After reading Caren Lee's recent blog post, Immigration: Where to start?, I have quite a few questions and thoughts.
This article, written in what seems to be a frustrated tone concerning immigration laws and their needed improvement, made me wonder... what can REALLY be done about illegal immigration? Caren makes a good point in saying that, digging fences will never be the solution to preventing illegal entry into our country. And maybe that's not what we should be so focused on. There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. right now. Of those 11 million, 8 million of them have found their way into the American workforce. If we stop the exploitation of illegal immigrants who are desperate for work, maybe we can eliminate a prime motivation for illegal immigrants crossing the border in the first place. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/
In Caren's article, she mentions the economic consequences of deporting all illegal immigrants and speculates about whether or not American workers could fill all of these positions. In my opinion, 8 million mostly below-minimum wage paying positions would be incredibly difficult to fill. To reference another article written by our very own Amanda Balamenti, perhaps if we were to raise the federal minimum wage, some of these positions would be eliminated and it would not be a matter of replacing 8 million workers after illegal immigrants are gone, but rather a matter of providing fewer, but better-paying jobs to legal, hard-working American citizens. http://usgovtcheeseandme.blogspot.com/
We need not look over one important rebuttal to Caren's argument for deportation of illegal immigrants. According to an article recently published by CNN, 2.9 billion dollars have already been spent on reducing the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. The price of fixing our current immigration problems is not cheap. While we do need to respect and uphold the law by reducing exploitation of illegal workers and using programs to fairly, and in timely fashion, turn illegal immigrants into citizens, it is not reasonable to expect immigration to be a quick or complete fix. Ever.
People illegally enter our country for countless reasons and in the defense of human rights, we need to consider some of these motives as pure and stop viewing all illegal immigrants as pests that need to be eliminated. America is, after all, a melting pot that boasts in it's opportunity and diversity.
I looked at the CNN article referenced above it says the current amount spent on enforcement and deportation is $2.9B and that it will probably cost much more than that to significantly reduce undocumented immigrant populations.
ReplyDeleteThis crazy cost could support making it easier to becoming a citizen, which in my opinion would help stem the flow of illegal immigration. Also, if the current illegal aliens became citizens they would be contributing to our economy, in the form of taxes, and not costing us money to deport them.