Illegal immigration is a contentious issue in the rise of American nativist sentiment. There is a broad swath of reasons that illegal aliens come to America including escaping persecution, war, and oppressive regimes, or simply pursuing economic opportunity in a safe country. They come in with young children who are too young to be held responsible for the legality of their parents’ actions but have no documents to fully integrate into society.
President Obama signed executive orders to expand current DACA programs meant to temporarily protect undocumented children from deportation as long as they are crime-free and on the path to contributing to this country (with a work permit and high school graduation or military experience). The enforcement of an executive order has constitutionality issues and was blocked by a Texas federal judge with 25 states that opposed the order. That ruling is being used to block the enforcement in New York (which supported the expansion) but is currently met with a lawsuit that may turn the tide toward enforcing the order in states which support it. Much of this is in limbo which is terrifying for undocumented children who gave their information to the government with the promise they would be protected, not detected and deported.
The DAPA program protects illegal immigrants who have children born in America as citizens. The intention is so deportation will not tear apart families but the effect may be undocumented immigrants growing families for their own safety. There are concerns that illegal immigration will be bolstered by government policy.
The main problem with illegal immigration is that it disregards the law. For illegal immigrants to bypass the system that legal immigrants paid into and respectfully waited in line in is not fair to those who come legally, given the variety of visas and papers one can enter with legally. At heart, this shows that there are substantial flaws with our immigration system.
The economic effects of illegal immigrants were debated in class. From numbers quickly researched, the net economic effect of undocumented people is estimated to be negative. This comes from the fact that they do not pay taxes (unless they voluntarily choose to do so) but have access to American social services which every other legal resident does pay into. This should be rectified with a tax ID but a counterargument was that undocumented immigrants often work below the minimum wage and cannot afford to pay a portion of their earnings to the government.
Here is where I find moral ambiguity. On a humanitarian basis, America should accept these people coming from dire circumstances, but then also extort them for cheap labor to take the grunt work Americans will not deign to do. That does not seem ethical to me. They have a right to stay but not a right to fair labor practices? And what about the businesses that employ them – shouldn’t they be subject to judicial scrutiny?
Undoubtedly immigrants lift this country up and should be supported, but emboldening illegal entry is unjust. Ultimately there is a lot of gray area with the variety of circumstances immigrants enter with and the ways government should penalize the illegality of their stay.
