Migrants and Rights - Term Paper Example

Migrants and Rights In his book ‘The right to stay home’, the David Bacon traverses communities to weavenarratives about how immigrant communities struggle to survive in their original countries, migrate, and eventually struggle in their new adopted countries. Immigration occurs when a person leaves their country of origin to go to another country with the aim of acquiring employment, security and escaping natural disasters, hostilities such as war, persecution in their home country (Bacon 143). Globally, immigrants face challenges such as inability to work, the risk of apprehension and deportation at any time. Human rights are inherent to all human beings regardless of their nationality, sex, place of residence, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, language, color or any other status. Migrants may face discrimination in rights to education, employment, social care, freedom of speech and liberty, as well as assembly. Basing on Bacon’s chapter ‘the human rights of migrants’ in his book, and using the US as a focus, it is vital that migrants are accorded and afforded human rights without discrimination. Immigrants may face the challenge of discrimination to employment. Immigrants especially those who are undocumented generally cannot easily find work or receive social benefits that are available to other citizens. Wage levels for those who are employed are frequently low and rarely do the immigrants stand a chance to be promoted into higher leadership roles that would lead to increased levels of income (Bacon 147). Moreover, in the business sector, the immigrants are unable to voice out their concerns on low wages as they stand a chance to be unemployed. Immigrants are also denied to have basic elements of a normal life through being denied citizenship. Despite reforms that have been made with the aim of improving the lives of immigrants there are still a lot of problems that they endure. The constitution of the United States gives the members of the U.S.A the right to acquire education and healthcare .The Immigration Reform and Control Act in the US was followed by introduction of many anti-immigrant bills. These bills made it much more difficult for undocumented immigrants to acquire services. In California for instance, an extreme measure was taken to disqualify undocumented immigrants from acquiring healthcare and education. This measure led to other states taking up the similar measures. This measure was aimed at reducing the population of immigrants in the states as less people would be willing to move into regions where they cannot acquire critical services such as healthcare. Moreover, through attacking this vulnerable group of immigrants, the California state made the living conditions for immigrants in the region worse thus this may have led to some of the immigrants moving back into their state of origin. Employees have the right to form unions that would advocate for their interests for instance increase in salaries and better working conditions. Undocumented immigrants majorly acquire employment in labor intensive sectors. These include agriculture, food processing, garment production, transportation and domestic services. They tend to acquire less benefits and fewer rights. Immigration legislations make the labor cheaper for the employers in these sector. Immigrants find it difficult to fight for their rights through forming unions to strive for better pay because they may acquire sanctions from their employers which make it difficult to acquire future employment. Moreover, the National Labor Relation Board has a rule that if an employee is fired and the employer shows that the employee was undocumented, then the employer is not obligated to rehire the employee. Rules such as this hinder undocumented immigrants from fighting for their rights thus they will rarely acquire employment benefits. The U.S. constitution protects all people including immigrants from unreasonable searches and seizures. Although the immigrants have this right, cases where officers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conduct searches with and at times without warrants frequently occur. These actions infringe on the right to privacy that should be guaranteed to each person in the U.S. Moreover, the immigrants ae at times coerced to sign away their rights and are deported from the United States and leave their families behind. Some of the immigrants lack basic knowledge on their rights therefore they are unable to defend themselves. The United States constitution gives all members of the states the right to equality. Equality is important in service delivery to the member citizens and to immigrants. However, the immigrants frequently experience unequal treatment for instance in service delivery. This makes the. There are frequent cases of racial discrimination. Immigrants may experience challenges in acquiring just treatment (Bacon 166). Moreover, racial discrimination may hinder some of the immigrants from acquiring employment in various places. This therefore leads most of the immigrants to pursue employment in the labor intensive sectors. These sectors however are associated with little pay and poor working conditions. In addition to this, immigrants rarely acquire equal treatment even in the employment sector. They often experience challenges in acquiring employment benefits that citizens acquire easily. For example, an immigrant often lacks the benefit of acquiring a company car. Other members employed in the same company may acquire this and other benefits for instance vacations. In other cases, immigrants are overworked and the employers fail to pay the overtime fee. Due to difficulty in changing jobs, most immigrants remain in the company that they are employed despite the problems they experience. Groups that fight for the rights of immigrants have over time become divided. This has come up due to increase in policies that are against undocumented immigration. Moreover, the stand of Republican members of the Congress, makes it difficult to advocate for the rights of undocumented immigrants. Therefore, most of the groups that previously advocated for the rights of all immigrants now advocate for rights for the documented immigrants. In addition to this, the groups also support measures that are directed towards undocumented immigrants. The reduction in support from these groups has made it more difficult for immigrants to have an easy life in USA. The number of challenges undocumented immigrants experience are bound to increase as new laws are made and implemented. Immigration is bound to occur regardless of methods that are used to reduce cases of its occurrence. However, if the process of legal immigration is regulated, it will be much easier to regulate the movement of people throughout the borders. Immigrants however require to be treated with respect and should acquire basic rights for instance the right to acquire healthcare and education. It is through embracing immigration that the government of U.S.A. will be able to control and regulate its occurrence. Works Cited Bacon, D. (New York). The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration. 2013: Beacon Press. Read More