So yea... I guess an agreement can be made

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.

Mediation Brief

Thesis: Immigration is a powerful force for any country, but in the United

States particularly, if it is not harnessed, the influx of undocumented

aliens becomes more of and hindrance than a helping factor of cultural diversity.

Reason 1: Healthcare – Illegal immigrants receive healthcare and are unable to pay their medical bills.

Evidence: Doctors sign a pledge saying they will give help to anyone who needs it.

Evidence: Illegal immigrants have accidents and need help, which costs money

Evidence: Over 50 hospitals have been forced to close in California because of unpaid bills

Evidence: In the case of Shmul Kaplan, his citizenship took too long. His Supplement Security Income was cut. The loss of this income can be a factor in how bills (healthcare) get paid.(lexisnexis-washingtonpost.com)

Reason 2: Jobs – Immigrants take many jobs that most Americans wouldn’t touch, but also take skilled jobs also.

Evidence: Most Americans hate the thought of doing hard labor for little money.

Evidence: Illegal immigrants take most of these jobs, but the more dire their situation back home is, there is a natural inclination to do whatever you can, and this leads immigrants to take more than 9 million skilled jobs.

Evidence: Most of the money they earn is sent straight to their native country, deflating the American economy.

Reason 3: Naturalization – if legal process is sped up, there would be less incentive to immigrate here illegally

Evidence: Many aliens lose their lives attempting risky ways to get into America

Evidence: If someone’s green card application would go through on time then most illegal immigrants would become legal visitors.

Evidence: There would be no need to immigrate illegally if you could come here legally in a timely manner.

Evidence: FBI performs background tests on those that request citizenship which can take months.(lexisnexis-washingtonpost.com)

Evidence: Maria Montenegro’s citizenship took 30 years, a lifetime for some (lexisnexis-USA Today)

Evidence: since America

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 .