Offering unauthorized immigrants a path to citizenship has been a point of discussion for a long time now. Conversations revolving around immigration in the United States have prompted intelligent answers which have rested on moral principles and ethics of immigration (Vaughn 414). In the early ’90s, Western Europeans were favored by the quota system, which drove the immigration policy in the United States. However, in 1965, the policy was amended by the Immigration and Nationality Act (1965) to select skilled immigrants and reconnect them with their families during the immigration process.
The immigrants who attain permeant residency do not exclude children who are brought illegally. Statistics for 2015 have shown that 43.2million foreign-born- individuals (both unauthorized and legal) have lived in the United States, which is equivalent to 13.4% of the total population (Vaughn 415). Reports show that about a million immigrants usually enter the United States yearly, and more than a million immigrants become lawful permanent residents (Vaughn 415). Children have no sound judgment, and therefore, they should not be deported as much as they could be in the country illegally. Thus, deportation, which is the formal removal of a foreign national for violation of immigration laws, should only be applicable if citizenship for unauthorized individuals has failed.
Finally, a million immigrants who usually enter the United States yearly and who become lawful permanent residents have proved a clear path to the attainment of citizenship. As a result, some of the misconceptions about immigration in the United States are that immigration harms the economy, immigrants commit more crimes than American-born people, and immigrants deplete American jobs (Vaughn 416). However, offering citizenship to the millions of immigrants in the United States will boost the economy since they will become automatic taxpayers.
Work Cited
Vaughn, Lewis. “Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning, Theory, and Contemporary Issues.” Teaching Philosophy, vol. 42, no. 4, 2019, pp. 414-417.