Illegal Immigration

Beware! America is being invaded by aliens! Not the little, green, Martian type you see in science fiction movies, but the real thing. I'm talking about the illegal type who come in every day and every night, by land and by sea. Estimates have shown that as many as 500,000 illegal aliens make it across the border every year (Morganthau 67). Illegal immigration causes many problems in the United States, including economic problems, crime, education disputes, and overcrowding. All of these problems were already damaging our country and illegal immigration has made them much, much worse. Let me begin to explain the problem with a story. A woman named Xiomara T. escaped Nicaragua in 1991 to escape the violence afflicting her country (Jost, Feb. 3, 1995). She slipped across the Mexican-American border easily one night without papers guaranteeing her legal status which would give her all the rights she needed. She made it into California with no problems from the border patrol, whose duty is to keep illegal aliens out of our country. In California, Xiomara got a job working for about four dollars an hour, even though her employer knew she was illegal. A few years later, she became pregnant and Wyatt 2 received virtually free prenatal care through a government-funded public health clinic. Now she receives free medical aid for herself and her child through Medicaid because her child is an "American-born" citizen. When her child is old enough, Xiomara told sources she planned to enroll him in the public school system. She and her child receive all of this aid for free, although she doesn't pay a dime in taxes through her "under-the table" job. She is just one of the typical illegal aliens who found the "good life" for free and without the right to even be here. Too many illegal immigrants like Xiomara are causing economic problems in the American society by taking away jobs from American-born citizens. By increasing the supply of labor and settling for low wages, illegal aliens take away the jobs from Americans and force down the wages of those who withhold their jobs (Leone, ed., 1995, 8). This is unfair to Americans because they are the ones who deserve the positions, yet 7.6 percent of the United States population is unemployed (Leone, ed., 1994, 96). A large mass of them is unemployed because of those immigrants who take away their jobs. American employers who hire the aliens in the first place are also to blame for this economic problem. If there were no jobs for illegal immigrants to obtain, there would be no reason for foreigners to come here at the onset of it all. The sad part of it all is most illegal aliens have Wyatt 3 little or no job skills at all, but since they work for the low wages, they are the ones who are hired (Harrison 35). Greedy business people will do anything to save a dollar these days, even if it means committing a crime. Many of the illegal immigrants who come to our country live off of our federal aid and receive free money, when they don't even pay in taxes. This free money comes in the forms of welfare, Medicaid, education costs, and other government funds. Our hard-earned tax dollars are paying for immigrants who don't even have the right to be here. The Texas head of the House Ways and Means committee, Bill Archer, stated, "People should not expect to come to this country with their hands out to receive benefits paid for by taxpaying Americans" (Jost ). He is absolutely right these people are getting something for nothing while Americans are getting nothing for our tax dollars when we do something to earn it. Immigrants pay much less in taxes than they receive in the form of social benefits (Leone 8). In fact, the approximate national costs of immigration, including unemployment funds for U.S. workers displaced by immigrants, cost America $42.5 billion more than they paid in taxes in 1992 (Leone 8). If we didn't pay for these immigrants, maybe we wouldn't have such an immense deficit. Once again, illegal immigration is the cause of a massive problem the country is facing at the present time. It is simply a cause, and the effect is appalling. Wyatt 4 Another problem that immigrants cause in the United States is education. Illegal immigrants expect to send their children to our government-supported public schools, just because they were born here. I know that the constitution guarantees the right to free public education to American citizens but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. The children shouldn't have been born in the United States because their parents shouldn't have been here in the first place. It is physically impossible to give birth to a child in the United States while still in Mexico. Thus, they had to come here illegally. The children of illegal immigrants go to tax supported schools (without paying taxes, of course) and then they have the nerve to complain that the children aren't