The world has gone through a revolution and it has changed a lot. We have cutthe death rates around the world with modern medicine and new farming methods.
For example, we sprayed to destroy mosquitoes in Sri Lanka in the 1950s. In oneyear, the average life of everyone in Sri Lanka was extended by eight yearsbecause the number of people dying from malaria suddenly declined. This was agreat human achievement. But we cut the death rate without cutting the birthrate. Now population is soaring. There were about one billion people living inthe world when the Statue of Liberty was built.
There are 4. 5 billion today. World population is growing at an enormous rate. The world is going to add abillion people in the next eleven years, that’s 224,000 every day! Experts saythere will be at least 1. 65 billion more people living in the world in the nexttwenty years.
We must understand what these numbers mean for the U. S. Let’s lookat the question of jobs. The International Labor organization projects atwenty-year increase of 600 to 700 million people who will be seeking jobs. Eighty-eight percent of the world’s population growth takes place in the ThirdWorld. More than a billion people today are paid about 150 dollars a year, whichis less than the average American earns in a week.
And growing numbers of thesepoorly paid Third World citizens want to come to the United States. In the1970s, all other countries that accept immigrants started controlling the numberof people they would allow into theircountries. The United States did not. Thismeans that the huge numbers of immigrants who are turned down elsewhere willturn to the United States. The number of immigrants is staggering. The humansuffering they represent is a nightmare.
Latin America’s population is now 390million people. It will be 800 million in the year 2025. Mexico’s population hastripled since the Second World War. One third of the population of Mexico isunder ten years of age, as a result, in just ten years, Mexico’s unemploymentrate will increase 30 percent, as these children become young adults, in searchof work. There were in1990 an estimated four million illegal aliens in theUnited States, and about 55 percent of them were from Mexico.
These people lookto the United States. Human population has always moved, like waves, to freshlands. But for the first time in human history, there are no fresh lands, no newcontinents. We will have to think and decide with great care what our policyshould be toward immigration.
At this point in history, American immigrationpolicies are in a mess. Our borders are totally out of control. Our borderpatrol arrests 3000 illegal immigrants per day, or 1. 2 million per year, and Twoillegal immigrants get in for every one caught. And those caught just try again!More than 1 million people are entering the U. S.
legally every year. From 1983through 1992, 8. 7 million of these newcomers arrived-the highest number in any10-year period since 1910. A record 1. 8 million were granted permanent residencein 1991.
Because present law stresses family unification, these arrivals canbring over their spouses, sons and daughters: some 3. 5 million are now in lineto come in. Once here, they can bring in their direct relatives. As a result,there exists no visible limit to the number of legal entries. Until a few yearsago, immigrants seeking asylum were rare. In 1975, a total of 200 applicationswere received in the U.
S. Suddenly, asylum is the plea of choice in the U. S. ,and around the world, often as a cover for economic migration. U.
S. applicationswere up to 103,000 last year, and the backlog tops 300,000 cases. Under thepresent asylum rules, practically anyone who declares that he or she is fleeingpolitical oppression has a good chance to enter the U. S. Chinese are almostalways admitted, for example, if they claim that China’s birth-control policieshave limited the number of children they can have. Right now, once aliens enterthe U.
S. , it is almost impossible to deport them, even if they have no validdocuments. Thousands of those who enter illegally request asylum only if theyare caught. The review process can take 10 years or more, and applicants oftensimply disappear while it is under way. Asylum cases are piling up faster thanthey can be cleared, with the Immigration and Naturalization Service fallingfarther behind every year. At her confirmation hearings at the end of September,Doris Meissner, Clinton’s nominee as commissioner of the Immigration andNaturalization Services, conceded, ‘The asylum system is broken, and we need tofix it.
‘ Adding the numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, 50 percent of allU. S. population growth comes from immigration. While Americans try to havesmaller families, immigration threatens our nation.
If immigration ratescontinue to be this high, more than seventy million people will be added to theUnited States population in just fifty years, with no end in sight. We aretaking in more people than all of the rest of the world combined. As have allthe other countries of the word, America needs to control its borders. As everyhouse needs a door, so every country needs a border. And yet, our borders arefull of holes. We have clearly lost control over our future.
Our children willpay the price of uncontrolled immigration. The United States is no longer anempty continent. In 1886, when the Statue of Liberty was built, there were 58million people in the United States. In 1984 there were 240 million people,that’s four times the total population in less then a century The U. S. cannotand should not be the home of last resort for all the world s poor, huddledmasses.
We are not doing a good job with our own poor, as we see more peoplewithout jobs. Supporters of immigration use many arguments to support theirside. Let’s look at a few of these arguments: Illegal immigrants take jobs noAmericans want. The fact is that the average illegal immigrant arrested inDenver, Colorado, made more than seven dollars an hour. Many were making over100 dollars per day.
Denver identified 43 illegal aliens making 100 dollars perday as roofers, while 438 people were registered in their employment serviceswho would have loved those jobs. The average illegal immigrant arrested inChicago makes $5. 65 an hour. More than thirty million American workers make lessthan that. A common belief is that aliens fulfill many of the least desirablejobs. However, most experts agree that in today’s economy,there is no shortageof Americans competing for many of these same jobs.
Actually, many Americansalready work in these low-paying jobs. For example: the poor black woman, whoworks as a seamstress, Her boss asked her to train a new employee, an illegalimmigrant. As soon as she finished training her new charge, she was fired. Herposition, of course, went to the illegal immigrant, who was willing to work forless pay, and under deplorable working conditions.
This is one example of howillegal workers depress wages, and slow, stall or prevent unionization orimprovements to working conditions. Another myth cited by supporters ofimmigration is that illegal immigrants work hard, pay taxes, and do not go onwelfare. Thesad truth is that these folks seem to learn the ropes of the welfaresystem with incredible speed. Today’s illegal immigrants apply for and receivebenefits from the government that citizens need.
According to Donald L. Huddle,an economist at Rice University in Texas, legal and illegal immigrants cost thenation a net 42. 5 billion dollars in 1992. The Huddle study also found that in1992, more than 2 million Americans were displaced from their jobs by illegalimmigrants.
This resulted in an additional 11. 9 billion dollars in publicassistance. In California alone, they cost more than 18 billion dollars a year. California currently has an estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants now attendinggrades’ 0-12. This will costs the California tax payers an estimated 1.
5 billiondollars. This is 10 percent of the students currently enrolled in our elementaryschools today! California has 49. 8 percent of the countries illegal aliens,therefore, California pays multiple costs for its leaky borders. Providinghealth care for illegal immigrants costs California tax payers 400 milliondollars annually. Illegals drain about twobillion dollars a year forincarceration, schooling and Medicaid from the budgets of such major destinationstates as Texas, Florida and California. For California alone, a 1993 study bythe California Legislature estimates criminal justice costs involving illegalimmigrants to be 385 million dollars to the state, with an additional 112million dollars to local or county government.
This is a total cost of 497million dollars, paid by the California tax payer, each and every year! Illinoisdid a study showing that it paid 66 million dollars in unemployment benefits toillegal immigrants in one year, despite alaw that was supposed to stop illegalimmigrants from getting unemployment benefits. Los Angeles estimates that itspends 269 million dollars in social services on illegal immigrants each year. Every person added to our population drains our natural resources andcontributes to the destruction of our environment. In a Pulitzer-Prize-winningstudy, the Des Moines Register found that for every person added to ourpopulation, 1. 5 acres of the richest farm land goes out of production to makeway for new houses, roads, and shopping centers.
If this continues, the UnitedStates will stop shipping food to other countries shortly after the year 2000. How can the United States feed the hungry people of the world? The nationalmajority now says it favors cutting back on legal immigration. A TIME/CNN polldetermined last week that 77 percent of those surveyed felt the government wasnot doing enough to keep out illegal immigrants. For years now, the battle hasraged between the federal authorities who are supposed to police the borders andthe states who pay the price if they fail. In an attempt to reduce illegalimmigration, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, has introduced a bill that wouldestablish an annual limit of 300,000 newcomers, including ”immediaterelatives,” and a national identification card. Congress passed legislation in1986 that stipulates fines and other penalties for employers who knowingly hireillegal aliens.
The bill includes provisions to grant amnesty to illegal alienswho were in the United States prior to January 1, 1982, and to aid farmers whohave relied on illegal aliens to harvest their crops. Does anyone benefit fromthe rising tide of illegal immigration? Businesses that can profit fromemploying illegals at low wages do. And many illegals are better off here thanin their own countries. But many others are exploited by dishonest employersandare treated like slaves. These immigrants are denied the rights andprivileges we want every person in the United States to enjoy.
In closing, wemust all realize this issue will not go away. Other generations of Americansmade great sacrifices so that we today can enjoy the freedom, the quality oflife, and the standard of living that we have. When I think of what uncontrolledimmigration will do to the dreams of my parents and grandparents, what it willmean to the future of my children, I realize that we will find a way to controlimmigration. Because we must.
BibliographyPrimary And Secondary Sources (These listings are in order of theirimportance, in category. )”Immigration: Identifying PropagandaTechniques” Bonnie Szumski ; JoAnne Buggey, Ph. D. College of Education,University of ‘ Minnesota(Greenhaven Press 1989)”Immigration-OpposingViewpoints” David Bender & Bruno Leone, Series Editors William Dudley,Book Editor(Greenhaven Press 1990)”The Essential Immigrant” DanLacey(Hippocrene Books 1990)”Immigration” Kelly C.
Anderson(LucentBooks 1993)”Immigration-A pictorial History of” Oscar Handlin(CrownPublishers 1972)”Immigrants, Refugees, and U. S. Policy” Grant SMcClellan(H. W. Wilson Company 1981)”Immigration and Illegal Aliens”Mark A.
Siegel, M. A. , Ph. D. Nancy R.
Jacobs, B. A. , M. A. Patricia A.
Von Brook,B.A., M.S.(Information Plus 1989)
