Introduction
Immigration law deals with the state administration policies which direct the occurrence of immigration to their nation. Illegal immigration is the movement into a country in contravention of the immigration laws of that authority. Illegal immigration brings about many economical, political, and social matters and has developed into a basis of chief controversy in the developed nations and the more flourishing developed countries (Proper, pg 203). This paper proposes to examine the U.S. Laws governing illegal immigrants and the need to be reformed.
The purpose of this proposal is to show an overview of my investigation of U.S. laws governing illegal immigrants and the need to be reformed. My aim is to show with a brief history of U.S. laws and how the concept of natural law enables some illegal immigrants to remain the U.S. due to the some laws which permit people from other countries to remain the country without experiencing any problems form the government because of the rule of law. This article is an attempt to classify and bring together the information about immigration legislation on a number of most popular countries.
Immigration law, concerning the overseas citizens, is associated to population law, which presides over a legal position of citizens, in subjects such as nationality. Migration laws are at variance from nation to nation, also depending on the political environment at the moment, as opinions may possibly sway as of the comprehensively all- encompassing to the profoundly exclusiveness of latest migrants. Immigration law concerning the citizens of a nation is regulated by international law and the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights authorizes that all states permit entry to its own citizens. However, certain nations possibly will uphold moderately strict laws which standardize both the right of entry and internal rights, such as the duration of stay and the right to get involved in government. The majority of the countries have laws which assign a process for naturalization, by which immigrants may perhaps become citizens but the immigration laws in the United States of America have under gone rough advancement. During the colonial period the self-governing colonies formed their immigration laws. The first endeavor to naturalize the foreigners was through the Naturalization Act of 1790 but numerous years later the Chinese Exclusion Act was voted for to stop the immigration of Chinese people. The immigration Act of 1924 put a quota on the number of immigrants who can be permitted into the United States, founded on nationality. The immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 guided the establishment of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Currently, the five most important departments of the federal government concerned with the immigration procedure are the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, and the Department of Labor. Of all the five, the Department of Homeland Security, which substituted the Immigration and Naturalization Service, implements the immigration laws and bequeaths benefits on aliens. This Department is subdivided into three separate departments namely, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Each year, the Federal government performs a Diversity Visa Lottery which awards citizens of other nations legal entry into the United States of America. Conversely only the nations "with small rates of immigration to the United States" are permitted to apply (Mark, pg 200).
At the moment there are two unlike categories of United States visas: one for the citizens in quest of living in the US which is termed as Immigrant Visas and the other for citizens who seek for limited durations, which is termed as Non-Immigrant Visas. The former visa has "per country-caps", while the latter does not. The majorities of non-immigrant visas are for work reasons, and more often than not necessitate an offer of employment from a US business. Other categories comprise family, student, and tourist visas. The United States permits more than one million foreigners to become Legal Permanent Residents each year, which is more than any other country in the world.
Problems with U.S. immigration law
Even though there have been arguments that the United States has had problems with immigrants, the Immigration law became a grave political matter, predominantly after the September 11 terrorist attack.
Control measures
Labor and economic markets
Illegal immigration takes place predominantly from states with inferior socio-economic conditions to nations with superior socio-economic conditions, where prospective immigrants see greater economic prospects and excellent quality life. This has characteristically been analyzed as motivating people from the developing nations to the developing ones but as the economic circumstances get better in some of developing nations, the illegal immigration to these more flourishing developing nations has also amplified considerably. When the prospective illegal immigrants consider the likelihood and benefits of successfully migrating to the destination nation are better than the costs then illegal immigration will always be an attractive alternative. The remunerations taken into account do not only comprise of anticipated enhancement in living and pay situations but also incorporate opportunities in relation to prospective future immigration reprieve, where illegal immigration is given a chance for citizenship or naturalization as well as the rights to citizenship of any future offspring are a consideration. The costs may perhaps incorporate restrictions on existing as an illegal immigrant in the destination nation, leaving relatives and habits of life behind, and the possibility of being detained and consequential sanctions. The projected economic forms of illegal immigration include unreliable deliberations and degrees of complications.
Neoclassical model
The neoclassical economic form perceives merely at the possibility of triumph in immigrating and getting gainful employment, and the increase in actual profits an illegal immigrant may look forward to. This rationalization may account for the economies of the two countries, as well as how much of a "pull" the destination nation has in regard of jobs with better pay and enhancement in the excellence of life. It at the same time illustrates a "push" that appears from negative circumstances in the home nation like economic mobility or the lack of employment.
Neoclassical hypothesis posits that dynamics such as border enforcement, geographic propinquity, ease of employment, likelihood of future legalization, and probability and consequences of arrest, preside over the probability of flourishing illegal immigration. This model in addition presupposes that illegal employees have a propensity to add to, and struggle with, the receiving country’s pool of unskilled employees. The illegal personnel in this model get employment by acknowledging lesser wages than the native-born employees, and occasionally below the legal stipulated minimum salary which are paid off-the-books. Renowned economist George Borjas is in support of these features of this model, and calculates that the actual wages of United States employees with no a high school degree went down by 9% from 1980 through 2000 owing to rivalry from illegal immigrant employees. Since the decrease of middle-class blue-collar professions in industry and manufacturing, youthful native-born generations have obtained high education. The bigger number of new blue-collar employees qualifies as Massey's "underclass” labor, and suffer from subservient roles, unreliability, and, perilously, a lack of prospective for progression. The entry-level white-collar and service professions present development prospects for the legal immigrant and native-born employees. In a developed nation like the U. S. just 12 per cent of the work force has lower than a high school education but illegal immigrants have a great deal lesser levels of education of approximately 70 per cent of illegal employees in the United States from Mexico who lack a high school certificate. Interestingly though, the illegal immigrants benefit because even the so called underclass jobs have a lot higher comparative wages than those in home nations. Since illegal immigrants frequently look forward to labor only for a short term in the destination nation, the lack of prospects for progression is less of a quandary for them. The verification for this may be seen in one Pew Hispanic Center poll of more than 3,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico in the U. S., which established that 79 per cent can willingly joined a provisional employee program that permitted them to work legally for a number of years but then necessities them to depart. The structural requirement hypothesis posits that the eagerness to work unattractive jobs is what confers illegal immigrants their gainful employment. The structural demand hypothesis argues that instances like this demonstrate that there is no direct contest between amateurish illegal immigrants and local born employees and the notion that the illegal immigrants "get jobs that nobody else wants" is far-fetched. Massey argues that this has particular connotations for guiding principle, as it might disprove allegations that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs or lowering wages from local born employees.
Poverty
Even though economic representations look at the comparative wealth and proceeds between destination and home nations, they do not inevitably mean that illegal migrants are constantly impoverished by the low standards of the home nations. The poorest classes in a developing nation might lack the wealth required to mount an endeavor to immigrate illegally, or the connections to friends or family already in the destination country (Giorgio, pg 198).
Reforming the immigration laws
Unauthorized immigration might be encouraged by the yearning to run away from civil wars or repression in the nation of origin. Non-economic push reasons incorporate persecution from religious issues and otherwise, recurrent bullying, abuse, genocide and oppression and dangers to civilians during the war. In most cases, political motives customarily encourage refugee flows - to run away dictatorship for example. The conditions of unauthorized immigrant may possibly happen together with or be replaced by the conditions of asylum seeker for emigrants who have escaped a repression or war and have unlawfully traversed into another country. If they are acknowledged as lawful asylees by the destination country, they will then achieve the status. On the other hand, there may perhaps be many prospective asylees in a destination country who are reluctant to submit an application or have been denied the asylum status, and for this reason are classified as unauthorized immigrants and possibly will be subject to deportation or punishment. Nevertheless, Article 31 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees makes it illegal the Contracting States from imposing fines on refugees for their illegal presence or entry, who come directly from a country where their life or freedom are endangered. There are many cases of mass departure from war-stricken or poor countries. These consist of instances from Africa, El Salvador, and Colombia and from this perspective, there surely makes it imperative for a full reform of the U.S. immigration laws (Giorgio, pg 257).
Dangers
The unauthorized immigrants may perhaps render themselves to dangers while connected in illegal entry into another nation. Apart from the prospect that they might be captured and deported, some significantly more dangerous results have been known to be a consequence from their activity. For instance, unauthorized immigrants may well be trafficked for misuse consisting of even sexual exploitation (Giorgio, pg 103).
Overstaying a visa
The majority illegal immigrants are migrants who initially arrive in a state lawfully, but overstay their official residence or what is termed as overstaying a visa. An interrelated means of becoming an unauthorized immigrant is by bureaucratic methods. For a case in point, a person may be permitted to remain in a state or even be protected from expulsion for the reason that he/she requires special allowance for a medical situation, deep love for a local, or as a way avoiding being tried for a crime in his/her country of origin, without being capable to legalize his/her condition and get a work and/or residency permit, not to mention naturalization (Vernon, B. pg 278).
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009
This is an act which is intended to simplify immigration laws, extends the time it takes to gain citizenship, and strengthen borders. This act assists to reform the immigration laws in that it amends the rules on naturalization. Those who reside in the U.S. requires to have particular residential status for eight years before becoming eligible while those who would desire to become naturalized on the basis of marriage takes five years even though this period may be reduced to six years or three years respectively if the applicant meets the activity condition in that one had a particular type of entitlement or visa while being a resident.
Conclusion
The United States of America has perhaps the best human rights record in the world. The rights to freedom of movement of a human being within national borders is frequently contained in the constitution or in a nation’s human rights legislation but these rights are limited to citizens and leave out all others. Some skeptics believe that the freedom of movement mutually within and between the nations is a basic human right and that immigration and nationalism guidelines of the state governments contravene this human right that those similar governments identify within their own borders. According to the article 13 on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the fundamental human rights are violated when people are prohibited from leaving their nation. Nevertheless, immigrants are not guaranteed the right to enter a state, as that right is only given at the host nation’s discretion. In view of the fact that illegal immigrants lacking appropriate legal status have no legal identification papers such as identity cards, they may possibly have reduced access or none to proper banks, education, housing, any public health methods. This lack of right to use might have the consequence of the expansion or creation of illegal subversive forgery to make available these documentations.
When the establishments are inundated in their endeavors to stop illegal immigration, they have traditionally resulted to granting amnesty. Amnesties for these illegal immigrants are usually to waive the subject from the deportation clause which is normally related with illegal aliens (Aizenman, pg 198). But as long as these lop holes in the immigration laws are in place, there will always be more illegal aliens. And thus the need for reforming this law once and for all.
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