The Development of Effective Immigration Policies - Essay Example

Illegal Immigration can be curbed by enforcing existing immigration laws, repealing birthright citizenship, and requiring proof of citizenship when applying for social services. The development of effective immigration policies can be one of the most challenging tasks for states internationally. In periods of strong financial crisis, like the current one, the control over immigrants is quite difficult. In USA the above problem has become intense since the beginning of 1970s – when the number of immigrants from Mexico reached the 500,000 (Reed 25). In the decades that followed, the number of immigrants entered USA presented a trend of continuous increase; in 1977, 1 million immigrants from Mexico entered USA (Reed 25). It is clear that appropriate measures need to be developed towards the elimination of illegal immigration across the country. These measures should not be considered as an opposition to human rights but rather as an effort to secure the quality of life of citizens. Moreover, appropriate criteria should be used for judging the provision to immigrants of American citizenship. The measures taken for the control of illegal immigration across USA would include the introduction of mechanisms for enforcing existing immigration laws (especially ‘the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996’ (Koven & Gotzke 142)), the repealing of birthright citizenship and the provision of right to apply for social services only to those who can prove their citizenship. The above issues are discussed in this paper referring to the literature that has been published in this field. It is assumed that the plans promoted in USA for the control of illegal immigration are important but they are not appropriately monitored; as a result, these plans often fail to address effectively the specific problem. It is assumed that it is not a problem related to the lack of legislation but rather to the lack of effective cooperation among the authorities involved in the relevant processes. In accordance with Anderson (2010) the control of illegal immigration in USA has been proved to be quite difficult; in the context of the above finding, authorities in USA have tried to focus on those forms of immigration that would be easier controlled – reference is made to the legal immigration (Anderson 215). For this reason, the measures developed for the control of illegal immigration in USA may affect legal immigrants also, a problem, which needs to be appropriately addressed; however, the above problem should not prohibit the authorities from enforcing the current immigration laws, as such practice would benefit the illegal immigrants across the country. At this point, the following issue needs to be highlighted: under certain terms, immigration laws are not enforced in US because of the existence of a series of interests depended on illegal immigration; the most indicative example of such case is the entrance of illegal immigrants in the workplace. Illegal immigrants cannot ask for normal wage – in terms of its level; in fact, their wage is lower compared to the average wage of employees in a similar job position. As a result, employers prefer illegal immigrants, a fact that makes the entrance in the workplace for citizens and legal immigrants even more difficult (Weissinger 203). The above phenomenon is so extended that the enforcement of immigration laws across the country has become quite problematic. However, no signs seem to exist regarding the limitation of the above problem. In fact, in a relevant research it has been revealed that the immigration agents across USA are about 2,000 – while the illegal immigrants in USA have been estimated to 11.5 million (Gaines & Miller 124). In accordance with Wepman (2007) the lack of effective enforcement of immigration laws in USA leads to the following assumption: existing illegal immigrants across the country ‘face little or no risk of removal once they entry the country’ (Wepman 394) – a fact that could further urge illegal immigrants to enter USA. As for the birthright citizenship – regulated through the Fourteenth Amendment (Soerens, Hwang, & Anderson 104), the specific rule seems to fail to respond to the needs of immigrants; at the same time, this rule hides a series of threats for the US citizens. The above assumption is based on the following facts: a) there are no guarantees that the person who was born in USA will be able to leave the country and return back; in fact, in many families of illegal immigrants the following problem was identified: parents had to leave the country and take with them their children who were born in USA; when these children, American citizens, have tried to return to USA they had face severe difficulties and delays – in most cases, their documentation was not considered as sufficient for allowing them enter the country; under such threat, illegal immigrants have preferred to leave their children in USA when they had to return to their country – a phenomenon common to families of illegal immigrants from Mexico (Pickus 59). In this way, members of families have been separated with no perspectives for their reunion – since the parents cannot return to USA and their children would not be able to return to USA if they would leave the specific country; the above problem mostly refers to those ‘ who entered the USA illegally to give birth and they do not have any other US – citizen or Lawful Permanent resident relatives’ (Soerens, Hwang, & Anderson 104); b) for USA citizens the provision of citizenship to foreigners who are born in USA hides the following risk: the integration of population is set under risk since people with different cultural traditions are mitigated in the society; in the long term, this phenomenon would lead to the alteration of the cultural and social characteristics of the nation; at the same time, the tax obligations of American citizens are being increased – having to cover the costs of social services of millions of illegal immigrants – of those also who acquired a birthright citizenship (Congress 2005). Regarding the access of illegal immigrants to the social services, the following issues have to be explained: current legal framework for the provision of social services to illegal immigrants is not clear. However, an alternative practice has been established – ensuring the provision of social services to the above people: ‘channels serving the poor or universal public services’ (Ugalde & Cardenas 18) are used for providing social services to illegal immigrants across USA. However, even if the access of illegal immigrants to the country’s social services is not allowed, still costs are resulted from using alternative schemes of social services, as described above; these costs are also covered from public funds. Moreover, there are cases where illegal immigrants have access to social services even if they don’t have the necessary documentation - a problem resulted from the lack of effective control on the citizenship of those applying for social services (Reed-Danahay & Brettell 2008). The severe threats for the social services system in USA from illegal immigration are made clear if these facts are combined with the continuous increase of illegal immigrants across the USA. In accordance with the issues discussed above, illegal immigration in USA could be curbed only by introducing appropriate mechanisms for the enforcement of existing immigration laws and repealing the birthright citizenship; at the same time, the control over the criteria for granting access to the country’s social services should be improved. The increase of the number of immigration agents would be a necessary term for achieving the above targets. Works Cited Anderson, Stuart. Immigration. California: ABC-CLIO, 2010 Congress. Dual Citizenship, Birthright Citizenship, and the Meaning of Sovereignty. Washington: DIANE Publishing, 2005 Gaines, Larry & Miller, Roger. Criminal Justice in Action: The Core. Belmont: Cengage Learning, 2008 Koven, Steven & Gotzke, Frank. American Immigration Policy: Confronting the Nations Challenges. New York: Springer, 2010 Pickus, Noah. Immigration and citizenship in the twenty-first century. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998 Reed-Danahay, Deborah & Brettell, Caroline. Citizenship, political engagement, and belonging: immigrants in Europe and the United States. Bedfordshire, UK: Rutgers University Press, 2008 Reed, Ueda. A companion to American immigration. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006 Soerens, Matthew, Hwang, Jenny & Anderson, Leith. Welcoming the stranger: justice, compassion & truth in the immigration debate. Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2009 Ugalde, Antonio & Cardenas, Gilberto. Health and social services among international labor migrants: a comparative perspective. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997 Weissinger, George. Law enforcement and the INS: a participant observation study of control agents. Maryland: University Press of America, 2005 Wepman, Dennis. Immigration. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007 Read More