Justice In The Devil's Highway

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Justice in Immigration In The Devil’s Highway, Luis Urrea portrays the terrible pain and suffering that illegal immigrants face on their journey to the United States. Urrea, however, gives little attention to the controversy of dealing with the illegals currently in the American population. One major question that arises in this category is whether or not U.S. employers should hire illegal immigrants and whether or not these employers are justified in the decision they make on the matter. With the impoverished economic situations in Mexico and many Latin American countries, it is easy to understand why many people choose to immigrate to America and into a land they have always heard offers opportunity for a better life. The real matter however,…show more content…
employers’ reasoning for hiring illegal immigrants is wrong and unjust, as supported by the theories of Immanuel Kant and John Rawls. Looking past the immediate injustice of the issue, we can see that this hiring is wrong because it has a negative impact on America in many aspects. United States employers paying under-market wages and benefits to undocumented workers depresses wages for all American workers, and thus these greedy companies make huge profits at the expense of these illegals and the working citizens in the United States. Also, a report of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration in 2011 showed that illegal immigrants received $7.3 billion more from 2005 to 2010 from the IRS than they paid in federal income taxes (Schulkin 1). Our country is currently experiencing a massive debt, and I do not think it is appropriate solely looking at the issue in a factual manner that we allow illegal immigrants into our society or work place. Another major response to this issue is that these illegal immigrants are doing extremely beneficial work in the United States that many others will not do, and if we prohibit them from doing so than much of that work may not get done. However, just because these illegal immigrants are willing to do this hard work for next to nothing in potentially dangerous working conditions does not make it okay for us to allow them to do it. Not only do possibly dangerous and unsafe working conditions impose harm…show more content…
In other words, Sandel describes it as the idea of encouraging the gifted to utilize their talents to reap rewards for the community as a whole. This is also a philosophy that I agree with, and once again it is a philosophy that shows how unjust these employers are to hire illegal workers. These employers are using their status and gifts to reap profits solely for themselves and their companies and certainly not to benefit these illegal immigrants as they are being exploited. The employers are certainly not working for the betterment of the least advantaged, which is once again evident in the fact that many of them don’t offer safety regulations or job benefits. While this is not the case for every single U.S. employer who hires illegal immigrants, I do strongly believe, supported by statistics, that these are the major reasons why most employers hire them. These two philosophies along with my own show the actions of these U.S. employers in hiring illegal immigrants as completely immoral and
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