Analysis Blog

To fully understand the issue that America is facing right now I feel that it is important to look at the history of illegal immigration into this country.  In the article you can see that illegal immigration dates back to the late nineteenth century when the U.S. banned convicts and prostitutes from entering the country.  This then lead to the banning of Chinese immigrants and the mentally ill from entering.  Ellis Island became the main immigration station.  Here they processed most of the immigrants seeking refuge in America.  By the time Ellis Island was shut down in 1954, it had processed over 12 million immigrants.  The part I want to talk about is the history of Mexican illegal immigration into this country.  Mexican immigration into this country started in the 1920’s.  Many employers desired these immigrants for cheap labor, just like in today’s world.  The government at this time was focused more on maintaining the immigration procedures for immigrants coming from Europe and overseas, allowing Mexican immigrants to pour into the country.  When the Great Depression hit there was a severe decrease in immigrants from Mexico, approximately 500,000 to 100,000 immigrants left the country.  This was a combination of deportation and the severe drop in employment opportunities. 

            To help fight against the growing increase in immigration the U.S. established the border patrol sector of El Paso in 1924.  These men and women were responsible for protecting the Texas-Mexican border.  As many know today this organization is still in existence and is the main line of defense against illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border.

            In 1942 the U.S. signed the Bracero Treaty, which allowed for Mexican immigrants to come over and help with the increase for the demand of labor due to the war in Europe and Japan.  This not only brought legal immigrant workers to America, but also brought many illegal ones too.  These immigrants were only supposed to be hired if there were not enough American workers but employers preferred the cheap work of the immigrants instead.

            In 1954 “Operation Wetback” was launched under president Eisenhower which cause illegal immigration to drop by 95% by the end of the 1950’s.  This would not last however after the Immigration Act of 1965, which allowed for an increase in legal immigration, which cause an increase in illegal immigration as well.  Ever since then there has always been a large number of illegal immigrants in our country and if we do not do something about it, it will only get worse.

                Now that you have seen a brief history of some of the immigration problems America has had to deal with I would like to focus now on the problems we are facing in the present time.  There are a lot of different views on my topic of illegal immigration.  With the upcoming elections I just feel that a major issue for discussion is what needs to be done about this increasing problem.  My view on the situation is the government needs to do more on the prevention of illegal immigration into this country.  I am focusing my discussion primarily on the illegal immigration across the south western border of Texas and Mexico.  This is not where all illegal immigrants come from, but it is where majority cross into the U.S.  The percentage of illegal immigrants from Mexico has grown from 51% in 2001 to 60% in 2009 as shown in the article.  One cause for this increase is because there has been a decrease in illegal immigration from other countries due to the economic downturn that America is struggling through right now.  This is a reason why I feel that we need to focus our efforts on the Texas-Mexican border.  Not only do these people come into our country illegally, but some of the time they bring crime with them. This article shows how illegal immigrants tend to be repeat offenders and cause many problems for law enforcement here in America.  I feel that background checks are necessary for all convicted criminals in today’s world.  There is no reason for an illegal immigrant to be a repeat offender, if they are arrested a background check should be performed and if they are found to be illegal then they should be deported immediately.  This would help with the overcrowding of the jails in America.  In Arizona illegal immigrants represent about 14.8 percent of the state prisoners, seen at.  The places being hit hardest by illegal immigration are the border countries Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.  This is obviously because these are the states that immigrants cross over into.  These states governments have started to take it upon themselves to solve the increasing immigrant problems in their state.  Arizona has recently enacted a new law, which allows them to run background checks on everyone that comes through their legal system.  The federal government has not done a very good job with regulating the illegal immigration ever since President Bush took office.  Since 2000 when he took office there has been an estimated 850,000 illegal immigrants entering the U.S. each year as shown in this article.

            Not only do these people come here illegally but they also bring illegal drugs into our country as well.  This is why I feel that securing the border should be a priority for the government.  If we could limit the amount of drugs entering the country is would be huge. Right now there are some very different political positions on what to do with this problem.  Now I personally lean toward the conservative views on the subject.  I feel that the government needs to do more in the regulation of immigration.  There should not be amnesty given to illegal immigrants who have stayed here a certain number of years nor should babies born here by illegal immigrants be considered citizens of the U.S.  Right now America is spending an outrageous amount of money taking care of these illegal immigrants.  The more liberal side of politics believes that we should support these people regardless of legal status.  They want us to provide healthcare, education, ext. to people who are not even U.S. citizens.  This is a widely debated topic in the upcoming elections on what to do with these people.  The conservative view point is to first secure the border and then worry about getting rid of the illegal immigrants already within the U.S.

            Another problem is that the cost for a mass deportation of all these immigrants would be way too much.  It would cost around $43 billion to deport the approximate 390,000 illegal immigrants in the U.S.  With the government spending out of control as it is I feel that this is something that we can wait on.  I feel that spending should be focused on increase in the border security.  Hopefully with the increase in security there would be less cost in the future from having to deal with these immigrants. 

            It is more commonly known that illegal immigrants are notorious for taking jobs for very low wages, jobs that should go to American citizens.  There are approximately 7.2 million illegal immigrant workers in the workforce.  Especially now in today’s rough economy jobs are a scarcity and it’s not right for Americans not to be able to find jobs when illegal immigrants are taking them.  These jobs belong to American citizens and it is not fair to them that non-americans are taking these jobs away from them.

            Many immigrants are trying to find ways around the laws to become legal citizens.  A popular way is to have “anchor babies”.  This allows illegal immigrants to have babies in the U.S., who then become citizens which allows the parents to stay with them.  Because of this rule many immigrants are able to gain citizenship because they had a baby born on U.S. soil, and this is something I feel needs to be fixed as well.  In 2005 more than 380,000 anchor babies were born and were raised on taxpayer money.

            My blog will talk about all the different problems America is facing with illegal immigration.  I will show the different viewpoints in the political world and solutions that are being proposed.  If you would like some statistics that might shock you visit this site.