Illegal immigration is a major problem in the United States no matter on which side of the issue you fall.
If you feel that our current laws are too stringent, illegal immigration is a problem because an entire segment of the population living in our country has to fear deportation exploitation by employers. On the other hand, if you think that the United States is not doing enough to combat illegal immigration, you point to the fact that these people are actually criminals: They entered the country illegally and their presence drains American resources while driving down wages for legal workers.
I side with the latter camp. These people are criminals for crossing into the country illegally, and their use of our resources — namely our hospitals and schools — without paying most of the taxes supporting them hurts our economy.
I know it’s not realistic to deport all illegal immigrants. There are as many as 20 million of them in our country already. But I cannot support President Bush’s “comprehensive” immigration plan since it amounts to little more than amnesty, putting these criminals on a path to citizenship.
Legalization is an acceptable alternative for these workers, but I believe that if they broke the law to come here, they shouldn’t be granted American citizenship. We should work instead on increasing legal immigration from Mexico and other Latin American countries. We need to provide legal ways for them to become involved as a full part of society — speaking English and paying taxes.
Yet even an issue like illegal immigration has shades of gray, and as easy as it would be to favor a hard-line policy of deportation, the U.S. government should exercise caution and basic logic in treating individual cases.
For example, on Wednesday, a CNN.com story entitled “U.S. Sailor: Don’t Deport My Wife,” caught my eye. Eduardo Gonzalez, an American citizen whose wife is an illegal alien, is set to serve his third tour of duty overseas. He is worried that his wife will be deported when he is gone.
How can they possibly consider deporting Gonzalez’s wife? Not only is she married to an American, her husband is serving our country in the military. Why punish a member of our armed forces in such a way for going to war?
I completely support the U.S. military policy of giving citizenship to non-citizens who join the military. If you are willing to fight for America, you should be made an American citizen. No questions asked.
This comes on the heels of a story I read last week. Pedro Zapeta, an illegal alien from
Guatemala, had been working as a dishwasher for 11 years. Two years ago, he was leaving the country to go back home with the $59,000 in earnings he made working $5.50 an hour jobs when U.S. Customs seized the money because he did not declare he was carrying more than $10,000 in cash. Two years later, he still doesn’t have his money back.
No matter which side of the immigration debate you come down on, it’s embarrassing that the United States government stole $59,000 from Zapeta. He was leaving the country. Just because he was here illegally doesn’t mean the U.S. can steal his money. Make him pay taxes on the earnings and then let the guy go home.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should stop harassing people like Zapeta and Gonzalez, and instead go after the day laborers waiting for work in a parking lot and the employers who hire these people. Maybe once they’re addressing the real problem, we can start having a conversation about how to fix illegal immigration.
Benjamin Van der Horst is a College junior from Cincinnati. He is executive director of the nonpartisan political organization CSAmerica and the managing editor of the Emory Political Review.
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