The Civil War : The Battle Over Illegal Immigration

The debate over illegal immigration has been a constant and ongoing struggle in the United States. Millions of illegal immigrants are living among us in the country, we have more entering daily. Recently, President Barack Obama touched on the topic with his immigration executive order. Unfortunately, with the republican takeover of the white house, many of his actions are not being supported. This is viable evidence that there are people who want to help fix the immigration system in a way that will benefit illegal immigrants and give them a fighting chance to prosper here in the United States. With that being said, there are also powers who do not want to see that happen because they believe that it is not in the best interest of the United States to open their borders to illegals. This puts to question what the next steps for the United States will decide and how that will affect Americans across the country. My goal of this essay is to enlighten the moral concerns in the debates pertaining to immigration.

As depicted in John Steinbeck's novel Grapes of Wrath the 1930's was a time when migrant workers like the story's Joad family had to leave their homes, cross a perilous desert, live through the social injustices of the time, and work at jobs with low insufficient pay just to have a better life (Steinbeck). Seventy years later, the situations and experiences stay the same but the people are no longer native-born Americans but illegal immigrants who sacrifice everything to come to the United States to live a better life, as a result of that the 500,000 immigrants that illegally enter the United States through the Mexican border annually and stay in the country are the Joads of today (Aizenman).

Immigration has been a hot button topic for years, however just recently it has become one of the main sources of discussion for GOP debates and other less formal conversations and interviews. Suggestions on how to deal with it range from mass deportation to a big wall to stopping immigration completely. Yet with all this talk about how it is ‘destroying’ our country and what to do about it, not many people are really talking about about the immigrants themselves. When dealing with issues that pertain humans, no one can take a sociopathic side. This idea is brought up in both the video “Fixing the System” and the poem “Immigrants in Our Own Land”. Both sources bring up the argument that immigrants, including the ones who are here illegally,

Illegal immigration is a heated topic and the controversy recently escalated as one California town made history. Huntington Park, California is a small suburb of Los Angeles with an extensive Hispanic population. In August 2015, a local councilman appointed two illegal immigrants to serve on the city council of Huntington Park. The city mayor supported the appointment; however, many community residents were outraged. The debate has now spread nationwide as citizens debate illegal immigrants’ ability to serve in governing positions in the United States.

Yee, V., Davis, K., & Patel, J. (2017, March 06). Here’s the Reality About Illegal Immigrants in the United States. Retrieved November 10, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/06/us/politics/undocumented-illegal-immigrants.html

Public views toward undocumented immigration is not much positive because we are not welcoming their presence in our society. here, I would like to examines the receptions of undocumented immigrants in the US society. when we talk about illegal immigrants, people have first thoughts that they would be Hispanic, criminal, and uneducated people. However, studies and data show, there are other groups of people, who are living in the US without proper documentation. Findings suggest that many undocumented immigrants have been discriminated in the work place and public forums, such as school, restaurants, and streets by behavior, verbal abuse, lower pay, and labeling theory.

Illegal immigrants in the United States (US) have long been an issue of debate for policymakers and the public. The foundation about them is that they do not pay taxes; they add to the costs of taxpayers and use up funds in resources meant for assisting people and legal immigrants (the legal people). Therefore, they are perceived as a threat to the US economy. The true influences of illegal immigrants on the US economy are debated by debating over the economic benefits as well as economic costs of these immigrants. The bad impacts, discussed first, presented the decreases in low skilful jobs’ wage rates for legal immigrants and citizens instigated by illegal immigrants, the social facilities such as educations and healthcare that they utilize and add to taxpayers. Then contrary to the negative impacts, the positive impacts reveal benefits of low manufacture costs, rises in the resident market sales, undocumented tax generation, effect on development and employment brought forth by illegal immigrants. These impacts, both harmful and helpful, are independently analysed and weighed against each other. The discussion does show a minor net positive impact on the US economy in dissimilarity to the normal belief about illegal immigrants.

Is our government giving false reassurance concerning the risk of infectious diseases being spread by illegal immigrants? Are they basing our risk of infection on another country study results who “closely matches our TB program? Has the debate and concern over illegal immigrants in the United States sparked fears among health authorities about the spread of tuberculosis? According to a medical news article entitled, History of Tuberculosis, “Tuberculosis has around since ancient times, it existed 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. It has been found in Egyptian mummy’s spinal tuberculosis, known as Pott’s disease being detected by archaeologists. In the 18th century in Western Europe, tuberculosis reached its peak as 900 deaths per 100,000.

How do the different U.S. mainstream media such as newspapers and other types of news like television networks portray recent debates about illegal immigration? There will be a main focus on the New York Times representing the U.S., being one of the top prestigious papers of this nation, and the trusted channel CNN. With the variety of sources now established, we can now compare and point out its differences as well as similarities, and analyze the point of views of the people involved. As we compare these two sources, I will not only observe the article’s facts and interviews, but also, the way they portray immigrants and officials on the chosen images. We will also see distinguish the real facts from the ones that framed as facts by

The documentary introduces us to the “wetbacks,” which is a label given to those who illegally cross the Mexico-U.S. boarder through a river called “Rio Grande,” without the benefit of a bridge. In details, the documentary follows throughout a journey that some chooses to face, in order to enter the United States. ”Thus, wetback characterizes anyone who enters [the United States] illegally from Mexico. The term, then, carries an unavoidable connotation – one who has broken the law.” (Bustamante) Erroneously, most people assume that because someone crossed the boarder from Mexico, they are all Mexicans. The majority is, indeed, from Mexico, however, a considerable portion are from Central American countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and others. The other assumption that those who entered the United States illegally are criminals is untrue. Some undocumented individuals could indeed be criminals, but “being illegally present in the U.S has always been a civil, not a criminal, violation of the INA, [Immigration and Nationality Act] and subsequent deportation and associated administrative processes are civil proceedings.” (Congressional Research Service) The Obama administration increased the media attention on immigration issues, including, but not limiting to, how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should prioritize deportable individuals. The DHS is

Before watching the film I had the conventional stance similarly to the stance of border vigilantes. The border vigilantes had the conviction that illegal migrants were a danger to American society. They argued that the undocumented

We the people created a county founded by many cultures that created a county drawn by the promise for a better life. We the people pride ourselves on what began the cultural melting pot. Yet the rapid growth of illegal immigrants has become a problem. America continues to struggle with a problem aired centuries ago with illegal immigrants trying to work within the borders of the United States. A abundant concern that Citizens commonly argue on how illegal immigrants benefit from public schools, hospitals and welfares, not to mention they do not pay taxes. Another issue commonly dispute about how illegal immigrants overtake citizens jobs.

In the case studies, undocumented Mexican immigrants are called illegal immigrants, or illegal aliens. Their choice of words matter greatly. Lakoff tells us that ‘illegal’ defines an immigrant as inherently bad; while ‘alien’ stresses that that person is exclusively foreign, and altogether Other. This racialization which separates certain people as inferior or immoral has more and more blurred the lines between illegality and criminality. By marking those different from the Anglo/White middle class as illegitimate or unwelcome, we normalize the association between ‘illegal’ and ‘Mexican immigrant’ (Gallo 2014, Dick 2011). When a brown-skinned person is speaking Spanish they get racialized as unintelligent or lazy; which further to indexes their

Immigration has been a part of our history for an extremely long time. Illegal immigration dates all the way back to the nineteenth century. The United States is where most illegal immigrants migrate to because of medical, welfare, and educational benefits. Illegal immigration has caused the overall population to increase over the last few years. Because illegal immigration is increasing, the government and the Department of Homeland Security should provide better training for the workers who protect the border.

An argument a supporter had about immigration was, "Illegal immigrants are not terrorists. They want to come legally to do the jobs Americans don’t want, but our broken immigration system doesn’t allow that to happen.”(American Immigration, Sept 2007). This reveals that supporters of immigration focus on why immigrants are coming to America for in order to explain immigrant’s nature. This gives them room to narrow in on and focus on the real issues; the issue found in this case is that the internal workings of Immigration are corrupted in the sense that they don’t allow enough access to the United States. From this one could conclude that supporters of immigration focus on sympathy for the immigrants rather than heartlessly abandoning everyone for the acts of a