Immigration to the Us

Many people in our country see immigration as a threat to the welfare of U.S. citizens. People are afraid of foreigners coming into America, stealing our jobs, taking our healthcare, not paying taxes, and then cutting out at the ideal time. People view the Mexican border as the source of the problem, and imagine floods of Mexican immigrants coming into our country. The fact of the matter is that immigration has been at an all-time high in the last decade, but the population of the United States is also at an all-time high. Throughout the history of our country, we have averaged about five immigrants per every 1,000 citizens, and a very similar ratio still exists today. America is a nation built on immigration, but yet it still isn't accepted as a healthy and desired part of the way our nation functions.

Unauthorized immigration has decreased quite a bit over the past few years. Right now, more people are going back to Mexico than the other way around. As for the unauthorized citizens that do exist, 55% are from Mexico. At the same time, however, Mexico provides us with a higher percentage of legal immigrants: 59%. Border security is a big concern for many people, as they see this as the only way to keep these unauthorized immigrants our of our country. We catch four out of ten Mexicans trying to cross the border illegally. This may sound like we are having some success with our border patrol, but most of these illegals will continue to try crossing until they make it. It is estimated that 97% of these people eventually work their way across the border illegally.

The only effectiveness anyone could say our border patrol really has is discouraging illegal crossing, and making it harder to do so. However, it's pretty clear that the tremendous amount of money we put into border security isn't giving us the best bang for our buck. I don't think fences are a very effective solution to the problem. Another interesting thing to consider into this is that unauthorized Mexican men work more than the legal Mexican male immigrants.

Right now, there are five main reasons we have for allowing immigrants into our country. The number one reason is categorized as "Social"-this pretty much means for the purpose of family unification. This category accounts for 66% of the immigrants we allow into our country legally. The next category is "Economic"-this means competiveness in the workplace and finding jobs, it accounts for 14% of the legal immigrants. "Moral" is the next category that also accounts for 14%. What this means is if a person's home country is experiencing some kind of unrest, such as a revolution or natural disaster. 5% of the legal immigrants allow go under the category of "Cultural" reasons. This mainly is the desire for pluralism, or to add new cultural groups into our country. The last category is "Legal" reasons, and it accounts for less than one