Illegal Immigration
It is quite normal that each society tries to protect itself from outer invasions and always has some negative preconception in relation to the aliens. Thus, it is not surprising that nativism, or the policy defending the interests of the native-born citizens against the immigrants, is so widely-spread throughout the world. To make matters worse, more and more comers are regarded as illegal immigrants and cause a good deal of protest from the native-born citizens. Firstly, to go deeper to the very core of the matter, it is important to understand how and why people become illegal immigrants. Most of all, they are driven away by poor economic opportunities, social troubles, low quality of life and sometimes by political reasons. Today, globalization and trade liberalization has deprived a lot of workers of their jobs in those countries where agriculture and industry were the basic sources of income. For example, Mexican farmers found themselves unable to compete with the products coming from the US subsidized agriculture invading to the Mexican market by NAFTA agreements. “More efficient agricultural operations in the United States and the elimination of tariffs under NAFTA caused the price of corn to fall 70% in Mexico between 1994 and 2001, and the number of farm jobs to decrease from 8.1 million in 1993 to 6.8 million in 2002” (Taylor 17). Meanwhile, geographical factors like lack of water or stressful environmental pollution often motivate the people to take risks. Other people escape from religious persecution, political oppression or repressions and war conflicts, and look for refuge or asylum. Actually, there are three categories of illegal immigrants. The first enter the foreign state without a former permission (without authorization or inspection); in other words, they illegally cross the borders of this state. Nowadays there are even ‘professionals’ who take money for transferring aliens through the boundaries, usually in large groups. At the same time, there are those who are proposed good job and money in a new state, but instead get into the slavery and are trafficked for labor or sexual exploitation. The second group of immigrants is made up by those who overstay their visa (classified as Non-Immigrant Visa Overstayers). So, they enter the country legally either as tourists, by education programs or by business affairs, but then do not leave the country when their visa is over. The third group is represented by those who violate the terms of their visa and are classified as Border Crossing Card Violators. It is important to note that a great number of people stay illegal immigrants because they do not receive the promised status of refugees. Still others keep waiting for legalization, but unfortunately the bureaucratic machine is not working properly. “Costs, delays, and inefficiencies in processing visa applications and work permits contribute to the number of immigrants who immigrate without authorization,” Vernon Briggs (36) notes. As analysts have summed up, about 1.1 milion green card applications were simply ignored.In fact, the opponents of immigration have a number of reasons to argue against immigrants and to demand the borders to be defended better. First of all, the most popular claim is that the illegal immigrants make up an unsound competition at the job market and, moreover, depress wages as they agree to be less paid. George Borjas, famous American economist, for example, shows that “real wages of US workers without a high school degree declined by 9% from 1980-2000 due to competition from illegal immigrant workers” (Borjas 22). However, this first claim is one of the easiest to be argued with. Actually, better job proposal is really the main significant reason for people to leave their native country and push forward into uncertainty with risk for life in search for better living. But the matter is, they tend to apply for those positions that are not attractive for most of the native citizens. For instance, Douglas Massey (33) explains that today “a bifurcating labor market in developed nations creates a structural demand for unskilled immigrant labor to fill undesirable jobs that native-born citizens do not take, regardless of wages.” Hereby, the accusation of worse education and skill (about 70% of illegal workers in the US from Mexico lack a high school degree) is also not to the point, because due to these reasons the immigrants have lower demands for job opportunities and wages. Really, it is traced that “illegal immigrants as a group tend to be less educated than other sections of the U.S. population: 49 percent haven’t completed high school, compared with 9 percent of native-born Americans and 25 percent of legal immigrants” (Taylor 22) Nevertheless, according to the statistics, they mostly work in such spheres as production, crop gathering, farming, construction, installation, landscaping, repair, house-cleaning, maid and other spheres where no special skills are needed, while the native-borns in postindustrial economies prefer white-collar jobs where higher education is needed and such resource as “human capital” is decisive. Besides, immigrants agree to work without some essential opportunities for further advancement. Partly, the reason is they feel being temporarily here and sense of freedom is beneficial for them; Despite the fact that “illegal immigrants have lower incomes than both legal immigrants and native-born Americans”, their earnings do increase “somewhat the longer an individual is in the country” and after all, the wages they receive are anyway higher than those they could receive at home (Borjas 24). In addition, due to the fact they receive lower wages, they are able to provide cheaper products of their activities.The economic benefits are so obvious that instead of restricting laws against immigration many cities in the USA stand for the status of sanitary cities. Secondly, the critics put the blame on immigrants for taking much from social welfare, using health care services and public education. In their view it is not fair. Still, in many states the immigrants have a very restricted access to these services and can hardly receive any full-value assistance from government. On the other hand, in this view they are not only the producers, but they are also the consumers of some services and all kinds of goods. Therefore, they contribute to the general demand for the market invigorating the national economy, and in this way do contribute to the living standards growth instead of overburdening social services and “overwhelming society’s capacity to absorb and assimilate newcomers” (Ringer 37). On the contrary, they spent money for buying products and acquiring services. Their taxes are obviously a good income for the national budget too.The next essential argument against immigration is that newcomers are often excluded from mainstream civilization trends and their overall level of culture is rather low. Hence, they are also accused of the criminogenic situation changing for worse. In the view of many native inhabitants, it becomes much more dangerous in the regions where the immigrants appear; juvenile delinquency at public schools is often associated with the expansion of illegal immigration. However, there is no strong evidence proving the direct correlation between the immigrants and rate of crimes. What is more, it is proved that “the problems which are purportedly caused by immigrants equally exist amongst native-born populations as well, and that politicians often use immigration as a convenient scapegoat to distract the public from real social, political and economic problems” (Ringer 37). This argument is eloquently showing how the problem of illegal immigration is overestimated and misused. It has really become a toy in the hands of politic forces.Although in countries like China where density of population is abnormally high, or like Syria, where the natural resources are exhausted, the preventing measures are quite reasonable, in contrast to the problem of overpopulation there is another idea. The immigrants often help in renewal of population in those countries where it is declining and aging and the rates of birth are significantly falling down. Thus, they bring fresh young forces into the state economy and at the same time change demographic situation for better. In parallel, it is also understandable when the countries with poorer socioeconomic opportunities encourage their citizens to work abroad, because a large among of money earned there returns to the native country of a worker who makes remittances for their families. For this reason, Mexican consulates, for example, have started to issue identity cards for their citizens living and working in the United States. Moreover, there has been a handbook and a DVD issued in Yucatan to inform the potential immigrants of al the risks and difficulties of crossing the border between Mexico and the United States.Further on, there is a lot of mess in courts when it goes about the parents of children born in the States, as the 14th amendment provides all the children born within the USA with the status of American status, even if the baby’s parents (one or both) are illegal immigrants. And when the question arises what to do with such parents, it goes without saying that it is inhumane to divide a child from parents and some judges deny them with imprisonment.Then, one more liberal reason to justify the illegal immigration is the right to freedom of movement, which is one of the founding principles of democratic state. In the view of this idea, the laws restricting immigration violate human rights and put the bias of newcomers who are initially taken as being worse than legal citizens in all meanings. There is no surprise that the laws like the one issued in France in 1994 (prohibiting the assistance to illegal immigrants) was highly criticized by non-governmental organizations like the Cimade and the GISTI and some political parties as well. That is why the system of amnesties introduced sometimes by different governments seems to be reasonable and adequate. In 2009 the Brazil parliament, for example, opened a 6-month window for everyone who wanted to receive a legal status, no matter what the past relation with law of the individual was. Into the bargain, funds spent to fight with illegal immigration turn out to be much more overwhelming than those spent to support it. Consequently, there are enough arguments in support of the idea to provide the newcomers with the status of guest workers and to make this procedure much less headache for immigrants.
