Immigration Reform and President Trump

How would you feel if you got separated from your family or if you had to wait months to be released from imprisonment just to be in the country of freedom known as the United States? Most of us human beings with a soul and heart would not like either of those things one bit. An article states, “Children would be separated from their parents if the families had been apprehended entering the country illegally” (Davis). “The president Wednesday signed an executive order to end that brutal practice — and instead could imprison children alongside their parents indefinitely” (Fialho). The immigration system is broken and a reform is needed to ensure more humane actions and to keep immigrant families together. The United States government should consider an immigration reform because they should consider that immigrants actually come to the United States to go to school, they help our economy, keeping DREAMers and DACA helps our economic well being, and some immigrants are the smartest people now and in history.

First off, immigration has supported the growth of the United States economy because immigrants are hard workers, entrepreneurs, job creators, taxpayers, and consumers. “Immigration is driven by what are called push and pull factors” (Kopan). Immigrants also increase the United States gross domestic product (GDP) by trillions of dollars a year and their importance will only increase within the next couple years. Although immigrants boost our economy, Trump thinks the opposite and issued more strict enforcements towards immigration as soon as he entered office. As the enforcements began, immigrants, their families, and immigrant communities lived in fear because they could be deported any day.

President Trump and his administration tell the press that the United States laws and court rulings are forcing them to separate families at the border. They are indeed lying because when Trump took office, his administration began to prosecute as many immigrant related offenses as possible. The zero tolerance policy, “which prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien” (Department of Justice), applies to all adults whether they cross over alone or with children. The Justice Department cannot prosecute children along with their parents, so the only thing the department has left to do is to separate families. During the months of April and May, approximately two-thousand immigrant children were separated from their families.

The Trump administration started the zero tolerance policy by choice, and it could end by choice also. There is no law or court ruling that says they should separate children from their families, but just like the law states that if the parents commit a crime they need to separate them from any children. Children who were held apprehended at the U.S-Mexico border continue to be released to relatives or to shelters, but after the zero tolerance policy took effect, parents are being prosecuted and any conviction could possibly lead to deportation. Hundreds of thousands of families have fled to the United States due to violence, gang activity, and persecution in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Cases of fraud have been found among migrants traveling with children who are not their own and Trump wants to stop those cases of fraud.

Second, immigrants increase the the efficiency of our United States economy by reducing open spots in labor shortages. That creates more job openings for native-born Americans. The current immigration system is bureaucratic, time consuming, and should issue a reform to solve many peoples problems. Immigrants hold about 16% of the labor force and present almost half of the labor force without a high school diploma. Immigrants also hold 25% of all doctorates and 35% of doctorates in science, math, and engineering.

Immigration has highly benefited the United States economy and had little to no effect to the overall wage gap and job market. “Immigrants have long been a scapegoat when economies are sputtering, jobs are being lost or security is a concern” (Shih). Immigration builds up the economy while at the same time leaving the native population better off on average. Immigrants gather up opportunities for themselves that were possibly not available to them in the country they fled from. There are increasing numbers of immigrants that are pursuing college degrees and their skills benefit the economy through innovation and entrepreneurship. Second generation immigrants, which are people born in the United States to foreign born parents, also contribute to the economy because they are taxpayers just like us and good workers.

Immigrants help our United States Economy in many different ways. Immigrants are thirty percent more likely to start a business in the United States than non-immigrants and eighteen percent of all small business owners in the United States are immigrants. Small businesses owned by immigrants employed as many as five million people in 2007, and they generated more than seven hundred and seventy six billion dollars annually. The purchasing power of many immigrants boost the demand for local consumer goods. The federal deficit was decreased by two billion dollars after the DREAM act was passed.

President Trump argues that immigrants have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for United States citizens. That argument that Trump makes is false. As the U.S population increased, so has total employment, therefore adding more immigrants to the economy does not overcrowd employment for native workers. Immigration generates growth and employment opportunities by increasing the total population of hr United States. A larger population results in increased consumption levels, higher demand, and more production, which is all our economy needs to be successful. Third, the United States would benefit if they protect and do not get rid of DACA. DACA, also known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, protects individuals who were illegally brought to the United States when they were young from getting deported. DACA gives young undocumented immigrants protection from deportation and a work permit that expires after two years and and is subject to renewal. The main requirements for DACA is that you are under thirty one years of age and you came to the United States before your sixteenth birthday, you were physically in the United States from June 15, 2007 to present, you are currently in high school or already graduated high school, and have not convicted any type of felony.

There are many teachers in the United States that are apart of DACA and could lose their jobs and be deported if it is repealed. “If lawmakers can’t fix DACA, thousands of teachers could face deportation when their sole permits expire” (Toppo). There are about twenty thousand teachers eligible for DACA around the country, and a lot of them have Spanish speaking skills that are highly demanded in schools. The loss of thousands of teachers will have the extreme effect on many children striving to learn. Public schools are already short thousands of teachers and getting rid of them will only drive the issue worse. The president of the American federation of teachers called Trump‘s choice to repeal DACA “a heartless assault on young immigrants and on our communities.”

Six years ago, tens of thousands of people applied to DACA and celebrated their ability to work, learn, and live in the only nation most of them know. The U.S Secretary of Homeland Security has seen the consequences of the broken immigration system and said that they took a step forward creating DACA, but would take an even farther step backward if it is repealed. “Protecting dreamers is a smart, effective policy that ensures our limited law enforcement resources are spent on those who pose a risk to our communities, not on those who contribute to our state and national economies every day” (Napolitano). Wasting limited enforcement that the United States has to deport good people does not make us safer, it simply makes us the opposite. That is why police chiefs around the United States support keeping DACA intact as well as the president of the National Border Patrol Council.

The United States would also benefit if they protect and do not get rid of the DREAMers. The DREAM Act also known as, Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, was a bill on congress that would grant legal status to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Unfortunately the DREAM Act did not pass congress, but people have been referred to the term”DREAMer” as someone who has lived and gone to school in the United States and consider themselves American. The term “DREAMer” is also used to describe someone who is an undocumented immigrant and has big hopes and dreams for a better future. So DREAMers have a big future ahead of themselves and could be a stepping stone to start an immigration reform.

Fourth, there are some very smart people in history that would be considered immigrants today and chose the United States of America as their home. If those people did not make the choice of coming to the United States, the world today would be a much different place. The united states has always been a magnet for high-skilled immigrants, or HSI’s, that were or still are the best and brightest. Before independence in the United States, millions of people from Great Britain who were considered the intellectual and technological elite settled in the thirteen colonies to seek religious freedom. Many of the Founding Fathers, inventors, and well known people were immigrants.

HSI’s have proven that they are basically jackpots as very great workers. In the 1900’s and late twentieth century, two waves of Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazi’s entered the United States and soon became very skilled scientists and entrepreneurs. The man who remodeled the treatment for AIDS, founders of YouTube, Zappos, Yahoo, Google, Intel, Facebook, and Apple were all immigrants or children of immigrants and are very successful to his day. One key input for GDP is that with more human capital, the nation produces more, and HSI’s are erupting with human capital. High skilled immigrants are not just great at the job they do, they also create many jobs and it is proven that they are more entrepreneurial among most people. HSI’s are also very great inventors of high-quality labor.

Smart immigrants have offered the United States economy basically a steroid shot meaning that they stimulated and helped the economy grow. Many people come to America to study at a university as their first path to becoming an American citizen. There is a great number of immigrant students at every university in each graduating class that receive advanced degrees. Foreign students that excel in advanced degrees are an enormous benefit to America because they are some of the smartest people in the United States. Trump’s executive order banning refugees from entering the U.S means that beyond smart people are being turned down in masses. America is at risk to lose many brilliant people if Trump ends up making all those executive orders possible.

Immigrants have brought creativity and innovation to the United States and if the U.S wants to continue to keep bring creative and innovative, they need to keep smart immigrants in the United States. It does not take rocket science to know and believe that not every person who is highly intelligent will be born an American. Many of the smartest people in the United States happen to be immigrants themselves or one or both of their parents were immigrants. The United States should welcome those people striving to go to college and earn their degree because they may soon come up with a new invention that will positively change our country or the world. The United States should indeed issue an immigration reform because the citizenship of many smart people could be lost when they could be creating something new.

Yet some people may disagree that issuing a reform will only put the thoughts in the heads of immigrants that they will get free social services. “In the household sample, 20 percent of U.S. citizens and 30 percent of legal permanent residents who reported having received Medicaid during the five years before they were interviewed also reported losing the coverage” (Hagen). Immigrants are basically getting free social services and they expect to get all those things without working. Medicaid is being repealed from some immigrants but is that the right thing to do or can it be improved? If a reform were to happen, to control this issue the government should allow immigrants to receive social services on one condition. That one condition to receive social services is that the immigrants should be working and show proof of a job.

In addition, people who are against an immigration reform may argue that the government would be letting criminals into the United States. The thing that some Americans against immigration don’t get is that immigrants are willing to work in the United States to better support their family. “The past two decades have seen the fastest increase in immigration since the early part of the 20th century. The past 15 years have seen the most rapid drop in crime rates in the nation’s history” (Griswold). The crime rates of the United States have gone down as immigration has gone up. What does that tell you? Immigrants are not always criminals and seeking a crime to commit. The government can control this issue if a reform were to happen is by doing background checks for any criminal activity and not let those people pass.

People against immigration need to get the assumption out of their head that immigrants are criminals and just want to come into the United States to acquire free social services. Their assumptions are totally wrong because immigrants actually want to work in the U.S and gain social services from working to support their family. An immigration reform is needed because immigrants come to the U.S to go to school and pursue high level degrees, they boost our economy, protecting DACA and DREAMers would benefit the United States, and immigrants are actually smart people.