To Brief, or Not to Brief?

Thesis: Illegal immigrants take American jobs, money, and healthcare; all of this could be taken care of through the construction of a physical barrier, a stricter border control protocol, and the speeding up of the naturalization process.

Reason: Illegal immigrants cost America tons of jobs, millions of tax dollars, and are ruining our healthcare system.

Evidence: 10,225,722 skilled jobs have been taken by illegal immigrants, not to mention the tens of millions of unskilled labor jobs taken.

Evidence: Over 50 Californian hospitals have had to close over the past decade because of unpaid bills belonging to illegal immigrants.

Evidence: Almost $400 billion have been spent on Social Services for illegal immigrants since the inception of the Immigration Law of 1996.

Reason: A patrolled barrier or fence would do a better job of keeping illegal immigrants out of America than granting amnesty.

Evidence: The 14-mile high-tech fence between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California is a double- and triple-fence that uses motion sensors, video surveillance, and constant patrol by both ground vehicles and helicopters has cut the number of apprehensions in the area from 100,000 illegal immigrants a year in 1993 to 5000 a year now.

Evidence: Experts say a 700 mile fence like this would cost approximately $2.2 billion dollars, but compared to the approximate $7.5 trillion dollars that illegal immigrants have cost America since 1996, it is not much at all.

Evidence: The DREAM Act would grant amnesty for up to approximately 2.1 million immigrants, along with approximately 1.4 million family members, and with the fraud rate from the 1986 amnesty, another 900,000 immigrants would fraudulently receive amnesty. Compared to the 60,000 target illegals, over 4.3 million immigrants would receive amnesty that weren’t originally intended to.

Reason: Speeding up the naturalization process would mean that more people would go through the proper legal steps to become citizens and less would immigrate here illegally.

Evidence: Although it is supposed to take about 6 months to complete the naturalization process, there is a 1-3 year waiting period in most states.

Evidence: This is if everything goes perfect; if a would-be immigrant makes a single mistake on their application, it can easily double the time it would take.

Evidence: There is no reason to sneak over here illegally and risk getting sent back if someone could just wait 3 months and get here legally.

The Effects of Illegal Immigraion

When it comes to illegal immigration, it is not a question of "Is it a problem?" but of "How big of a problem is it?" Here are some of the latest stats:

21,205,690 illegal immigrants,
524,784 OTM illegals in the country
$41,877,283,378 dollars wired to Mexico since January 2006
$334,010,860,071 dollars wired to Latin America since 2001
$397,479,996,334 dollars worth of Social Services for illegal immigrants since 1996
4,177,718 children of illegals in public schools
$14,800,975,889 dollars spent on illegals in grades K-12 since 1996
350,506 illegal immigrants incarcerated
$1,474,753,271 dollars worth of incarcerations since 2001
662,701 illegal immigrant fugitives
2,141,717 anchor babies born since 2002
10,221,141 skilled jobs taken by illegal immigrants

With numbers like these a solution must be found, and granting amnesty is not an option. The government needs to set up a stricter boarder patrol, some sort of physical barrier (like a fence), and speed up the naturalization process so that citizens of other countries will actually go through due process and not just skip to the end.

Source:
Illegal Immigration Counters." Immigration Counters. 7 Nov. 2007. 11 Nov. 2007 .