5 mins

Writing an Immigration Essay: 75 Essay Topic Ideas

The whole world watches the immigration drama that occurs in the USA. Separated families, tears, anger, escalation of antimigration attitudes in society—this all are consequences of immigration regulations.

Writing an essay on immigration may seem difficult enough. However, the IvyPanda team is here to help you. Just keep reading and you’ll find out simple tips to ace your assignment.

Immigration Essay: Research the Problem

Before you start drafting your essay outline, you should understand what is immigration, its causes, forms, and develop your opinion.

What is immigration? This is the process of acquiring permanent residence in a foreign country. And, accordingly, an immigrant is a person who undergoes this process.

Why do people decide to immigrate?

Actually, every person has their own reason. But we gathered most common immigration causes below:

Economics. Most people decide to move to other country when they are not satisfied with conditions in their homeland: lack of jobs, low salaries, high taxes, corruption. All of these make a person seek a better life.
Politics. In some countries, government bans certain parts of population from occupying certain positions, gaining education they want, etc. For example, lists professions and occupations that are prohibited for woman.

Wars. Even though we’re living in the 21st century, wars still occur. And the desire to save immigrants’ families, and escape from death leads to increasing number of refugees.
Human right and freedom. We all want to live in a better place with our loved ones, being able to choose a career, and religion, regardless of our social or marital status. However, some countries ban same-sex marriage, some religions and religious trends other than the dominant ones. There are also a lot of countries where there is no freedom of speech. Imagine that even a short post in your social media account may lead to a prison.
Personal causes. It may be a desire to take the career to the next level, a realisation of childhood dream to live in a certain place, to acquire education in a certain institution or country, etc.

Immigration can be legal and illegal. Legal immigration means that the person is acquiring the residential status in accordance to government regulations. On the other side are immigrants who decide to try and flee to foreign countries illegally.

Is it bad? You have conduct a thorough research and form your opinion.

If you’re doing your research for illegal immigration essay, you should also investigate effects of it. Mostly, it negative impacts on economics. Illegal immigrants take any job that provides an income to support their families. Employers use this labor force without paying any taxes, providing insurance and often pay less than minimum wage. This leads to legal job cuts and lower budget revenues. And, as a result, cuts in social, education, public health, and other important programs occur.

Among other effects, we can name the rise of terrorist and criminal activities. You can explore this topic when writing the immigration essay or paper on terrorism.

Relatively easy way of illegal immigration leads to reduced motivation for legal immigration. It’s cheaper and easier.

If you’re writing the overpopulation essay, you can mention that overpopulation can be both cause and effect. The lack of access to fresh water, poverty, and pollution makes people seek for the better life somewhere else. And, as a consequence, immigration explosions provoke overpopulation, cut of legal jobs, increased pollution in the destination country.

Immigration Essay: Stick to the Structure

Now, let’s get back to the writing. First of all, brainstorm some ideas of your immigration or overpopulation essay. Write them down and then pick the topic that appeals to you the most. Don’t forget to check if there are enough sources for your paper. There are plenty of free essays and examples to help you with all of that.

The next step is to create an essay outline. A typical essay structure consists of introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Even if you need to write a five-paragraph essay, you must include these elements.

First things first, let’s start with the essay introduction. In the intro of any type of essays, you must give a hook to your readers and provide an essay thesis. Engage your readers with a couple of suggestions about the problems of immigrants that you’ve researched.

As for the essay body, its contents may vary depending on the type of assignment. In the argumentative or persuasive essay, you must put several arguments supporting your point of view. In the for and against essay, provide a counterargument after each argument. If you’re writing an opinion essay, express your thoughts and don’t forget to keep a logical flow. Otherwise, your readers will be bored and quickly lose their attention.

As well as the introduction, a conclusion is also a mandatory element. In this part, you must restate thesis and ideas, presented in a body without repeating it. Write it in other words.

Immigration Essay: 65 Topic Ideas

Now you know how to write your essay on immigration. But you may need some ideas. That’s why IvyPanda’s experts prepared some excellent topic ideas and essay samples you may use in your assignment.

All you have to do is just check the list below, pick up ones that you find the most interesting and use them as an inspiration.