Research Paper Sample about Immigration

Immigrants have always made up a significant portion of the U.S. population and especially now. According to the Census Bureau in 2019, immigrants made up 14% of the U.S. population, which is 45 million out of 328 million people. While immigrants make up such a huge portion of our country, we often treat them cruelly. There are many negative thoughts towards immigrants as many know but there are a lot of positives as well. Many can be against immigration but we all know that immigration is important and crucial to our country for it to be able to go round. In the Social Justice Resource Center’s “Immigration Facts and Figures”, they state facts of the beneficial and positive effects immigrants have on the U.S. economy and jobs. The Council on foreign Relations in “The U.S. Immigration Debate”, goes over the failed attempts of authority figures to address immigration problems. The High Country News in “How the U.S. Immigration System Has Grown Increasingly Cruel” states that immigrants receive cruel/poor treatment if caught crossing the border because they are seen as criminals. Immigrants are important to and for us but are underappreciated and undervalued.

Many say the immigrants are “stealing” work for U.S. born citizens, when in reality there are more than enough jobs to support both. In “Immigration Facts and Figures”, the Social Justice Resource Center states “Removing the approximately 8 million unauthorized workers in the United States would not automatically create 8 million job openings for unemployed Americans for 2 reasons. First, removing millions of undocumented workers from the economy would also remove millions of entrepreneurs, consumers and taxpayers. The economy would actually lose jobs. Second, native-born workers and immigrant workers tend to possess different skills that often complement one another”. Everyone will always have to compete to for work with others, whether it be with an immigrant or with a born citizen because there are many people who have the same skill set or are able to learn. Finding work has always been competitive and now more so with the increase of population. Removing immigrants to make work for the unemployed would just make everything in the economy decline instead of helping like most would think or want. Immigrants are essential, not only to create jobs but also to do jobs. According to “Immigration Facts and figures”, by the Social Justice Resource Center, “Immigrants, regardless of status, fill the growing gap between expanding low-skilled jobs and the shrinking pool of native-born Americans who are willing to take such jobs. By facilitating the growth of such sectors as retail, agriculture, landscaping, restaurants, and hotels, low-skilled immigrants have enabled those sectors to expand, attract investment, and create middle-class jobs in management, design and engineering, bookkeeping, marketing and other areas that employ U.S. citizens”. Most immigrants come to the U.S. seeking work; meaning most, if not all are willing to do any kind of job. Immigrants are known to do undesirable jobs that born citizens refuse to do. Immigrants do not only take undesirable, low skilled work, as many also study to fill in the gaps for work where you need to be educated and highly skilled. We should be seeing immigrants as beneficial to our country and it’s economy as they are a part of what makes it great economically. 

U.S. authority figures don’t seem to know what to do or how to address immigration problems. We seem to see a lot of back and forth debate between congress and authority figures like the presidents. The Council of Foreign Relations states in “The U.S. Immigration debate” that, “The last push for a major immigration overhaul came in 2013, following a decade in which Congress debated numerous immigration reforms, some considered comprehensive, others piecemeal. The last comprehensive legislation to make it through Congress was under President Ronald Reagan in 1986; it gave legal amnesty to some three million undocumented residents. In 2007, President George W. Bush worked with congressional Democrats to reach a compromise on a new comprehensive bill, but it ultimately failed to win enough support”. Comprehensive immigration reform refers to omnibus legislation that attempts to address demand for high- and low-skilled labor, the legal status of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country, border security, and interior enforcement. We can see that immigration problems have been occurring for many years and will continue on in the future. Debate for the decision making of immigration problems takes a long time, most of what is being debated is also rejected most of the time. According to the Council of Foreign Relations in “The U.S. Immigration debate”, “Biden campaigned on overturning almost all of Trump’s immigration policies. In its first months, his administration has taken dozens of actions…Biden’s steps to undo Trump-era policies have included reducing immigration enforcement inside the United States, ending the travel bans, lifting the suspension of green card processing, and halting construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. His administration has also expanded TPS protections, canceled safe third country agreements, and raised the refugee cap to 62,500 after initially maintaining the limit imposed under Trump”. We aren’t getting anywhere to solve immigration problems because what one president starts, the next ends it to start their own. It’s a never ending cycle of getting nowhere because we don’t stick to something long enough to see results. So now we not only have a problem with making decisions on the problems we have problems committing to those decisions. 

It seems that we don’t have compassion for people anymore, especially not for immigrants when they are crossing the border. According to the High Country News, in their article “How the U.S. Immigration System has Grown Increasingly Cruel”, “Border Patrol laid out its first national strategy and established what’s known as “prevention through deterrence” — the idea that the border can be controlled if you increase the stress, harm and suffering that unauthorized migrants are exposed to, so it reaches a point where it has a deterrent effect”. Deterrence is the theory that perpetrators know the laws so punishment will prevent the crime. Through this theory of “prevention through deterrence”, surveillance towers and checkpoints have been placed along the U.S.-Mexico border. Pushing people to travel further into the desert, shifting the geography of their travel so that they can’t enter as easily or at all. It is a dreadful journey to begin with that is just being made more difficult. Many do not make it; either passing away on the difficult journey or passing when they do arrive due to poor conditions. In the High country News article “How the U.S. Immigration System has Grown Increasingly Cruel”, it states “Desperate families follow dangerous smuggling corridors from Central America to the U.S. Southwest. Once here, they are separated and sent to overcrowded, inhumane border facilities that have little to no oversight”. Due to how strenuous the journey is on one’s health, many arrive in horrible conditions. For example, Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, was 7 years old when she and her father decided to make the journey to the U.S.. They were taken into custody with many others trying to cross the border when Jakelin fell sick. She passed the next day and was one of six children who died in Border Patrol custody in 2018 due to insufficient medical care or neglect. Who would have thought that our government would allow children to suffer and die when they clearly are able to help. Isn’t our country supposed to be based on morals?