The US Immigration Impasse - Essay Example

The US immigration impasse: a questionable gain and unquestionable pain Migration has been an imperative ingredient of Arab nomadic tribes. Even Americans are not free of the migration procedures. Migration seems a vital element in the Latin American history. As viewed by Benjamin Franklin and other experts, the Americans have truly reflected the migration guts in the early phases of country development. The American history maps back when the Latin Americans entered the massive continent. Some research questions were even raised by the country forefathers regarding neophyte’s entry across the shores (Brettel & Hollifield, 2000). Towards the start of 19th century, the immigration came from Eastern Europe and Germany, most probably. The basic immigration causes were American employers and job providers, in search of cheap labor. The upward labor mobility was much practiced in this era. The 1882 laws saw some change in immigration policies, with restricted entries for Chinese in the country. The 1892 Congress decree of Chinese immigrants showed some antagonism and racial tensions (Brettel & Hollifield, 2000). The congress’s animosity could be further seen in today’s’ American immigrant law as well. Though, the reasons are not acknowledged. The 1920s experienced a shift in the American immigration law, with some ethnic and oriental immigration laws rooted in American law system. The quota concept was introduced in 1920s and abolished in mid 1960’s, with some white race Europeans and their successors with a convivial and welcoming attitude. The prejudices kept its pace and were seen most in popenoe eugenics movement, the reason being the “race-superior” concept behind the prejudices (Brettel & Hollifield, 2000). The changes occurred after the World War II (1939-45), which formed some restrictions and squashy entrance policies for the immigrants, thousands of refuges were allowed to enter the American shores, with some victims of political or religious discriminations. Today the issue of social security and immigrant trust is not only taken into account on the lone basis of number and place of foundation that the law endows with. Even today, big issues arise when some ethnic groups are allowed to enter US coasts, and some are abandoned without any particular rationales (Brettel & Hollifield, 2000). But it seems crystal clear from the historical immigration laws and attitudes, that attitudes impacting social trust are also portrayed in the provisions of law, that abide upon the maltreatment exposed to contenders. The immigration history reveals the fact that America has been pre-obsessed with four vital issues (LeMay, 1999): From early days till now, there is a main stress on maintaining regional and ethnic characteristics. From the early days till now, there has been a deep concern to preserve ideological morals of entrepreneurship and democracy. The doors have always been open to the victimized. Even throughout the American history, the labor and scientific knowledge workers and skilled labor has been a great problem. The first immigration procedures and policies were quite deficient in structure and layout. Today, we recognize the former hypothesis and concerns with a bi-partisan support. Even the current immigration law is not without its adverse chucks. Changing and analyzing the entire immigration law structure would a tedious job; some paucity needs to be analyzed well. Some administrative provisions and clauses are still unwanted. The institute comes with the congress act of Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, generally known as IIRIRA. It has never gone through full execution after it was conceded (LeMay, 1999). Though congress kept concluding the significance of the ex-law and its inadequacies, a much passionate approach to American law has been advocated. Before this law, the immigration officer had little prudence to remove the strangers. If there were some doubts, the immigration case was transferred to the immigration judge for further examination and investigation. The stranger or the foreigner could make a certain appeal, which doesn’t seem possible today. The American concept of equity and justice has been altered by the new conceptual alterations in the new law (LeMay, 1999). Today an immigration officer can exempt or exclude a certain number of foreigners across the border, without even asking their appeal. The procedure is primarily named as the accelerated one, which excludes some of the border aliens out. The immigration officer final decision is subject to a supervisor or senior head, with the base being a fraud foreigner or some bad credit rating credentials. The exclusion forms a typical base here. The rushing procedure often excludes the non-fraud cases as well. The claims are often of factual or persecution nature, which diminishes the dues of the further immigration procedure. The border crosser can be easily excluded from the migrants’ list, if he/she is unable to persuade the immigration officer of the real fear. The credit rating and fear credibility plays a vital role here. Upon failing to meet such requirements, the aliens can be easily discarded. The guilt level is also important here. But measuring the guilt level in persecution victim is very complex (LeMay, 1999). The other issues of IIRIRA criticisms are that it holds some baseless reasons for entry of aliens and contains somber views for this too. The fragile and unjustifiable reasons, on which the application is rejected, form no rock-solid grounds too. Another reason may be the applicant’s inability to appear in the hearing on the desired date, as announced. He may have returned after some visa expiration and asking for further extension. If he or she has infringed the visa condition, that could present another scenario. He may prove some organizational membership to some anti-US organization. This status may deny his entry in US (Wucker, 2006). Another point of objection on the 1996 law is the provoked misdemeanor. The consensus for crime and belief that INS was not contributing much towards hindering foreigners’ entry with criminal record and rating, defines the term. The “aggravated felony” term was further extended, pointing out serious question of proper application of the law. Where should be applied with justice and fairness, leaves some tricky queries unreciprocated (Wucker, 2006). The aliens faced with unlawful and illegal behavior may have performed acts so restrictedly, that prosecution authorities may have concluded that ex- behavior of immigrant did not guarantee even a single custody record. Under the IIRIRA’s provisions and clauses may define the act committed by the alien as a provoked misdemeanor, therefore would be sufficient to include him in the immigrant forbidden list. Once he or she is removed from these sound bases, the re-entry chance in US diminishes further. The probability of entering US again often gets negligible (Wucker, 2006). The big list of crimes that composes aggravated felony comes from many sources. The first sources being prostitution, gambling, fake passports, commercial bribes and some other ethical sexual harassment crime that could have been committed by the criminal either before or after the IIRIRA. Some crimes may have little penalty or punishments periods, but the right to reject the applicant still persists (Wucker, 2006). A bigger criticism and objection on the expulsion and entry laws is not allowing any prudence in attitude or change in the victim’s behavior. Her ex life and list of achievements have been so noteworthy, that these don’t count for a change in the applicant current behavior. For example, a person has lived nicely all his life, without a single day of custody, his attitudes may change, no matter what his or her ex ratings were. The altering attitude is never detected by the law, or could be justifies too. Even if you have become nicer after committing the crime, no matter how fastidious you are: you will still be placed under aggravated felony grounds and have no doors open for provision or appeal (Wucker, 2006). A third weakness inherent in the system is the lack of proper assistance and direction in telling him how to change the conditions faced by him. There is no legal or legitimate kind of proper assistance, which tell him to meet the strict criterion and ruthless provisos that might confront him. Another important section of the law, which creates some extra burden on the government, is section 110 of the law. This section mainly focused towards handling some immigration problems more effectively; these are (Roth, 1997): Drug-trafficking Smuggling Alien over stays The section of the immigration law requires each applicant to get himself registered as entering the US borders. There is a much magnified load on the registry people and computer data bases that maintain and update the applicant registration record. The information gathering process would be time consuming, and the registration updates would be technically complex. Often it would result in long lines of applicants, waiting for registration to be done quickly, at all places of entry like Detroit, El Paso, Brownsville and Buffalo. The crowd would become at times very hard and time-consuming to tackle (Roth, 1997). There would be a huge amount of load on the computer terminals and the registration staff personnel. It is like adding some extra burdens and costs to the immigration procedures, and making it a much more hectic task for government. The off-putting results would be felt on the tourism and free flowing trade. The trade zones and the US intra-trading practices would suppress a lot as a result of this additional registration activity. However, the impact of registry is still undetermined in terms of alien over stays. How these would be affected, is still big question mark. The system only puts a lumber on the registration bodies, it doesn’t ensure where the tourists would actually go after entering US. The tracking facility is still lacking, and needs some better provisionary reforms that ensures alien tracking too (Roth, 1997). The internationalization or the globalization all over the world, still questions the US migration policy. How would it impact the US trade with other zones like Triads. The tourist motels and locations would be empty after so many immigration rules and procedures: these questions need definite answers and still can’t be answered much objectively. Today the US immigration policy makers are under the intense pressure of making US a favorite tourist place. Not only this, a bigger issue is to actually identify the real immigration problems from the discretionary and fabricated ones. Which immigration issues are critical and which require immense tackling are still some complex questions for US immigration policy makers (Roth, 1997). There is a great need to see the both sides of the mirror. But a lot of deviation is needed in the existing immigration policy: the focus should be to restrict the terrorists and applicants indulged in serious crime activities. If same hostile and reluctant attitude is continued, this may pose some serious problems for US government and administrative immigration bodies. The GNP and GDP would be affected and level of foreign direct investment in the country would also change. Secondly, US are famous for labor incentive goods, if it plans to continue for labor-incentive industry for the fore coming decade, it would focus on locating much cheaper labor. The capital-based crucial nations often don’t need to worry in this regard (Roth, 1997). An accurate analysis provides a better view of the economy. The illegal aliens bring reimbursements to the macroeconomics side. Check out the inflation and employment rates, and see what economic costs really incur. Some cheap labor opportunities are also being rejected with the costs of making the US border securer from criminals and fakes. If some students wish to study in US University, it would increase the GDP and provide some job employment as well. Such immigrants are ready to work as blue-collar workers too, which most the local Americans wouldn’t cherish to perform. The cheap labor mobility boosts the fact (Roth, 1997). The recent data shows an immense decrease in the unemployment rates from 7.3 percent to 5.1 percent, over the past two decades. The fall in unemployment rates a plus point for the US economy in terms of immigrants’ entrance. They blissfully do the blue-collar jobs. The substantial reduction in the overall unemployment rates has nothing to do with the cut in interest rates to create more US jobs. The macroeconomic forces support and verify the immigration as the best tool for stabling the inflation and levels of employment in the country. The support comes from highly skilled labor in fields like engineering, IT and management sciences. The individuals with such fantastic backgrounds and outsourcing job options provide an alternative way to foreign immigrants coming to US for higher education. If immigrants are allowed to work inside the US borders, they keep paying their FICA and other taxes and add some incomes to the American GDP. The H-1 visa attraction is merely restricting US power to attract highly experienced workers and therefore, affecting the competitiveness of the US firms (Roth, 1997). However, the immigration forms and norms should be free of ethnic and racial tensions and should focus primarily on the positive side. The argument is not to enter the criminals inside the US border, but to attain some positive and flourishing benefits from these too. The visa conditions should be mitigated a little, so as to hearten the foreign investment in US and some good careers too. Some better incentives should be provided by the congress in order to take chock-full opening of economic opportunities. The anon contradictions could be removed with some little and vigilant analysis of the immigration rules and procedures. Incentives are a key to success. The immigration procedures should spotlight on border security, but shouldn’t view every immigrant with the same eye. The appeal procedures need to be rehabilitated as well (Nelson-Erichsen & Erichsen, 2003). The US immigrant history is vast and huge. The same old hostile attitude would not pose any economic and cultural payback too. If the immigration policies are too strict and exclusive, the workers may find a route to EU nations or another member of triad: Japan. The US trade and job importance would start vanishing as a consequence of harsh policies and less compassionate attitudes. Even the blue-collar jobs would diminish extensively, with leaving US residents applying for such jobs. Everything in the world has its own pros and cons- so has the US immigration policy. It’s still not error free and needs some watchful amendments (Nelson-Erichsen & Erichsen, 2003). The argument doesn’t solicit to generously enter the US borders every time with a warm and welcoming tenor. The real problem put by the immigration applicants is of greater security, not the economic fruits. At least some immigrants can be given some wonderful training on how to respect and behave like civilized American nationals. A full spectrum of values and vogues need to be developed, which would also be reflected in the American immigration law. The biased and hostile discrepancies need to be eradicated at their first instance. The aliens can be treated with justice and given trainings regarding the civic and judicial citizen rights. A direct threat to US border security arises from fake and illegal applicants. Though, the terrorists and criminals could be checked by psychological tests and some other reliable criterion. The ancient American heritage would seriously challenge the upcoming “internationalization” where different firms have decided to go global and come out of regional product updates. The global ethnocentric and geocentric human resource managers would be seen all over and even third country nationals are hired by the host country or home country managers to work in some other country. The international assignments and much dynamic globalization seriously confront the contemporary US immigration polices. Works Cited: Brettell, Caroline and Hollifield, James. Migration Theory : Talking Across Disciplines. Routledge, 2000. LeMay, Michael. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History. Greenwood Press, 1999. Nelson-Erichsen, Jean and Erichsen, Heino. How to Adopt Internationally, Mesa House Pub. 2003. Romero, Victor. Alienated: Immigrant Rights, the Constitution, and Equality in America. NYU Press, 2005. Roth, John. Encyclopedia of Social Issues, Marshall Cavendish Corp, 1997. Wucker, Michele. Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right. PublicAffairs, 2006. Read More