Should Borders Be Closed?

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)

Open or closed borders? This seems to be a topic that many people want to listen to. We all have reasons why we should close the border as well as open it, but has anyone really thought about those arguments and noticed that they don’t make sense? In addition, there are much better reasons to keep them open:

The United States of America (USA) has been one of the traditional receiving countries of immigrants (Friedberg & Hunt, 1995), and they do not take in too lightly of allowing immigrants violate its law and entering illegally to settle in its country without consequences. To date, millions of people have violated its immigration policies. The USA is also the economic leader of the world. It has been the notion that illegal immigrants are devouring up the US economy and for that reason they should be ousted. However, illegal immigrations have rooted into society since far back in history, and realized now, it is that illegal immigrants are not damaging the US economy; they contribute to it and their services costs

In order to ensure our country 's safety, I believe that the borders of America should be closed and secured. If America 's leaders vote to keep our borders open and free to all, the Immigration Crisis will evolve into an even bigger problem. It is my understanding that America is already trillions of dollars in debt, not including all the funds it would take to care for thousands of immigrants. While the numbers are clearly not as bad as most other countries, we too have our own citizens living in poverty everyday. I firmly believe that until we are capable of providing restoration and a better quality of life to our own people, we have no business or resources to do so for other countries.

The long-term effects of immigration policy, such as DACA, can only be speculated. Recent activity from the Trump administration has suggested the dismantling of DACA while proposing stricter immigration policy such as the merit-based immigration policy known as Reforming American Immigrants for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act (Gelatt, 2017). Therefore, continuously studying immigration policy is essential to understanding the potential impact on the United States. This capstone will examine social-disorganization theory and how it perpetuates the stigma associated with immigrants and criminal behavior, specifically as it relates to DACA and the future of immigration policy.

Should the United States close the borders? By leaving our borders open we are allowing many illegal immigrants into the United States, who ruin the American economy. Not to mention the people who could be involved in major crimes, and terrorists enter freely, and jeopardize the safety of the American people. The United States has had terrorist attacks in san bernardino last year, at the boston marathon in 2013, at fort hood in 2009 and 911.

Not only do some Americans believe that immigrants take jobs away from Americans, but they also believe that immigrants bring crime to America. President Donald Trump has made numerous remarks about immigration and crime, suggesting that the two are linked. However when the amount of immigrants living in America, both documented and undocumented, increased sharply between the years of 1990 and 2010, the United States violent crime rate plummeted by 45% and the property crime rate declined by

A lot of immigrants who go to another country cause a lot of criminal activity such as drug trafficking, prostitution, and identity theft. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, another 23 percent, more than 43,000 illegal aliens, were convicted of drug offenses (Gemma, Peter B.). Out of all the drug offenses that is a lot of charges just for illegal aliens as a specific category. Immigration isn’t something that has just recently occurred in the world. It is something that has been going on for as long as people can remember. Immigration isn’t something that is going to stop. Its also not something that can be fixed completely

Although illegal immigrants only make up less than four percent of the total population in the United States, five percent of the population in both state and federal prisons is made up of those who are not United States citizens. Between 2010 and 2014, 121 illegal immigrants who were released from immigration custody were later charged with murder (Shoichet, 2015). Figures show that immigrants are three times more likely to be convicted of murder than the general population. Each year, approximately 900,000 legal and illegal immigrants are arrested, and 700,000 of these end up being released. Illegal immigrants account for 12 percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnapping sentences, and 16

Immigration is one of the central themes of the founding of the United States and as such it is often the epicenter of controversy among both citizens and policymakers. Throughout the twentieth century, American citizens and policymakers have brought to the forefront the importance of immigration and the role immigrants play within society. This can be a cause of friction between immigrants and multi-generational citizens because immigrants are often viewed with a negative connotation. They are often blamed for stealing jobs from hardworking citizens, draining the healthcare system and adding to the homeless population. They are associated with crime, poverty and in general they are perceived as undesirable members of society (Spenkuch, 2014). The relationship between crime and immigrants is of particular importance because there is a common perception that immigrants cause crime and their neighborhoods are riddled with criminal activity. Also important to note is that the characteristics of immigrants tend to coincide with members of the native-born population that are disproportionally incarceration. In general, they are poorly educated, earn low wages and are young, males. This led to the perception that incoming immigrants continuously add to the lower class, criminal population. In order to clearly understand the relationship between the two concepts they must be examined both from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint

A couple of facts that counters the image of illegal immigrants as criminals include, “The anti-immigrant forces draw, for example, on the ‘2006 (first quarter) INS [immigration and Naturalization service/FBI statistical report on undocumented Immigrants’ with its array of alarming statistics about illegal immigrants and crime to make their case that undocumented immigrants not only break the law entering the country but also break the laws, with a proclivity to violent crimes, once they make their homes here.” And, “One of the most disturbing findings of the IPC study was that immigrant children and immigrants with many years in the country are more likely to become criminals than first-generation immigrants or those with less than 15

Although events such as San Bernardino in 2015 provide anecdotal evidence of immigrants committing acts of extreme violence, these events are extremely rare. Nonetheless, tragedies such as these inevitably grab headlines and capture the attention of millions of Americans across the country. Tragedies such as the attack in San Bernardino hold strong emotional appeal to proponents for restrictive immigration policy. However, these rare and uncontrollable events should not provide the base of logic for America’s national immigration policy as they are not a proxy for immigrant behavior as a whole. Various statistics regarding crime among immigrants may reveal an underlying reason for lower crime rates, which is that the majority of immigrants understand the implications of committing a crime and know that it would not be in their best interest as a new member of the country they wish to call home. Natives, moreover, have crime rates five times that of immigrants. This demonstrates the potential positive externalities that immigrants contribute to the social sphere by lowering the crime rate and acting as models within urban America.

It is proven that immigrants are far more afraid and less likely to as well participate in any crime involved activities, quit their jobs, shoplift, hurt others in any way, shape or form, or do something that could get them arrested. It’s the sense of fear they have for getting deported, but it may also be that good spirit in which they truly came here to start a better life with no problems. Many comparisons between cities, communities and counties are done by economists to differentiate the links of local concentration of immigrants and the rates of crime and violence in that specified area. Results showed that the higher number concentration of immigrants, the lower crime rate. There is no proven connection found between immigrants and higher crime

Many immigrants come to the United States in search of the opportunity to have a better life. They have the willingness to work, seek out educational opportunities and to be productive members and contributors to society. Rarely do you find those instances where immigrants come here to take, destroy all that our nation has built and established. When you hear the current administration in the media use fear, as part of cultural destructiveness to destroy how our society view other cultures and diminish the worth of individuals within their own Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, Thomas, (pg. 64, 2012). By doing that the narrative around immigrants’ changes, people start to believe that immigrants are here committing crimes and a higher rate in comparison to Americans that are born here; For instance, during one of Donald’s Trump 2016 campaign speeches he said “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re

The thought of arriving immigrants in any host country has been accompanied by reactions of exclusion, and continues to expand throughout the years. During any social illness, immigrants tend to be the first to be held responsible by their recipient societies. Most crimes are associated with immigrants due to the fact that they may not posses the same socio-economics status as natives. Another contributing factor is the media that conducts numerous stories that highlight the image of immigrant crimes to recall the alleged difference between native and foreign born. Undoubtedly, the correlation between immigration and crime has become one of the most controversial discussions in current society. As we enter a new era, immigrants will have