Immigration is a powerful force in any country, and immigration policy will be a major decision maker for choosing a candidate in the upcoming election. If this force is not harnessed and the immigration policy fixed, the influx of undocumented aliens becomes more of a hindrance than a helping factor for cultural diversity. The immigration dilemma is made up of three main parts: healthcare, the naturalization process, and the number of jobs that are taken by illegal immigrants. Until these issues are taken care of, there will continue to be a rift in America, the greatest country in the world.
The big deal with healthcare is not that immigrants are receiving healthcare, but that they aren’t able to pay for the services they receive. Now some people would simply cry that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be able to receive healthcare. Great idea genius! Very American if I do say so myself. Doctors sign waivers saying that they will give service to anyone, anyway. Illegals are using our healthcare system more than now, especially in Southern California, as they come up with even more creative and dangerous ways to cross the border. Incidents like these, and the fact that they can’t pay their fees, have forced over 50 hospitals to close their doors in the past decade (Immigration Counters).
If there was just one reason we could pin all of this on, it would be on the extremely mediocre immigration policy. As it stands now, the average wait for naturalization is closer to around 2 – 3 years, instead of the 6 months that it is supposed to take (Immigration Stagnation). If an immigrant’s green card application would just go through like it was supposed to, and then the citizenship papers would pass through in a timely manner (within the green card’s validity), then the urge to illegally sneak over here would be almost nonexistent. One of the biggest reasons that these applications take so long is that the FBI conducts thorough background checks on applicants (Immigration Stagnation). But here’s the million dollar question: Do you really think that running background checks on hundreds of thousands of random immigrants is a big priority for the FBI? NO. Or at least it doesn’t seem like it, but who knows; they may just be trying to make all the bad guys wait so long they give up.
These 2 and 3 year waits are actually on the good side. There are several horror stories that stem from this erroneous process. Let’s look at the Garadah family. Bassam Garadah and his wife, Maha Dakar originally filed for political asylum in 1998 from Palestine. After over 9 years of building a family and making a life for themselves and their 4 daughters, the Garadah’s have found out that their application for asylum has been denied. No biggie, tons of people wait 10 years to find out that their applications have been denied. The real problem is that no country will accept the entire family, so that unless we change our pathetic system, their family will be split apart due to the mistakes and errors of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and FBI (One Family’s Nightmare).
Luckily we are trying to fix our failing systems, and it looks to be a big ticket issue in the upcoming election. That’s long term, but on the short term side of things, the USCIS said on July 17 that they would accept all work-based permanent residency applications filed through early June. This is a good step, but it was only under pressure from employers and an imminent class action lawsuit that their reversed their previous ruling of not letting any more green card applications in for the year. Thank goodness they came to their senses, because the thousands of immigrants that had flown in had done so because the USCIS invited foreign professionals to begin the green card process (FACTS.com).
The last major issue of this whole immigration schmorgasborg is the simple, undeniable fact that millions of illegal aliens take American jobs; tens of millions of jobs. Now most people simply say that they take labor jobs that most Americans wouldn’t do for the pay anyway. And they would be partially correct, except for as of Dec 7, 2007, there are over 10,260,566 skilled jobs currently possessed by illegal aliens (Immigration Counters). This is when it goes from something people can over look to something that pisses a lot of people off. The aliens only want to do all they can for their families, though. As a recent study shows, an illegal worker’s wage can go up by as much as 8.7% if they have deep family and/or friendship ties back home that they are helping out financially (Demography). It is understood that this need to send money home is strong, but I think just about everyone believes that the $343,403,209,671 wired to Latin America since the year 2001 is a little much (Immigration Counters). It is the fact of how much money gets wired to Mexico and Latin America that causes so many American to uproar over this subject. But think, $343,403,209,671 over 21,250,771 illegal immigrants is a large amount of money to be spread over that amount of people.
America seems to be on the right foot however, with the bill that was overturned and the hot button issue that immigration has become. Let’s look at a popular saying: “America, the land of dreams.” Now does it seem better as “America, the land of dreams where would get kicked out and sent back home” or “America, the land of dreams that are actually possible”. Think about it.
Sources
Al-Jadda, Souheila. "One Family's Nightmare." USA Today 26 Sept. 2007. LexisNexis. Cooper Library, Clemson, SC. 29 Nov. 2007. Keyword: Immigration Difficulties.
Downie, Leonard, ed. "Imigration Stagnation." Washington Post 21 Jan. 2007, Final ed., sec. E. LexisNexis Academic. Cooper Library, Clemson, SC. 27 Nov. 2007. Keyword: Immigration Problems.
"Immigration: U.S. to Honor Green Card Applications; Other Developments." FACTS.Com. 9 Apr. 2007. 27 Nov. 2007
"Immigration Counters Home Page." Immigration Counters. 13 Dec. 2006. 28 Nov. 2007
Mundra, Kusum, and Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes. "Social Networks and Their Impact on the Earnings of Mexican Migrants." Demography 44 (2007). Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Cooper Library, Clemson, SC. 29 Nov. 2007. Keyword: Immigrant Earnings.
