Debates Over The Immigration Reform in America

Immigration has still been an popularly argued topic in politics in this country for an long time. Other people are arguing that immigrants are necessity for our country since they take jobs that others would never take and should be allowed the right to live in this country. Others people however say that punishment is needed because what they are doing in this country is very highly illegal and they are also taking jobs away from the people as well as not paying taxes. On both sides they have their own reasons to support the idea that illegal undocumented immigrants might as well be punished since they are already breaking the law by being here illegally and the other side claims as well shows why they should be allowed to stay. The discussion of immigration in this country has reached its peak that some form of a reform must be made to better American politics. It’s not ideal for the country to be constantly back and forth on this issue and for the policies behind them to be so clustered and mismanaged.

One of the main points against the rise in illegal immigration is that there would be fewer jobs for national born citizens and in turn would create a need for higher salaries as result and this would only help out big companies rather than help the nation as an whole. A counter to this idea is that the jobs they are doing are ones that frankly no American would want to do since they are low paying jobs. Other Americans who are desperate for jobs might be affected, but there are still tons of people who will choose what carers they want that pay the most. Many migrants beside the fact are happy while they are able to find work here. It is therefore an logical idea for them to be legalised so that there are enough people who will choose to work the jobs that we do not want to do. Without the workforce of many migrant workers, much of the American economy would fail or tumble beneath itself due to the facts most of these illegal immigrants come from areas like California, Texas, Florida and Arizona which are well economically.

Another key point is that illegal migrants pose no gain to the American economy as they do not contribute to taxes and therefore reap the gains they should not receive. However, from the last IRS data from 2015 it shows, “that the agency received 4.4 million income tax returns from workers who don’t have Social Security numbers, which includes a large number of undocumented immigrants. That year, they paid $23.6 billion in income taxes. That doesn’t even include workers who paid taxes with fake Social Security numbers on their W-2 forms, which is also common”. Many of these illegal immigrants still pay taxes everyday as everything they buy always has a tax on it. The ideal that they do not pay for anything is absurd and blown outta proportion.

A third reason for legalising illegal immigrants is that everyone deserves equal rights as human beings. Many people migrate from their own country to the US because they seek better opportunities, freedom, and rights. An example are Mexicans as, “they account for more than half of the illegal immigrants in the US with a number of 6.1 million people”. Almost half of Mexico's entire population lives below the poverty line, which is one of the leading factors for why Mexicans migrate and wish to provide for their family and for some the only way to do that is by finding work in the US. According to the Human Rights Watch World Report (HRWWR) 2013 there are also some essential human rights that are being violated in Mexico. One of them is the criminal justice system, which fails to fight human right violations done to victims, due to years of corruption and inadequate resources that could not be matched by the US. Other rights that are violated are the labour rights. In 2012, “there was a new labour law reform that would make it easier for employers to replace the regular employees with workers on a short-term contract”. Because of this a lot of Mexicans may choose the US for better security of their rights. Although these examples are of Mexicans, other undocumented immigrants may come for similar reasons, or they may come from countries with even worse conditions.

Americans may argue that this does not affect them and that it is not their responsibility. However, a large part of this is something that Americans can look at and judge for themselves. The policies that we currently have is place are unjust and these migrants are waiting to be let into this country so that they can show what they can offer our country and help contribute. These are people with families who hope to flee their own countries of the pursuit of a better life with opportunity even if that means the work that we Americans deem as terrible but they are willing to in order to better themselves.