Legal immigration to the US is the movement of non-residents into the country with authorization from the US Government. Illegal immigration to the United States, on the other hand, refers to the act of moving to or settling in the US temporarily or permanently in violation of US immigration and national laws. Immigration becomes illegal when immigrants either enter the country without authorization from the US Government, or having entered the US with authorization, either overstay their visa or violate its terms.
The economic, social and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding race, ethnicity, religion, economic benefits, levels of criminality, political loyalties, moral values, and many other aspects of our society. Furthermore, people have way to many different perspectives that the government is unable to make fair laws to regulate immigration that make everyone happy. The result of these is a number of protests all over the country.
There are some people who support immigration both legal and illegal, there are some who oppose the two, and there are some who are only one sided, meaning that they only support legal immigration.
This is my opinion/perspective:
"I personally support immigration both legal and illegal because I believe that everyone has the God given rights to self improvement. If this means that one needs to move to another country, I believe that one should be free to do so. Plus, I believe that if one is not able to immigrate to a country legally, and one needs to immigrate anyway, I believe that illegal immigration is perfectly acceptable. Furthermore, at a certain level, immigration both legal and illegal is beneficial for the US economy. This is because immigrants provide more labor causing the prices of certain goods to lower. Also, the government receives more tax revenues that are never claimed back by all illegal immigrants who work with illegal papers. I believe this is a sort of mutual benefit because immigrants are able to make money and provide for their families in third world countries."
What is your opinion/perspective?
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Addressing your personal opinion in an order to not attack, and in actually an order to just address, I feel relitivly strongly the same way you do.
Illegal Immigration was a hot topic in 2006 and in the middle of Bush's term with lots of legislation being proposed at the federal and state levels. Bush has taken a very middle of the road approach to handling this right now because he is supporting a fence yes, but so is any common american realizing that we are only making what is a problem worse, but he does support citizenship paths.
I think that illegal immigrants need a way to become citizens if they have proved themselves worthy of this citizenship. If an illegal immigrant is overstaying a visa and obtaining a job to support the families they have back home and just trying to make a better life for themselves, I feel that there is no reason to send them home. Now, i do not believe it is the Government's job to support them in that sense, but they can just ignore it. Now, there are illegal immigrants that are overstepping the laws of the land and deserve to be booted out, my personal opinion.
Sometimes life is hard, and I think this topic is one of those topics, one that is just hard to deal with because it comes down to personal love for all human beings as a whole, vs following and respecting the laws of the land.
Brianna
Our nation exists to protect the interests of our citizens. As citizens we have every right to make laws regarding immigration and we have every right to expect that those laws will be rigorously enforced. Anything less represents a serious erosion of the very thing that makes the USA an attractive place to immigrate in the first place which is the rule of law.
The argument about people being justified in breaking our laws because they are just trying to improve their lives is utter bullshit. Basically anyone who accepts that argument also has to agree that it is OK to rob banks or steal your car as long as the reason the criminal committed the crime was to "improve their lives". Breaking the law is not justified by economic circumstances. I've traveled in Mexico quite a lot and I read extensively on this subject. Starvation and malnutrition are not problems in Mexico on anything close to an extreme scale. I might tolerate and excuse a little theft as a rationalization to prevent starvation but that is not what we are talking about. We have our own poor and we don't tolerate lawbreaking from them and it is not a justifcation for the poor of other countries to break our laws either.
The argument that illegal immigrants benefit our economy has been debunked repeatedly. Here is one excellent study which concludes that at the Federal level illegal immigrants cost taxpayers about $10 billion more than they contribute to the Treasury. It further concludes that if those same illegals were made into citizens they would contribute slightly more taxes but would also be eligible for the full buffet of social welfare services and that their NET cost to taxpayers would sky rocket to about $30 billion annually. I could post dozens more similar studies because the evidence is overwhelming that illegal aliens are a massive burden on taxpayers at the Federal level and even worse of a problem for local government. This is of course money that is stolen from all of us and which is not available to solve our problems or make our country better.
The High Cost of Cheap Labor
The argument that illegal aliens lower prices for consumers is also bullshit because anybody who payed attention in Economics 101 knows that prices for goods are set by supply and demand for those goods and move independently of the costs of producing those goods. For example, illegal aliens are heavily involved in the construction industry. Housing developers saved lots of money by hiring illegal labor but for the past decade did anybody notice that they were passing those savings on to home buyers? No! Housing prices rose steadily and the developers pocketed the labor savings as fat profits. There was NO benefit to consumers. Illegal immigration benefits the illegals and is a cheap labor subsidy to business and all of the rest of us get stuck with the costs and get no benefit.
Essentially the world is a pretty screwed up place and about 5 billion of the world's 6 billion people are poorer than the average Mexican. A very large number of them want to come to America. This blog is essentially arguing that anybody who can crash our borders should be allowed to stay and that we should not even be trying to stop them by enforcing our laws. All such a policy is going to accomplish is that the 300 million people in the USA will be overwhelmed by the world's billions of poor and the USA will be transformed into a cesspool with conditions equal to just about everywhere else in the world. Our own native born poor and the middleclass will take the worst hit.
It should be obvious that the only hope for all these poor people is to help them where they live. Here is an incredible insightful video that makes this point far better than I can:
Immigration by the Numbers
I don't disagree that people have the right to try to improve their lives but they don't have the right to make mine or my country worse in the process with higher taxes, worse schools, more crime, closing hospitals, re-introduced contagious diseases, congested highways, paved farmland, more pollution, less open space and etc. If Mexicans want a better life then they should make Mexico a better place that offers their people better lives.
Mexico is a democracy and a richly endowed country so there is no reason why the people of Mexico can't demand that it be a better place. They could start by reforming their property laws. Mexico could solve most of their problems tomorrow by allowing Americans to own land on their coastlines. They would set off a building boom that would create untold jobs and incredible wealth for the Mexican people and would create a property tax base that would pay for things like roads and schools that would propel Mexico into the first world. Mexicans need to fix Mexico and illegals from everywhere need to be sent home to fix their native countries.