Immigration: Legal, Illegal, and Everyone in Between

The American immigration system has sparked many intense arguments and discussions among the political spectrum of the United States government. Immigration has been occurring between the United States and numerous other countries, such as Mexico, China, India, and Cuba, for many decades, but more recently the number of illegal immigrants has sky-rocketed to profound heights. There is an estimated twelve million illegal immigrants currently residing within the United States borders. Everyday more and more illegal immigrants enter into United States to take part in both the government's benefits and job placing. The processes involved in both legal and illegal immigration needs to be reformed and become more restrictive towards those illegal immigrants who truly have no desire to apply for citizenship.

Caps or restrictions need to be placed upon the time allotment and amount of visas, green cards, temporary work cards, and the lottery programs, which allow immigrants to cross over the border into the United States. Immigrants with temporary-work visas need to evacuate America and return to their home countries when their allotted working term has been completed. The family reunification process also needs to be reformed to include only the reunion of nuclear family members, which consists of children and spouses. Extended family petitions need to be disregarded from the 1965 Immigration Act because they create serious problems concerning chain migration. The practice of chain migration greatly affects the annual allowance of immigrants into the United States.

The United States current immigration policies hinder the many economic advancements and interests of America. The United States cannot continue allowing millions of immigrants to integrate into the country each year. Standards and precedent needs to be established in order to filter through the wide selection of immigrants wanting to enter into America. Immigrants should be provided with the basic tools, fundamentals, and information which are needed to survive and successfully advance in the American culture. New immigrants should be required to attend a series of citizenship classes that cover major concepts of the United States government, history, and culture. Basic concepts from the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and other important American documents and laws needs to be learned and understood by immigrants before they are granted citizenship. A course in American history and citizenship will help encourage the immigrants to become better assimilated and positioned in society.

Fixing Immigration, written by Yuval Levin discusses the problems associated with the United States legal immigration policies. Yuval Levin goes into extensive detail explaining how the immigration policy, based on the family reunification idea of the 1965 Immigration Act, is out of date and no longer reasonable for the twenty-first century's immigration standards. Yuval Levin believes that family reunification and the processes involved in becoming a legal citizen causes many economic problems. The Immigration Act of 1965 should be updated and modernized to fit in with today's growing society.

Levin uses great detail in order to prepare the reader/audience for the on-coming realties of immigration throughout the United States. Levin states that the problems concerning immigration "resides in our actual immigration policies- our means of selecting, processing, welcoming, and integrating those who come to our shores openly and legally" (page 50). The author goes on further to explain that family reunification, employment based green cards, visas, and other various migration petitions need to be substantially reduced and a more extensive filtering process established. Levin argues that a drastic reformation of the 1965 Immigration Act is severely needed. "These basic outlines of current American immigration law have their origins in policies established more than forty years ago, in response to a very different world" (page 51).

Yuval Levin uses an array of resources, such as commentary from various congressmen and State Departments, English Literacy and Civics Program, Department of Education, and the Office of Citizenship in order to help effectively prove the need for reform to the 1965 Immigration Act. Levin also uses state wide statistics in order to illustrate the general categories/ways most immigrants gain access into the United States. Yuval Levin shows the percentages of immigrants with employment-based green cards, the refuges, and the lottery program newcomers. The sources provided within this article fully support Levin's argument. This article gives the audience an insight to the severity of certain immigration policies without needing much background knowledge. The author gives background information concerning the origins and principles of the 1965 Immigration