The first Illegal Immigrants to ever step foot on American soil, the New World, was the pilgrims, that’s right, us, the great American people. We traveled overseas from Britain and assumed ownership over America. The Native Americans who occupied the new territory were treated unfairly by us, the intruders. We treated them as if they were on our land, so we pushed them further away from the coast so we could take our place on this new soil, that we today call our home. Unfortunately, the Native Americans didn’t have a government system to insure we had green cards and visas; otherwise they may still run this country. And now that we have The United State of America, we want to keep it ours. We refuse to have our country overran by a multitude of illegal aliens that are using our resources and taking our employment opportunities, while we, the hard-working Americans receive nothing in return. Nevertheless, that is exactly where America is today. There are nearly thirteen million illegal aliens in the United States, that is nearly four and a half percent of the population, and growing at roughly five hundred thousand illegal immigrants a year according to F.A.I.R “Federation for American Immigration Reform”. This is a major disposition for the economic and social order of the United States. Illegal Immigration creates many problems, higher unemployment rates, health care issues, not paying taxes, and many others. The Problems that are caused by Illegal immigration grow rapidly as the population of illegal immigrants increase. Something needs to be done, and no one has a definite solution to this issue, but I believe I have an answer.
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The first problem that Illegal Immigrants cause, is the increasing rise of the unemployment rate for national legal citizens. The average unemployment rate of the United States is 9.7%, according to Beck. That doesn’t seem too drastic, but if you look at the locations where most of the Illegal immigrants are employed and live; the unemployment rate of those states are higher than those that are not affected as much by Illegal Immigrants. California has the most illegal immigrants with 12.5%; Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida follow closely behind with the most illegal individuals. Each of these 5 states is in the top 9 states with the highest unemployment rate. What does the unemployment rate and illegal immigrants have in common? “I’m glad you asked, Illegal Immigrants, wait I’m tired of that name, I want to sound politically correct, I’ll call them “undocumented workers.”” CITE PAGE NUMBERS The reason that undocumented workers come to the United States is so they can provide a better life for their families. They come here in pursuit of jobs, because they are unable to find them in their country. As a result, the immigrants take more employment opportunities compared to any other state. California has employment opportunities that Americans could excel in, but the Americans are refused because undocumented workers took them. Now, before I go any further, this is where illegal immigration activists argue, undocumented workers do the jobs that Americans aren’t willing to do. That’s bologna, Have you ever seen the show “Dirty Jobs”? In one episode Mike Rowe, the host of “Dirty Jobs” helped clean the sewer of San Francisco; the sewer ran the length of the streets following in suit with the hills, that’s not a very intriguing job, yet it was still the work of a blue collar American. Another job he participated in was “Horse Inseminator” you can just use your imagination with that one. The point of all these examples is that Americans are willing to do whatever it takes to have a paying job, especially with the way our economy is now
“Swift & Company meat-processing plants lost about nine percent of their workforce when they were raided in six states. After the raids, Swift raised their pay by almost two dollars an hour and hundreds of residents lined up the next day to take the jobs illegal aliens used to have.”
“Howard industries, an electronics maker in Laurel, Mississippi, was raided in the fall of 2008. Hundreds of citizens soon lined up to apply for the new job opportunities, including one woman who drove 40 miles.”
This doesn’t include those individuals who are lazy and unmotivated, while they rather milk the government instead of getting a real job. Now that I got that off my chest, the issue with undocumented workers having jobs isn’t our governments fault, or the average Americans; it’s the companies and employers that hire them.
“Bear Stearns Reported That between four and six million jobs have moved to the underground economy since 1990. Those are the “jobs Americans won’t do,” but rather the jobs they used to do before illegal labor became much more attractive to employers.”
Companies can hire undocumented workers at a fraction of the cost of hiring deserving legal American citizens. I don’t blame employers for taking the cheaper route of hiring undocumented workers. There are a number of advantages, such as, no payroll tax since the employer is paying under the table. They don’t have to have to worry about supplying health insurance for their employees, and finally they can pay lower wages since undocumented workers don’t have that legal right to an attorney, or the privilege of equal rights.
Every legal citizen of the United States has become accustomed to paying taxes, from the time they get their first job to the day they die. To see the importance of the argument I’m about to make, I have to explain how taxes are used. Taxes help maintain roads, highways, and the public school system so our children can have an education. Taxes also pay for public safety, police officers, prisons, and defense. Taxes also go to a number of other areas in our nation, but that’s a general list. If a citizen doesn’t pay his/her taxes there are consequences that can occur depending on the situation. If someone neglects to pay taxes or tries to get out of paying taxes otherwise known as tax evasion, there can be fines, criminal charges, auditing, investigations, and garnishing of wages. There could be a giant disposition for a single individual to handle. But, luckily for undocumented workers, they don’t have to worry about paying taxes. They get to use our resources, have our jobs and not have to worry about filing a tax return at the end of the year. Yes, they have to pay sales tax, but that is only 7.25% on the dollar, compared to 20% of one’s salary. The only time undocumented workers pay any kind of income tax is if they somehow got a social security card illegally, then they pay social security tax. They deliberately perform tax evasion with no punishment, when a normal American citizen would be punished.
Another big issue with undocumented workers is health care. American citizens get the privilege of owning health insurance which covers costs that get accrued when visiting hospitals and doctors. Undocumented workers don’t get the privilege to own health insurance, so they have to pay for their health care out of pocket. The cost of having basic procedures are mind boggling, too expensive for a family in an upper class salary bracket to afford without health insurance. I wonder how an undocumented worker can afford to pay for their medical issues, my guess is they can’t. Most of the time when someone can’t, or don’t pay their medical bills, the hospital just has a collection agency garnish their wages. With an undocumented worker it’s a bit different, with no records of where they work, where they live, or a social security number, how to hospitals get that money? Well the answer is they don’t, most of time hospitals just eat debt and wait for the government to reimburse them for the loss. So if the government is reimbursing the hospitals, essentially the American people are paying the hospitals for the loss. With the government having to give money to the hospitals that causes taxes to go up. When taxes go up, people have less money to stimulate the economy, thus causes a recession.
With all that being said, what has the government and states come up with for solutions? In 1996 Bill Clinton decided to use border control to help in his campaign, he had a 14 foot fence 40 miles long put in to help deter the flow of undocumented workers. This is great in theory, but the border between Mexico and the United states is roughly 2000 miles, which only leaves a 1,940 mile gap. In 2006 George W. Bush had plans for a virtual fence which would have cost 6.7 billion dollars. The virtual fence would consist of, cameras, ground sensors, and radars. The virtual fence would stretch almost the entire Mexican Border. The whole project was canceled by the Obama Administration, after spending nearly 700 million dollars and seeing nearly no results. Even if the virtual fence was completed, there would be a stretch of 200 miles in Big Bend National Park in Texas that wouldn’t have a virtual fence established. (“That’s like having a home security system installed but putting a note on the front door saying that the back door doesn’t have a sensor yet.” -Glenn Beck) There is a government agency that helps with deportation of Illegal Immigrants; this agency is referred as “Ice Air”. Basically it’s an airline dedicated to transporting illegal persons back to their home country. Ice Air has all the amenities that you would find on Continental, TWA, or Southwest Airlines. Every passenger gets a meal, soda, peanuts. But the only difference is that it is paid for by a legal national citizen, that’s right, Illegal Immigrants get a free ride back home. An average one-way single person ticket would normally cost roughly 700 dollars. There have been stories about Illegal Immigrants who had turned themselves in. Their reasoning in often cases were so they could get a free ride home for holidays, and then they just sneak back over as it becomes a repeating pattern for them. Basically the Illegal Immigrants are getting smart; they are using our agencies for their benefits. That is what we get for having such poor deportation and border control methods. It seems like there have been solutions to the problem at hand, but none have been followed through or thought out very well.
I have a question for you, do illegal immigrants have civil rights, and do they have rights under our National Constitution? Personally I don’t think they should, but the Government seems to think so when it comes to suing National Born Citizens. Arizona Ranchers Roger and Barbara Barnet were sued by 16 Illegal Immigrants after holding them at gun point on his property as they crossed the borders illegally. He held them there until authorities arrived; Barnett has turned almost 12,000 Illegal Immigrants over to the authorities since 1998. The Illegal Immigrants said that they were traumatized and that their civil rights were violated. What civil rights were they talking about? I don’t think the U.S Constitution says anything about Illegal Immigrants having rights in our Nation.
Barnett said some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, with that he added, that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water. Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil – which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their “clients” to keep them running.
The Illegal Immigrants sued Barnett for nearly 32 million dollars, that’s insane. The courts didn’t see it Barnett’s’ way, but they also didn’t see it the immigrants way either. The immigrants won the law suit, but only got 100,000 dollars. That fires me up, how can a group of people who have no rights in our country sue a national legal law abiding citizen and win?! Our government is screwy if you ask me. How are people like Barnett supposed to handle situations like this? It just doesn’t make sense to me but a lot of things don’t make sense to me, such as, Obama wanting to make it to where undocumented workers are able to get drivers license legally. That’s giving rights to people who have no rights under law of being in our country. It seems like instead of setting up ways to abolish Illegal Immigrants, the government just wants to find ways to give them legal rights in our nation.
Ok I could go on and on with this argument and debate, but this paper has to come to an end eventually. So my solution to this problem is fairly simplistic on paper, but more difficult in action. I propose that the government imposes a $50,000 fine for each undocumented worker that any employer has. It may sound outrageous, but I believe that employers shouldn’t be allowed to cut corners; it’s essentially tax evasion. The employee will face other felony charges, and maybe even a prison sentence. I believe that would be a great scare tactic to keep most employers from hiring undocumented workers. With no jobs available, we can only hope that undocumented workers head back across the borders to their home countries. Some people argue if you force companies to higher legal citizens they have to raise their wages, which is true, but they also say if companies raise wages that they may not be able to stay in business. My response would be “good,” if a company can’t stay in business because they have to raise their wages for legal American citizens then they have no business being in business. Another idea to add to my solution is what Bill Clinton already started, a fence; two 14′ tall fences stretching the length of the border, all 2000 miles. At an average cost of 5 million dollars a mile, that would cost roughly 20 billion dollars. People might argue that this hypothesis is way too expensive on the tax payers, but if you look at the budget set in for the stimulus package you’ll notice that the amount of money that set aside for unemployment was roughly 40 billion dollars. Then I also would propose a compromise to allow for some illegal’s to come out of the wood work, and we would allow them to become legal national citizens. To sum things up, with no jobs for illegal immigrants, they would leave the country because there isn’t any prosperity for them here. Also with an enormous fence, that will help deter illegal immigration from occurring as often. With no Illegal Immigrants’ being in the United States, employers are forced to higher national citizens, thus reducing the national unemployment rate, and reducing that amount of money government has to pay. When it comes to Illegal Immigrants using our hospitals, I believe that they should just be refused, yes that sounds harsh, but it isn’t fair to our hospitals when they have to eat the loss, because the intruders can’t get provide a payment for people who are honest national citizens. This will save the government and hospitals money also. That is essentially my solution to the Illegal Immigrant issues, it makes sense to me, but since I’m not known in politics my voice may never be heard on this subject.
U.S. Code Title 8, Section 1325
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States
at any time or place other than as designated by immigration
officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration
officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United
States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the
willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first
commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or
imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent
commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or
imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
(b) Improper time or place; civil penalties
Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to
enter) the United States at a time or place other than as
designated by immigration officers shall be subject to a civil
penalty of –
(1) at least $50 and not more than $250 for each such entry (or
attempted entry); or
(2) twice the amount specified in paragraph (1) in the case of
an alien who has been previously subject to a civil penalty under
this subsection.
Civil penalties under this subsection are in addition to, and not
in lieu of, any criminal or other civil penalties that may be
imposed.
The paragraph above is the statutes for Illegal Immigration, half the information in it isn’t even enforced. Mostly because it can’t, we don’t have the resources, or enough border control to apprehend the ones crossing the border. Our nation has so many problems with border control that half the time that Illegal Immigrants are apprehended they are let go, and given a citation with a court date on it. Reasoning behind the citation is because our prison system is so full already. Our government needs to come up with a good plan because our country is going to fall apart faster than a jenga tower standing on one block.
http://law.onecle.com/uscode/8/1325.html.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/09/16-illegals-sue-arizona-rancher/
http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/interactive-timeline.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/09/16-illegals-sue-arizona-rancher/
http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=16859&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1007
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