Matthew Scoggins

Eng-112-204
March 7, 2019
How Illegal Immigration Has Affected the United States

Illegal Immigration has been a major dilemma in the United States in the past and even in

today's time. Many laws have been put in place over the years to stop illegal immigrants from

coming into the United States. However, there are controversies about people entering the US

illegally and whether people know how much this occurs regularly.

In the early 1990’s the issue of illegal immigration along the U.S. and Mexico border was

relatively abandoned. Immigrants from throughout Central and South America could travel to

border towns and openly walk or run into the United States. Once they were in, they could easily

get away by simply just buying a bus ticket from one’s hometown to a border city. “The

difficulty of getting into the United States was minimal and no special smuggling services were

needed for many migrants (Guerette 1).” The people that entered the U.S. successfully without

the proper paperwork went without any major punishment if they got captured by the United

States border agents. The border agents would and still today put them on a bus and ship them

back down to where they came from. Nonetheless immigrant’s will still try and slip through

again and again. Unquestionably, illegal aliens from Mexico is by far is the largest flow of

immigrants into the United States.

Estimates of the numbers of illegal migrants vary, but they indicate a sharp

increase throughout the late 1990s. According to some calculations, the number of

illegal immigrants reached 500,000 or somewhat higher per year during the late

1990s, almost twice as many as in the first half of the decade (Guerette 2).
Back in 1999, the United States border control agents apprehended over 1.7 million illegal

immigrants that had entered the country illegally or if their visas had run out. In the mid 1980’s

the U.S. Congress passed several acts and laws to prevent illegal aliens from coming into the

country without all the necessary paper work.

Illegal immigrants coming from Mexico are usually trying to get into the United states to

have a better life for them or their future generations. If not that than they are usually running

away from some kind of trouble but most of the time it is because they are trying to protect their

kids and give them a better life, then what they had to deal with. Other people that benefit from

migrants coming in the U.S. illegally is some people take advantage of them and hire them for a

cheap labor so that they can save money on labor. “We find that, while illegal immigrants suffer

a large wage penalty compared to legal immigrants at all education levels, the penalty decreases

with education (Caponi).” Americans widely reject the policy whereby families entering the

country without permission are treated as criminals and children are separated from their parents.

“Only 22% of the public expresses support for this policy. More than seven in ten Americans

oppose such a policy that would separate immigrant children from their parents (Public Religion

Research Institute Survey Reports).”

Most American citizens definitely don’t like illegal immigration because they are coming

in and taking our resources and our jobs. That’s why there has been talk about building a wall at

the U.S.- Mexico border but from a recent survey:

The public is not any more supportive of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico

border. Thirty-one percent of the public favor the construction of a wall while

63% are opposed. Public views have not changed significantly over the past six

months. In 2017, roughly one-third (36%) of Americans expressed support for the
 construction of a wall along the country’s southern border (Public Religion

Research Institute Survey Reports).

That’s why part of the U.S. is split between parties and on our problems, “the struggles of many

Americans who feel that their prospects and their children’s prospects are diminishing, and that

they are on the losing side of globalization (Kerwin 6).” The laws of immigration impact this

type of people by sending the aliens back to where they are from. “President Trump famously

began his presidential campaign in 2015 by saying Mexicans are “bringing drugs” and “bringing

crime” into the United States. Since then, he has often invoked anecdotal cases of violence

committed by undocumented immigrants in order to legitimize immigration as an issue

(Mckenna).”

In conclusion the main issue is that if illegal immigration is good or bad for the United

States. Weather it helps the U.S. or the migrants and weather the U.S. should allow it to continue

or to build a wall and make the border stronger, so they have to either stay out or get the proper

paperwork. In saying all that we don’t know whether the country will be safer if we have a wall

or if we just keep it like it is.

 Citations

Guerette, Rob T., and Ronald V. Clarke. "Border Enforcement, Organized Crime, and Deaths of

Smuggled Migrants on the United States - Mexico Border."European Journal on

Criminal Policy and Research, vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 159-174. ProQuest,

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164?accountid=10163, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10609-005-6716-z.

Growing Divide on Immigration and America’s Moral Leadership. Public Religion Research

Institute, Washington, 2018. ProQuest,

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1639?accountid=10163.

Caponi, Vincenzo, and Miana Plesca. "Empirical Characteristics of Legal and Illegal Immigrants

in the USA." Journal of Population Economics, vol. 27, no. 4, 2014, pp. 923-960.

ProQuest,

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4124?accountid=10163, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00148-014-0524- x.

Rivera-Batiz, Francisco. "Undocumented Workers in the Labor Market: An Analysis of the

Earnings of Legal and Illegal Mexican Immigrants in the United States."Journal of
Population Economics, vol. 12, no. 1, 1999, pp. 91-116. ProQuest,
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Espenshade, Thomas J. "Unauthorized Immigration to the United States." Annual Review of
Sociology, vol. 21, 1995, pp. 195. ProQuest,
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Kerwin, Donald. "Moving Beyond Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Trump: Principles,
Interests, and Policies to Guide Long-Term Reform of the US Immigration System."
Journal on Migration and Human Security, vol. 5, no. 3, 2017. ProQuest,
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5340?accountid=10163.
McKenna, Chris, and Chris McKenna. “The Wall: A Conversation with Rep. Henry Cuellar and
Brookings Expert Vanda Felbab-Brown.” Brookings, Brookings, 12 Jan. 2018,
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3Ac9DboE90PM6FQ4tSopogjZOXBhoCyfgQAvD_BwE.