

Illegal Immigration

Most people agree that illegal immigration is wrong, because it is not fair to taxpayers and legal immigrants.



Nevertheless, illegal immigrants, also known as illegal aliens, have many reasons for illegally crossing borders or overstaying their visas. For instance, illegal aliens may be avoiding war, looking for work, reuniting with family, evading their government for political reasons, escaping criminal activity, and/or needing medical aid are just a few of the most common reasons. Even though all of these reasons are understandable and justifiable to leave a country, these reasons do not excuse illegal immigration.





The main reason why illegal immigration is unfair is because illegal aliens are a burden to taxpayers for several reasons. For instance, illegal immigrants are typically entitled to free social services. For example, hospitals and emergency rooms are obligated to treat all patients even if they can not or do not pay for it. Illegal aliens can receive welfare checks and food stamps. Sometimes, governments assist illegal immigrants with job searches and transportation to jobs. The children of illegal immigrants, who are often also illegal immigrants, are entitled to education thus overcrowding schools and decreasing the quality of the education. Furthermore, it is perceived that illegal immigrants do not pay any or as much in taxes compared with legal residents, thus they should not receive free social services. In truth, illegal aliens do pay at least some of the taxes that regular citizens and legal immigrants do pay. The actual statistics and numbers of what is not paid are impossible to calculate.



Furthermore, illegal immigrants are attributed with job losses for legal residents especially for lower income jobs. In addition, higher crime rates are also sometimes associated with illegal aliens. Illegal immigration is even unfair to the illegal aliens, since they are politically and economically restricted. And finally if and when illegal immigrants are caught, these illegal aliens could be sent to jail and/or deported from the country, again at a cost to the taxpayers.



On the other hand, there are several reasons why illegal immigration is good for a country. First, businesses can more easily succeed and possibly earn profits with the lower salaries given to illegal aliens. As a result, local services and goods have a lower price for legal and illegal residents. All in all, the local economies do receive a boost from illegal immigration.



However, it is believed that there is an overall net loss for taxpayers when comparing how much taxes illegal immigrants pay compared to the social services they receive. Furthermore in general, wealthy people, especially business owners, tend to profit more from illegal immigrants while poor people suffer more. Finally, it is not fair when compared to immigrants who work hard to legally enter and stay in the country. As a result, illegal immigration is overall significantly unfair to most legal residents.



There are three basic solutions to help resolve this issue. First, prevent illegal aliens. Second, deport all illegal aliens. Third, allow illegal aliens to become legal residents. Lets review each of these solutions.





The only way to prevent illegal aliens is with better border security and tracking down each person who overstayed their visa. First, it is technically impossible to have a perfect border security, especially when a country has huge borders such as the United States of America. Similarly, finding all illegal citizens who have overstayed their visas is not possible. Therefore, this individual solution is not perfect by itself, yet this solution is part of the overall plan to help prevent illegal immigrants.



The second solution for deporting all illegal aliens has the issue on how to find them. The solution here is by restricting their ability to reside in the country. For example, by not giving drivers licenses, marriage licenses, or any other form of identification to illegal aliens and giving legal immigrants licenses and identifications that expire when their visas expire is a good start with limiting their ability to function in the country. Therefore when an illegal alien is arrested or stopped by a police officer with expired or no papers, then they will be immediately held for later deportation. Similarly, stop most social services for illegal residences, such as welfare, food stamps, and education. I would not prevent medical needs, but all hospitals and emergency rooms would be required to immediately report all illegal aliens to the authorities. At the same time, this will prevent some birthright citizenships, that is when a child becomes a citizen in the country that the child was born in rather than the citizenship of the childs parent(s). It would also be necessary to not give birthright citizenship to children of legal immigrants and tourists too, since this is a legal method for non-citizens to stay in the country to take care of the children who are citizens and can not be deported. This solution might not be popular, but it would be effective in decreasing the number of illegal immigrants.





The final solution is to allow illegal aliens to become legal residents and ultimately maybe even citizenship, thus illegal aliens would become legal residents who would pay their share in taxes.. This solution would anger a great deal of people. First, legal immigrants would feel cheated that they followed the laws and the slow bureaucratic process in becoming residents while illegal immigrants were not obligated to do so. Second, most citizens believe that illegal immigrants should be punished and by giving them residency is the opposite of punishment. As a result, this solution is not popular with the population of any country.



In conclusion, illegal immigration is unfair for taxpayers, citizens, residents, and even the illegal aliens too. Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution for illegal immigration; however this is a problem that needs solving as quickly as possible. The faster illegal immigration is resolved, the better it is for everyone.



by Phil for Humanity

on 01/08/2008 Related Articles

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