We seem to be presently having a major issue with illegal immigration, particularly from the US Southern Border. I’m concerned that this may be a means that ISIS or Al Qaeda would use to sneak warriors into our nation who aren’t citizens.
Many of these immigrants purport to be running from gangs in their native lands. I believe that some are, but perhaps not all.
The US has a website run by the US Citizenship and Immigration Service that provides information on legal immigration. Wikipedia has an interesting article on the History of Immigration to the United States. NPR published an article on the effect of the 1965 Immigration Law change from the prior one.
If you note, there’s been an increase in legal immigration since 2000. Why have our policy makers increased legal immigration. Why don’t they encourage their children and grand-children to have more kids instead ?
I also note that the H-1B visa program started in 1990 to provide ‘specialized’ workers to American business. My take on this is that prior to 1990, American businesses trained their employees in specialized skills.
It seems to me that if wages where high enough and encouragement was provided, existing US Citizen could reproduce largely enough to not require such a high rate of immigration. This might require a policy change such as providing higher rates of support for parents of children. I do support lawful immigration though as new immigrants bring new ideas and also great culinary skills that improve our quality of life.
I don’t support the H-1B program as it is, as in many places I work, I’ve been one of the few non-H-1B workers.
When I worked at HealthNet, they decided to outsource to Cognizant. I was rebadged to Cognizant, and then after doing the knowledge transfer required of a team player, I was laid off. Since then, I’ve encountered many H-1B workers while on Contract jobs for many employers.
I think it would be best if we encouraged employers to hire and train Americans for the work. It would certainly be good for the employees and our nation.
On Illegal Immigration, Wikipedia has a set of interesting articles on the causes of Illegal, undocumented immigration. It seems that low skilled workers in the US are most disadvantaged by these immigrants. Of course, there is the matter of children and their education. which then must be paid for by the community. The Executive branch of our government is responsible for overseeing our country’s immigration policy as established by Congress. It’s been pointed out that our Executive branch should do more to address illegal immigration.
If you have any concerns like I do, and have any concerns about the effect of illegal immigration on your grandchildren perhaps you will address them to your representative in Congress.
Wishing you the best.
Adam Selene 2014
Immigration and the Law by Adam Selene is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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