The Immigration Policy of the United States - Essay Example

Inter Border Crime Name: University: Date: Inter Border Crime Introduction Mobility is no doubt one of the most crucial characteristics of globalization. There is a growing body of literature that focus on the significance of capital mobility that improves the rise of supranational institutions, transnational corporations as well as global commerce (Wonders, 2006). Immigration according to Parkin (2014) has been driven by increase in mobility facilitated by international transportation that is relatively accessible and advancement in communication technologies. The growing information accessibility concerning other locations and ease of travel has particularly been crucial for opening the cross-border flows of educated students as well as middle class professionals from developing countries; thus, promoting brain drain in different parts of the world (Pickering, 2006). Immigration policy of United States employing detention was, in the past divided into two: First, criminal immigrants, that is aliens who committed acts of criminality while in United States, or those who forged their criminal record after entering US were incarcerated and for those who were sentenced of particular crimes were deported (Furman et al., 2012). Second, persons with no criminal history were incarcerated for further investigation. As mentioned by Warner (2006), while criminal histories are becoming more and more common technique of differentiating between admissible and excludable noncitizens, US begun utilizing criminal law as a technique of regulating immigration. This paper aims to examine the ‘criminal other’ in the United States and their representation/narrative in the public discourse. Discussion For a number of reasons, immigration as observed by Bianchi and Buonanno (2010) is a topic of much heated debate in all countries of destination: First issue is that the flow of workers from nations characterized by distinct workforce composition could have significant redistributive impact on the native population. A second issue is that there are increased concerns that crime rates are increased by illegal immigration. Even though the economic literature has focused more on the first issue, Bianchi and Buonanno (2010) posit that the second issue is still largely unexplored. Still, policymakers as well as citizens in destination countries appear to be more worried about the immigration impact on crime. Illegal immigration brings about enormous costs, which are crime and monetary-related on the American society. People on one side of the political continuum argue that the cost attributed to the illegal immigrants is much more as compared to what they contribute to the American society, while some have taken a contrary view. Concerning the illegal immigrants’ criminal activity, Sampson (2008) posits that the question must simply focus on the number of crimes committed by the illegal immigrants in the US soil. Necaise (2013) further suggests that objective criteria must be utilised so as to establish if the criminal activity of illegal immigrants is lower or higher than the US per capita crime rate. More recently, three illegal immigrants, Eliseo Mateo Perez, Darwin Zuniga-Rocha, as well as Uriel Ramirez-Perez, were deported after being sentenced to time served in jail for raping 21 year old woman (first-degree sexual abuse) in New York. This proves that immigration brings about increased crime. Refugees criminalisation, which Ousey and Kubrin (2009) believe can offer recognition to stateless peoples, has undeniably augmented; however, it is not to the gain of people looking for protection. The refugees’ criminalization started during the Second World War, and has since then achieved greater traction normally by portraying individual immigrants as deviant who do not deserve state protection. Discourses of modern criminalization progressively consider involuntary migration as an example of transnational crime, instead of personal deviance (Pickering, 2007). Rather than looking for deviant outcomes of migration, Ousey and Kubrin (2009) assert that asylum seekers are currently considered part of the illegal movement of persons. Debatably, as refugee deviance discourses emerged in the late 1990s, perceptible discourses connecting forced migration as well as transnational criminality materialized. Even though criminalization of refugees may be recognized as principally driven by the media, the interconnecting of transnational crime as well as forced migration has to a large extent been steered by inter-regional, international, and national policy strategies (Pickering, 2007). The global North governments have customarily view forced migration as human trafficking, which consequently is viewed as a transnational crime. Human trafficking is currently an issue of border policing efforts and is prevalent in United States. Recently, a Mexican illegal immigrant, Javier Guerrero Molina was sentenced in to 10 years imprisonment in Jacksonville, Florida for trying to illegally smuggle a minor so as to partake in sexual activity. Guerrero himself had illegally entered the United States in 2000. Besides that, another Mexican, Luis Daniel Cabrera-Guzman was sentenced to two years in federal prison in Kansas City for plotting to create as well as dispense counterfeit and false identification documents for illegal aliens. Cabrera-Guzman had been deported in 2009 twice. More than 419,000 people were in 2012 deported from the United States with nearly 199,000 of these people being criminal aliens. There are few statistics accessible to support the assertion that people who were removed had engaged in criminal activities and that the high deportation rate is because of high criminal activity by the immigrants. A number of studies have established that the likelihood of immigrants to cause crime is much lower when compared to their US citizen counterparts. Therefore, Vazquez (2015) posits that illegal immigration does not amount to crime. Actually, latest studies have established that violent crime and immigration essentially have negative connection. Besides that, statistics on immigration offered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) do not support the assertion that immigrants removed from US are violent or dangerous persons (Miles & Cox, 2014). The existing statistics indicate that the leading offenses of deported persons are criminal traffic crimes, use of illegal drugs, and violations of immigration policies. In 2012, these three crime categories accounted for 68.3 per cent of all deportations anchored in criminal convictions. According to Vazquez (2015), rate of violent crimes and property crimes in the United States have declined tremendously to 34.2 per cent and 26.4 per cent respectively while the population of immigrants has continued increasing since 1994. Therefore, this proves that there is an existing disconnect between crime and immigrants. The heightening prosecution as well as deportation of criminal aliens has little association with crime rates and immigration. Vazquez (2015) argues that crimmigration was developed, not to fight the growing rates of dangerous or violent crime, but as way of ensuring dominance of white as the Latinos population in US upsurges. As observed by Ousey and Kubrin (2009), immigration results in demographic changes that have an effect on the rates crime. The demographic transition framework has two variants, and all emphasise somewhat on distinct fundamental mechanisms. Ousey and Kubrin (2009) first argument is compositional, which indicates that crime rates are increased when immigration increases since the population share is increased with demographic profile that is prone to crime. A resolutely recognised criminological conclusion is that crime pursues a particular age pattern with rates of crime being highest among young adults as well as teens. Besides that, an additional deep-rooted fact about crime is that male take part more in crime, particularly violent offences, at considerably higher rates as compared to their female counterparts. Therefore, when percentage of the population is increased by young as well as male immigrants, then the rates of crime will increase. In line with that reasoning, findings from the US 2000 Census point out that high percentage of immigrants are male at 51.4 per cent as compared to 48.9 per cent female immigrants and most are aged between 15 and 34 years. Another argument concerning demographic transition presented by Ousey and Kubrin (2009) is contextual drawing from the framework of social disorganization, principally from early theoretical perspective formulations. As conceptualized by tradition, social disorganization theory states that the rates of crime will increase when social networks and institutions required for successful behavioural and socialization regulation are rapidly broken down by social change. Therefore, population instability is one change that results in disorganization. As a result, Immigration as a key driver of residential instability as well as population change can be considered as a key factor that results in the informal social control breakdown as well as the associated increase in the rates of crime. This argument emphasises that immigration generates population instability and turnover that result in more crime. A different perspective that supports the positive connection between transition in immigration as well as crime suggests the role of economic deprivation as well as economic opportunities. One aspect of this perspective suggests that crime is elevated by immigration through the increase of population percentage with minimal skills for the labour market, low educational accomplishment as well as poor employment prospects. Research points out that the latest immigrants entering US are less skilled as compared to the natives as well as the earlier immigrants. Therefore, inadequate human capital diminishes the immigrants’ job opportunities and narrows their residential choices. As a result, scores of immigrants are directed into neighbourhoods situated around or in urban ghettos where they face poverty, unemployment, as well as various social ills related to contexts of severe economic deficiency. And so, immigrants understand that the likelihood of achieving financial success through lawful means is bleak. As stated by the opportunity structure theory, this realization may result in frustration and strain, which may consequently increase the likelihood of adaptive responses involving optional economic pursuits, like crime. Whereas the arrival of immigrants who have low skills can result in the rise of poverty and unemployment rates, increased immigration to US can likely result in increased crime. This mainly attributed to the fact that the structure of the urban labour market that immigrants are currently encountering is different from that experienced by immigrants during the past mass immigration. The significance of the current economic order is that in a number of instances, the recent arrivals’ experience counterparts the experience of the Latinos or African Americans. Specifically, assimilating into the American life may fail to involve the required upward mobility trajectory but rather involve the downward mobility trajectory, which involves a deviant way of life and continuous exposure to economic deprivation. In a nutshell, whereas immigrants usually experience hard economic challenges during the process of assimilation, recent immigrants may be particularly exposed to the kinds of economic deprivation related to greater violence and crime. The successful outlawing of human trafficking may practically end asylum considering that asylum-seekers cannot arrive in the destination without help from the smugglers. As pointed out by Pickering (2007), the majority of the asylum-seekers need smugglers at some point of their trip to sabotage the diverse measures enforced at the boarders. Still, the propensity in this narrative of conflating people seeking asylum from the global South with other illegal border crossings disregards numerous asylum-seeking specifics that are historically recognised. Asylum-seeking according to Wonders (2006) is recognized subsequently as an ill-fated outcome of globalization, and not an outcome of persecution. A good example of how immigration exacerbate the rate of crime can be evidenced by a well-recognised illegal alien gangs known as the MS-13, which stands for Mara Salvatrucha (translated loosely as ‘street smart clique’). MS-13 is labelled as the most dangerous gang in the world. According to Gemma (2014), the Salvadoran gang’s use of violence to control their operations has consequently made MS-13 more penetrable, but the foothold of MS-13 is progressively expanding since it has affiliates in 42 states. According to Federal Bureau of Investigation, the MS-13 gang members in Los Angeles hold the high status, and the alien gang normally targets students especially those in middle school and high school for recruitment. FBI further believes that the revolving door on the border has maintained the steady number of the MS-13 gang members even while numerous illegal immigrants who are its members are still being deported. MS-13 gang has almost 70,000 members who operate between the United States and Central America. The South Los Angeles based Florencia 13 is another gang that comprises mostly of immigrants that is expanding rapidly in the US and closely works with the Mexican Mafia. According to Gemma (2014), the gang is a petrifying gang that has transformed Los Angeles into the most dangerous counties in the US. The gang akin to MS-13 has spread to other states such as Iowa and Virginia. The gang involves in piracy, drug trafficking, and murder and numerous sources say that the gang has already infiltrated the U.S. military. Florencia 13 was initially based in Los Aztecas but is presently a powerful paramilitary force operating on both sides of US and Mexico border and majority of its members comprise of immigrants detained in the Texas prisons. The gang works with other Mexican cartels to smuggle illegal aliens, weapons, drugs as well as to murder officials of the consulate. The above identified negative consequences can be avoided or mitigated through numerous strategies. The first strategy is to improve the social policies considering that criminal others take part in criminal activities because of the adverse social policies’ consequences that result in their marginalization while in the host country. Although scores of people relate immigration with rise in crime, such fears may be quenched if United States espouses measures that will see the financial status of immigrants is improved and that they get fair treatment like the natives. Besides that, the transnational narrative as interdependence has to engage in the development of border transversal policing practices since it is in such practices that the interdependencies between the immobile as well as the mobile, between the law enforcement agencies and the monitored, get focussed on. While numerous laws have been implemented to clear the criminal others in the US, the immigration system must collaborate with the criminal justice system so as to detect, detain and deport the criminal others. For this reason, the status of immigration as well as its enforcement are currently having dominant role in the system of criminal justice. Therefore, crimmigration may restructure the US criminal justice system in order to include immigration status as a technique of handling the structure as well as functioning of the organizations in it, like: mission statements, implementation of programs, enforcement protocols in arrest, detention as well as enforcement, decisions by the prosecutor in plea agreements, fundamental laws enacted in addition to the interpretation of obligations and procedural rights. The United States government should understand that crime attributed to criminal aliens cannot be solved through retroactive means of criminal deportation (Warner, 2006). Due to the lower recidivism rate amongst the immigrants, it is not easy to stop crime. Therefore, the government should introduce new immigration policies that could reduce the likelihood for the immigrants to be stereotyped as criminals and terrorist by the natives, which often result in a hostile environment. The immigration policies should not create bias and promote discrimination; therefore, the current policies must be re-examined by the policy-makers. The US government should understand that criminalisation of immigration will eventually impact the public economic productivity, safety, and health of the immigrants and consequently the entire society. Bearing in mind that illegal immigrants know that the organizations for human service are no more a safe haven, therefore, they hide their problems until the problems reach a crisis state. Conclusion In conclusion, the paper has examined the ‘criminal other’ in the United States and their representation/narrative in the public discourse. Common belief as exhibited in the essay holds that immigration generates more violence as well as crime. This notion is based on the belief that either individual immigrants are inclined to involve themselves in violent criminal behaviour as compared to the natives or their arrival to the host country disrupts the current social regulation mechanisms. Without doubt, there is a considerable overlap between immigration law as well as criminal law in United States, which consequently have an effect on the way that policy makers see the exclusion consequences. While immigration criminal sanctions associated conducts as well as criminal grounds for deportation from the US keep growing, immigrant are turning out to be synonymous with other criminals. References Bianchi, M., & Buonanno, P. (2010). Journal of the European Economic Association, 1(1), 1-38. Furman, R., Ackerman, A., Loya, M., Jones, S., & Negi, N. (2012). The Criminalization of Immigration: Value Conflicts for the Social Work Profession. Journal of Sociology & Social, XXXIX(1), 169 - 185. Gemma, P. B. (2014). 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