Illegal Immigration - Effects on large cities - Essay Example

The 1965 Elimination and nationality act was probably the first effort to control illegal immigration into the US from Mexico (Skinner, 2006). From that date till present, many acts have been introduced in the US regarding immigrants. Some of these acts however (for example the Alien registration act of 1940 and the Immigration amnesty act of 1986), while being explicit in fines and penalties for illegal immigrants and those who employ them were also lenient in a way that these acts legalized a great number of illegal immigrants at that time.

Such acts have indirectly encouraged illegal immigration instead of limiting it. According to a study, cited in Huntington (2000), Mexicans constituted 62% of the total illegal immigrant population in the US in the year 1992. Other than Mexicans, illegal immigrants include Filipinos, Chinese, Hispanics and Spanish also. A research by Jordan, cited in Huntington (2000) concluded that without Mexican immigrants, the total immigration level in the US might have been almost equal to two thirds of what it has actually been.

Ritter (2006) has estimated that almost 11 million illegal immigrants live in the USA, and this number increases almost by a million each year. According to one estimate, the foreign born immigrant population has exceeded more than ten percent of the total population in seven census years i.e., from 1860 to 1930 (Huntington, 2000). These rates are alarming and suggest that America’s more than half population is immigrant. Garibaldi (2006) has pointed out some issues raised due to illegal immigration.

These include encouragement for others in illegal immigration, burden on the tax-paying population of America, injustice towards the legal immigrants, growth of the demand for cheap labor, fake documentations and paper fraud. Similarly, Wagner (2001) has identified the problems related to illegal immigration as follows: economic issues,