhelmingly increase the prices of these products, but because there are so many undocumented workers in this field, ultimately there would be a shortage of agricultural products (Goodman, 2014). I could not believe that statistic, and how important it is for there to be an immigrant labor force in the agricultural industry.