Immigration Reform Unauthorized Immigrants

The United States of America, being a country founded by immigrants, is known all over the world as the land of great opportunities. People from all walks of life travelled across the globe, taking a chance to find a better life for them and their family. Over the years, the population of immigrants has grown immensely, resulting in the currently controversial issue of illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants are the people who have overstayed the time granted on their US, visa or those who have broken the federal law by crossing the border illegally. Matt O’Brien stated in his article “The government thinks that 10.8 million illegal immigrants lived in the country in January 2009, down from a peak of nearly 12 million in 2007.”(Para, 2)

Immigration Reform is a serious and current issue in politics, in government, and in the lives of millions of people. Immigration reform is a term used by the American government and in politics. It refers to the changes to the current immigration policies in the United States. “Reform” is defined as a “change into an improved form or condition, by amending faults or abuses.” So, in a nutshell, Immigration Reform means the improvement of the law regarding how we, the United States, handle immigration. The only reason a country may revise its immigration policy/policies, is if it is having troubles such as illegal immigration. In the United States today, our government is having such troubles – illegal immigration. The statistic on illegal

The return and removal of illegal immigrants from the United States is one of the most widely discussed topics. Since 2007the United States Customs and Border Protection (ICE) has returned or removed over 1.2 million illegal immigrants from the United States. ICE has expanded its Criminal Alien Program to included incarcerated criminal illegal aliens.  In 2007, ICE identified 164,296 convicted criminals who were incarcerated in Federal, state and local penitentiaries (These are people who came into the United States illegally and committed a crime.)

Immigration Reform At this time, the United States has allowed more immigrants to enter the country than at any time in its history. Over a million legal and illegal immigrants take up residence in the United States each year. Immigration at its current magnitude is not fulfilling the interests or demands of this country.

​Immigration is defined as the act of leaving your country of origin and going to another different one to stay there permanently (Dictionary.com). Reasons, why people escape or leave their original countries, are varied; ranging from war, poverty, natural occurrences such as earthquakes while others just take the step for fun purposes. A reform is a change from the way things were done originally and make them better. Therefore, immigration reform is a term that is frequently used in political talks that refer to the alteration of the immigration policy of the nation. The debate is currently prevalent in the United States of America. It is a topic that has been discussed and reforms put across since around 1986 but it’s never addressed fully due to the conflicting stands taken by the leaders, the democrats, and the Republicans always have different views. Recently, the President Obama tenure has reawakened the issue. Some people support the reforms while others do not. It is a time the United States of America undertook immigration reforms as a solution to its porous borders.

Back in 2007 there were several concerns over immigration as a whole and exploding proportions of illegal immigrants crossing the border in the Arizona area. Arizona attempted to resolve the influx of people across the border by imposing heavy fines on employers hiring illegal immigrants. At that time in Arizona there was a democratic governor Janet Napolitano that continually vetoed the Arizona’s legislature attempt to reduce illegal immigration. In 2009 the state replaced the Democratic governor with a Republican governor Jan Brewer who was supportive of reforms for immigration in Arizona. In 2010 the immigration problem was so sever that Arizona passed legislation allowing the state to enforce federal law for identification of legal immigration into the United States. This sparked a nation wide discussion on illegal immigration and immigration reform.

In the United States, immigration has been high topic of debate. As of 2015, 13.5 percent of the United States population of 321.4 billion were immigrants (Jie). Immigration has been shaping the way America works for many years now. It has brought changes to the economy, workforce, culture, language and politics just to name a few changes. America is often referred to as the melting pot of cultures. Where the “American dream” can be reached as long as you are willing to work hard. However, citizens also demand strict boarders to prevent illegal workers but we still want the free movement of goods. A lot of legislative bills have been past in recent years that have brought change to immigration and the way it is done. The top five bills that have affected the country are as follows; The Immigration Reform and Control Act, IRCA, of 1986 penalized employees for hiring unauthorized workers. However, did nothing towards changing the immigration system or provide resources to implement the employer sanctions provisions. The Immigration Act of 1990 overhauled the immigration system by raising the number of permanent vistas form 290,000 to 675,000 and allotted 555,000 visas annually of underserved counties. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibly Act, IIRAIRA, of 1996 dealt with government spending and a three or ten year bar on returning to the United States for people who were caught without proper documentations from applying for asylum status within one year

A common misconception is that legalizing illegal immigrants would just result in “criminals” running around the streets causing disturbances. Who is ignored is the benefit of a very specific population of Americans, the sons and daughters of illegal immigrants. American children are harmed every time one or both of their parents is deported as a result of the lack of an immigration reform. In the article, “Children of Illegal Immigrants Struggle When Parents Are Deported” Valbrun states that “the government deported more than 46,000 parents of children with U.S. citizenship in the first half of 2011, according to the ARC report.” In these conditions, jailed parents cannot fight for their children’s custody and at times lose it to the government who then puts the children out for adoption or in foster care when they already have loving parents. Properly legalizing immigrants would improve the lives of many American children and improve the American social aspects with more

Immigration has played an important role throughout American history. What fundamentally sets America apart from other nations is the foundation that it was created by immigrants seeking a better life for themselves and their children (Camarota & Zeigler, 2016). During times of economic growth, laborers have been imported, and deported during recessions (Flores, 2016). An average of 1.1 million immigrants relocate to the United States annually (Storesletten, 2000). US Customs and Border Control officials, have witnessed a significant increase in the number of “unaccompanied alien minors” from Latin America, anticipating 75,000 minors (if not more) from 2016 to 2017 (Rush, 2016). The average age for “unaccompanied alien minors” is 11 years

In the United States of America there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the U.S. Many industries depend heavily on immigrant labor , legal and illegal, to achieve productivity. The construction industry, nationally , employ at a fast rate about 1,000,000 illegal immigrants; almost one in five illegal immigrants work major industries. (Passel,2006). Immigrant reform will undoubtedly reduce the supply of illegal immigrant by encouraging enforcement of current laws by creating new legislation with harsher penalties for illegal immigration. The enforcement of the new laws will allow for industries to allow employers to recruit and hire foreign born workers only with signs of identification. However for the industries

Finding immigration services in the Dallas area has gotten more and more difficult in recent years because the immigration process has grown incredibly complicated. In the last few years numerous new regulations have been put into effect, altering how immigration will go forward. At the same time, those new regulations have been rendered more problematic by recent court decisions. All of these changes mean that it is incredibly challenging for an individual to sort through the aspects of immigration and find the right way to press forward on their own.

In 2013, there were an estimated 41.3 million immigrants living in the United States. (Krogstad, 2014). According to present estimates, this foreign-born population consists of 18.6 million naturalized US citizens and 22.1 million noncitizens (Cenato, 2013). Among the noncitizens, approximately 13.3 million are permanent legal residents, while 11.3 million (28%) are unauthorized migrants. (Cenato, 2013). The majority of unauthorized immigrants are primarily from Mexico and other Latin American countries, they live Texas, Florida, California, New York and Arizona (Zong et. al 2015).

Over the last quarter of a decade, illegal immigration and enforcement have dominated mainstream policy making (Meisnner, Kerwin, Chishti & Bergeron, 2013). There has been a lot of public debate too, on whether or not the successive governments of the US have been able to effectively address illegal immigration and its enforcement thereof. However, as Meisnner et al. (2013) state, in the wake of the terror attacks of 2001, a paradigm shift appears to have been established, with the enforcement of illegal immigration taking a de facto stance. As such, as Dreby (2012) intimates, the number of immigrants who have been deported or removed from the US since 2001 has risen from 190, 000 to close to 400, 000. Considering the fact that there are more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in America, deportation on such a large scale without a doubt will result in a continuous chain reaction. One such consequence, as The New York University School of Law (2012) states, is that families are inherently broken apart by the removal of a family member. Additionally, there are other psychological and psychosocial impacts on families that are far-reaching. Because of these and many other compelling factors, this paper argues that the US should work to prevent deportations, rather than enforce them.

The United States’ immigration system has several flaws that no one seems to know how to address. There have been several attempts to correct these flaws like accommodating immigrants with the Dream Act and trying to eliminate illegal entries into the U.S by spending billions of dollars on border patrol. However, there are flaws in those attempts also. For example, according to Daniel Gonzalez, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients are having a hard time finding jobs and, in some states, are prohibited from getting a drivers license. Also, the billions of dollars that have been poured into increased border patrol “reduced but did not stop unauthorized entries” (Mae M. Ngai). Perhaps the flaws in the U.S. immigration system are present because the attempts to fix them contradict one another. Congress tries to make border patrol stricter, but yet attempt to accommodate undocumented immigrants. Nevertheless, these contradictions should be brought to the attention of the public and even Congress for three reasons: the U.S. have attempted to accommodate migrants, but their actions are severely flawed, there is too much money being spent on border patrol, but illegal entry still exists and is somewhat encouraged, and the House of Representatives and Senate can’t agree on how to approach the issue. These are issues that both current and future migrants and immigrants should care about because they should be accommodated in a way that is easy for them to live the

Did you know there are 8,194,000 children in the United States with at least one immigrant parent? 8,194,000 children whose families are being threatened by the Trump administration's recent changes in immigration policies. Immigration reform has been a topic of controversy for decades. Most Americans blame Mexican immigrants for the United States economic problems and many believe undocumented immigration causes high crime rates. However recent studies have disproved that undocumented immigrants are a threat to American citizens. When people think of immigrants they think of an outdated caricature that doesn't truly represent all of the 11 million undocumented immigrants.