(Institution Name)
Introduction:
The United States is considered as a nation of immigrants and rightly so. The United States is the most popular destination amongst immigrants and now however Canada is becoming a much more attractive option, the United States still is the highest immigrant percentage containing the country. At this time, there are more than ten million immigrants living in the United States, as per the record of the government.
This was the right path, used by those people who in couples or with family migrate to the country of US legally. Now coming towards the darker side, there are expected to have been equal as much illegal immigrants living in the country who are neither permitted nor eligible to reside in the country. These immigrants majorly belong to countries of Southern and Central America and Asia. Some countries of Eastern and Central Europe also contribute towards making this population. According to an estimate more than 700,000 people migrate to the United States each year and that the current tally of immigrants will double in over a decade.
As these people move into the country, their biggest purpose for doing so and their primary concern is to find a livelihood. They work in the form of blue-collar laborers and those who are bit educated; they start off doing entry level jobs in all kinds of industry. Tagline is that the job market in the United States is getting saturated due to the presence of illegal and legal immigrants in such a huge number and that the locally born people are not able to maintain their standard of living. The claim is that the immigrants are not actually the -wrongdoers, if they have caused the job market to get saturated, then they are the primary tool bearers of this happening due to low wage rates and sometimes sub humane working conditions. There is a dire need to reform the immigrant employment laws in the United States.
Brief Explanation of the Issue:
People belonging to countries where there are very little means of making enough money and where security threats are high; tend to move to the United States. Though some people use the proper channel for doing so and migrate to the country legally, many others use false means like fake documentation, showing employment of a bogus corporation and simply vanishing during a visit visa. People come to the United States with a primary goal which is to make money, and the secondary goal is to reside in the country permanently. It is estimated that more than 3% people in the United States are unaccounted for, and there is no record of those people with the government.
The problem begins when these people head to work in the industry. Since illegal immigrants do not possess rights to work in the country nor do they have any proof of it, they are left with no choice but to work on odd jobs like delivering stuff and doing all sorts of manual labor. They remain out of the government radar so that they do not get deported and make a few fake documents pacify a police officer who might inquire about them. The point is that they simply do not want to leave the country, what is worst is that they want their families to settle in the country too. While doing so, they both saturate the national job market and get badly exploited by the industrialists who start preferring low-cost labor over local nationals causing troubles for the later to maintain their living standards.
There has been a sense of disgust amongst the American-born nationals towards the immigrants, and they hold legal and illegal immigrants equally hated. On the contrary, the legal immigrants and sometimes the illegal ones too are seen protesting against the dual behavior of the industry and the government when it comes to paying wages, setting wage rates and asking them to leave the country. Mexican immigrants are in a huge number in the United States, and there is severe tension between locally born nationals and the Mexicans as the former consider them making scarce what is their right first.
Arguments:
The primary argument that enforces the view that immigrant employment laws should be amended is that the industrialists cannot be stopped from hiring cheap labor if they are getting it. Though the government has enforced minimum wages, still the illegal immigrants accept the terms of lower in compensation for being given the opportunity to work at least. As (Kane & Johnson, 2006) have eloquently put "What are the employers going to do if they're not bringing the people here? They're going to open up a facility right outside the United States, in Canada or Mexico". This means that even those jobs that national born American have will vanish too. Hence, the arguers demand an increase in the number of skilled worker visas handed out to the citizens of the global community each year from 85,000 to beyond a hundred thousand. It is worth mentioning that originally the government had set the limit at 65,000 skilled worker visas (Carrasco, 2015).
Another major concern about illegal and legal immigrants is their placement in the country. An eye-opening fact is that 94% of immigrants in the United States live in the larger cities and metropolitan areas that are urbaner. Adding this to the fact that the native-born United States citizens mostly reside in the rural areas, sums up to the single point that the real Americans are rapidly vanishing from the scene of industry and are confined mostly to farming. This makes the reforms even more important, as the government must be able to enforce the placement of immigrants through well planned immigrant residence rules. Gathering of immigrants in certain pockets of the country is also not the solution as this already happens. Immigrants gather in localities and all the businesses and jobs they take away for themselves, the neighborhoods are also found protecting their fellow nationals even if they are residing illegally in the country. This makes it very important for the government to reform the process.
Another reason why immigrant employment seeks reforms is that the industry of the United States is addicted to the cheap labor force. As (Ross, 2015) has put “American business is addicted to undocumented labor. The undocumented keep costs down in industries in which they are heavily invested”. pg.1 The industry of the United States imbalance created in the country and the prevailing unemployment not the locals and not the immigrants. There are also very little ways of checking the immigrants for diseases which can possibly cause an outbreak.
The people who work illegally in the United States agree with so little wage rates for a reason, and that is the poor condition of security in their home countries. As (Stockdale, 2012) mentions, “The abuse and exploitation in the United States may appear as a better alternative than conditions in the home countries of many H-2A workers.” Pg.772 It is a humane responsibility of the United States government to make reforms that help these people out of exploitation. The United States government confesses that the country’s immigration system is broken and that the mechanism is not working right (Numbers USA, 2014).
There is some counter arguments tat ridicule the idea of allowing an immigrant to enter the country in the first place. According to (Herbst, 2007) "It's clear that foreign outsourcing firms are abusing the system, and we can't let that continue." pg.2 There are companies in the countries like India from where people are sent to the United States, claiming them to be employees of bogus Indian companies, these people once arrived, work as independent workers. This is one way how the country’s system is loopholed. Hence, it is deducible that immigrants must not be allowed in the United States and the visas that the government hands over to international corporations must be brought to halt.
Another counter argument towards immigration to the United States is that the illegal and legal immigrants are robbing the national born United States citizens of their right to get a good job and pay by saturating the market. As (Briggs, 2010) mentions in his study that “The impact of illegal immigration on the U.S. labor force is more than simply that it swells the size of the civilian labor force. Rather, it is the fact that the illegal immigrant labor force tends to be concentrated in certain sectors; it is not randomly distributed” pg.3. This means that the immigrants gather to form neighborhoods where they clearly refuse to accommodate the original nationals of the United States making them feel alienated in their own country.
Conclusion:
The inflow of both legal and illegal immigrants is causing much unrest in the policymakers and the general public as jobs are getting scarcer by the minute, and security threats are increasing. Time is upon the government to effectively address the issue through flawless legislation. The claims of those people who do not want immigrants to come in the United States are right on their claim as they really do cause the American economy a great loss. Additionally they are found guilty of other crimes like street robbery and theft in cases when they fail to get jobs. But the fact remains that the immigrants are human beings and deserve to live and not exploited, hence the government must make sure to register each and every person who lives in the country and to put a check under visas that allow corporations to send people into the United States. Rather than disallowing the immigrants inside the United States, the government must ensure that the rule of equal employment opportunity gets followed by the industry. This rule says that no person can be preferred over the other just on the basis of his nationality but only on the basis of expertise and eligibility.
References
Briggs Jr, V. M. (2010, March). Illegal immigration and immigration reform: Protecting the employment rights of the American labor force (the native born and foreign born) who are eligible to be employed. In Conference Proceedings, Presentations, and Speeches (p. 8).
Carrasco, L. F. (2015). Rush is on for highskilled foreign workers. Retrieved July 20, 2015, from http://tucson.com/business/local/rush-is-on-for-high-skilled-foreign- workers/article_2173bc56-d25f-5da1-aaa3-c34b600ad03f.html
Kane T, Johnson K. A. (2006). The Real Problem with Immigration and the Real Solution. Retrieved July 20, 2015, from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/03/the-real-problem-with-immigration-and-the-real-solution
Herbst, M. (2007). More Heat for Indian Outsourcers. Retrieved July 20, 2015, from http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2007-06-27/more-heat-for-indian-outsourcersBusinessWeek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice
Numbers USA. (AUGUST 5, 2014). STOP AMNESTY. Retrieved July 20, 2015, from https://www.numbersusa.com/solutions/stop-amnesty
Ross, B. (2014). Employment, Not Immigration Reform. Retrieved July 20, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-ross/employment-not-immigratio_b_6210566.html
Stockdale, K. E. (2012). H-2A Migrant Agricultural Workers: Protected from Employer Exploitation on Paper, Not in Practice. Creighton L. Rev., 46, 755.
