Humanities. Immigration Issues in the United States Essay

Introduction to the Problem

Definition of the Issue

Global economic inequalities and the growing demand for highly skilled workers and the demographic decline in the industrial democracies have led to wide range of economic opportunities for migrants in the industrially advanced nations. This has opened up the movement of foreign nationals in to the United States like any other country where there are more opportunities for earning a decent living. However, the migration of people needs to be controlled by the US government like any other transnational economic activity such as trade or investment through proper legislator measures (Ueda, 2006).

While formulating the legislation the US government has to take a number of issues into consideration like the economic relations with other countries, civic and other amenities to the migrants and above all the issue of illegal immigrants. The action required to be taken to protect the borders in the form of recruitment of more immigration law enforcement officers and improving the border protection technology still remain very ambiguous deterring any concrete action from the government side to control this problem. The uncertainties and ambiguities surrounding the illegal immigrants make the problem a typical open-ended one.

Factors contributing to Uncertainties or Ambiguities

The scope of the problem of illegal immigration in the United States has remained undefined due to the vagueness of the immigration policies. Since the issue is one of highly political nature there has never been well-defined legislative approach to the immigration issues in the US.

Secondly there is no way the number and size of the illegal immigrants in the US can be estimated precisely. This also adds to the ambiguity of the problem.

Discussion and Critical Evaluation of the Evidence

Supporting Evidence

One of the evidences is the empirical data on the flow of immigrants both legal and illegal into the United States. The number of immigrants has been estimated at 1,000,000 legally and 300,000 to 500,000 illegally every year. According to Settles (2001) this figure has increased from 14,000 about 60 years ago to the magnitude indicated.

The second piece of evidence is the employment status among African Americans and Hispanics. Cohen (200) points out in 1983, African Americans held 280,000 more manufacturing jobs than Hispanics. While Hispanic employment grew to 139,000 jobs between 1983 and 1995, African American employment only grew by about 5,000 jobs.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Evidences

Strengths

The first evidence provides a basis for assuming the magnitude of the issue of illegal immigrants

The strength of the second evidence is that it provides the basis for studying the ethnicity of the issue of immigration.

Weaknesses

The first evidence suffers from the weakness of being unreliable as the empirical data has the character of being a mere estimation. There is no authority or official figures to back up the number of illegal immigrants stated to be between 300,000 and 500,000. Any statistical information cannot have a variation of 200,000 between the upper and lower boundary levels.

The second evidence suffers from the weakness of being biased and lacking any authority behind the stated figures. This evidence also is outdated to the current issue and hence cannot be accepted as valid evidence.

Bias/Assumption underlying the Perspectives

The first assumption is that the immigration policy should be hard-headed and there should be a guest worker program developed to deal with illegal immigrants’ issue.

The second assumption underlying the immigration issue is that entrusting the responsibility of protecting the borders, if left with the military, it might lead to undesirable consequences, as the military has not been trained to meet the challenges of civil issues. The other assumption is that it is possible for the military to deal with the civil problems only by use of lethal force, because the training, which makes the soldiers outstanding warriors, also makes them dangerous as cops.

Evaluation of the Evidences

The problem with the first evidence is that it is not possible to precisely estimate the number of illegal immigrants in the country and whatever figures reported can at best be an estimate. Therefore this evidence lacks validity.

The second evidence provides outdated statistical information. There might have been changes in the periods after the figures indicated as evidence. Moreover any statistics relied on as evidence without the backing of the official source or authority has to be considered as weak and it will not substantiate the findings of the study.

Conclusion including Solutions and Limitations

Solutions to the Problem

1. The immigration polices can be amended to include humanitarian considerations and the issue of national worker identification cards. There should be a restriction on the chain immigration restricting the entry to spouse and children, in addition to drastic reduction in the job-skills based immigration (Honey & Barry, 1997).
2. The number of immigration officers can be increased so that there can be better protection of the borders from the immigrants entering the country illegally.

Limitations to the Problems

1. The immigration issue always had a political bias. Therefore there is no guarantee that the government would introduce sweeping changes with respect to its immigration policies. Secondly, there will be the question of human rights involved when a distinction is made between people selected for immigration and it will be a cumbersome process to identify whether the person actually possesses the required skill to be granted immigration.
2. The mere increase in the number of immigration officers cannot solve the problem as there will be still the problems relating to the existing illegal immigrants and their families. A second limitation of this solution is that this solution cannot prevent the people arriving with valid documents and overstaying as illegal immigrants. A physical crack down on the illegal immigrants every now and then is a virtual impossibility using these additional officers.

An ideal solution to the issue would be to punish the employers providing employment to illegal immigrants, by making them responsible for checking whether all the people employed by them possess valid immigration documents.

References

Cohen, S. (2006) Deportation Is Freedom! The Orwellian World of Immigration Controls. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Honey, M., & Barry, T. (1997). In Focus: The Immigration Debate. Web.

Settles, B. H. (2001) Being at Home in a Global Society: A Model for Families’ Mobility and Immigration Decisions Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 32(4), 627.

Ueda, R. (2006). A Companion to American Immigration. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.

Reflections on the Outline

In the outline I considered the present status of the immigration globally and the reasons for the people to migrate to different countries. In the next section I propose to consider different issues concerning the immigration polices of any country. The impact of immigration on the US economy and the society in general will be considered under the section impact of immigration. Issues relating to illegal immigration will be discussed in the next section as these issues form the major part of the immigration policies. Suggestions on tackling immigration issues form part of the next section of the essay.