Why illegals should stay

I think it's great. A lot of these undocumented immigrants are already paying taxes, so I really don't see a problem with giving them papers and allowing them to to work and contribute to the economy. A lot of people have been here for years, they haven't done anything wrong and they've been honest, hard-working people. Undocumented immigrants are doing jobs like harvesting food and cleaning houses, jobs that no one wants to do.

My mother came to this country - although legally - and did not speak any English, but 25 years later, she owns a massive housekeeping company.

That's the American Dream. Immigrants make this country great. And I would imagine there's some kind of due process. If someone's committed a crime or some kind of felony, they shouldn't be allowed, but if someone has no criminal record other than illegally crossing the border, I think they deserve to stay.

An Iranian migrant, Rom was a strong supporter of the Trump administration's immigration policies. He says the policy changes under Biden will only encourage more illegal immigration. I'm against President Biden doing that. I think a wall is effective and I was all for President Trump building it. I forget what the budget estimate was for the wall, but it was a spit in the ocean when you look at the trillions in federal budget outlays.

I was disappointed in the lack of progress but that's only because Democrats were trying to hobble that effort every step of the way. There's talk of high-tech alarms and drones, but at the end of the day, a physical wall stops people or slows them down. The classic example is politicians like Nancy Pelosi, who's got this wall around her compound in the middle of San Francisco. If walls didn't work, why do they have walls built around their homes? I viewed family separation as being unfortunate, but my personal perspective is that parents who bring their kids across the border put them at risk.

Because they are dependent on coyotes [smugglers]. When the US government separates them for whatever reason, somehow the US is the bad guy. Where's the parents' responsibility in all of this? I understand the need to provide a better life for their children. I get it, but I don't have a lot of empathy or sympathy for that situation.

At least they should be thankful they're being well fed and cared for, it's not like the kids are being tossed out into the wild. To be honest, I wasn't even aware of it under President Obama; I don't remember hearing about it and he got a free pass.

If I knew this was going to be the last bite at the apple, I would support it, to lay this issue to rest once and for all. However, I know from past history that this will not be the last bite. He has been living in America since he was 8 years old and owns a business.

Countries of origin for unauthorized immigrants in the U. Guatemala , El Salvador , Hon- duras , China , India , Korea , Mexico 6.

Other countries 2. Honduras , S trong American Ties. A supporter of Jeanette Vizguerra, an undocumented immigrant who has spent 20 years working in the United States and has three American children, outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Denver on Feb. Less than 5 years.

Percentage of unauthorized immigrants. Undocumented immigrants without U. With U. Benjamin, 42, fixes the hydraulic trucks used for cane-cutting operations in Clewiston, Fla. Overstayed visa. Crossed over Mexican border. The top-two ways illegal immigrants arrive in the U.

Note: Data are estimates rounded to the nearest five thousand. Wei Lee and his parents came to San Francisco from Brazil on tourist visas in They remained after the visas expired. Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times. But Mexico's over-representation also reflects the fact that many of these legal immigrants are not actually new arrivals; rather, they are former illegals who were already living here and managed to get their status adjusted.

Once these immigrants become citizens, they too can bring in immediate family members outside Mexico's annual quota. Throughout most of the previous century, agricultural interests in the South and the Southwest were the dominant forces pushing to exempt Mexico and the rest of the hemisphere from per-country immigration quotas.

Crucial to understanding this period is the Bracero Program, which began in in response to wartime shortages of agricultural laborers. The program involved the importation of temporary contract laborers or "guest workers" , who were allowed to be employed in America for a set period after which they were then expected to return home.

By the time the program ended in , more than 4. Living and working conditions were sufficiently harsh that contractees often dropped out of the program. Many failed to return home to Mexico, remaining here illegally.

Though at times justified as a way of stemming illegal immigration, the Bracero Program is widely seen as having exacerbated it. Not only did this program whet the appetite of growers for cheap, low-skill labor, it also opened the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to opportunities in the United States.

Seeking to explain the emergent problem of illegal immigration in a Public Interest article, Elliott and Franklin Abrams pointed to Bracero a decade after its termination and wryly observed that "the program may be said to be continuing on an unofficial basis. Bracero and its aftermath led eventually to the first major effort to deal with the consequences of mass illegal immigration.

Widely recognized as having facilitated hundreds of thousands of fraudulent legalization claims, IRCA has since rendered the term "amnesty" virtually unspeakable by American politicians and public officials. Those sanctions imposed penalties on employers who knowingly hire immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.

But because immigrants can establish "authorization" with identity documents that are easily counterfeited, the sanctions have proved ineffective. Over the years, several programs have been implemented that rely on more effective verification methods.

But these initiatives have largely been stymied by a coalition of employers, immigrant advocates, and civil libertarians opposed to anything resembling a "national identity card. Few Americans now recall that, prior to IRCA, it had never been against federal law to hire a non-citizen lacking work authorization. Today, individuals who hire fewer than ten illegal workers during any month period are unlikely to be prosecuted. This conveniently offers relief to many small-business owners and most home owners hiring gardeners, painters, or cleaning ladies.

Politicians and nominees for high-profile government appointments have sometimes been embarrassed by their employment of illegals, and any American might be legally vulnerable for failing to pay Social Security taxes for undocumented workers.

But the average American can still drive down to the local Home Depot parking lot and hire a day laborer without fear of being charged with violating the law. And for those who do overstep these generous boundaries, counterfeit identification affords protection from prosecution under the provision that they did not knowingly hire undocumented workers. In these many ways, the United States has long expressed a profound ambivalence toward illegal immigrants. Americans do not, by and large, approve of those who reside here without permission, yet we implicitly invite them to do so and only reluctantly crack down on their employers.

Just as the circumstances faced by illegal immigrants in our country are simultaneously threatening and encouraging, so the nation's attitude toward illegals has long been at once hostile and welcoming. This ambivalence toward undocumented immigrants is evident even among those responsible for enforcing our immigration laws. In scores of interviews with Border Patrol agents over the years, I have been struck by two contradictory comments they invariably volunteer.

Herein lies the unique challenge of immigration-law enforcement. By contrast, local police are unlikely to be defensive about their status as law-enforcement professionals. Nor are they likely to be heard saying, "If I were in that guy's shoes, I'd be dealing drugs or robbing convenience stores.

The same ambivalence is evident among Americans in general. Despite popular outrage over illegal immigration , there has been remarkably little hostility directed toward illegal immigrants , and indeed many people express sympathy for them. This relative tolerance stems, in part, from the fact that as we have seen important sectors of our economy depend on undocumented laborers.

But those accepting of illegal immigrants are not only business owners driven by market competition and the desire to avoid more burdensome requirements for verifying the legal status of new hires. They are also home owners motivated by convenience and empathy, as well as social-service providers and educators who, unsurprisingly, are not eager to inquire into the immigration status of the men, women, and children seeking their help.

And local law-enforcement officials are generally reluctant to get drawn into immigration issues, especially pertaining to illegals. Such responses can be acknowledged, and perhaps even applauded, without taking the additional step of regarding the undocumented as blameless victims of forces beyond their control. Illegals are well aware of the serious risks they incur.

They know they are breaking the law, and they are willing to take difficult jobs under poor conditions, all in pursuit of longer-term goals for themselves and their families. The economic consequences of immigration both legal and illegal are difficult to assess, and are subject to much controversy among economists. Yet one conclusion is clear and consistent: The big winners are the immigrants.

As economist Gordon Hanson reports, a year-old Mexican male with nine years of education almost quadruples his hourly wage by migrating to the United States. It is not difficult to see why a young person would take major risks to reap this sort of reward.

Assessing the costs and benefits of immigration for the United States as a whole is another matter. At the lowest end of the labor market, there is evidence that the influx of unskilled immigrants in recent decades a substantial portion of whom are illegals has reduced the wages of workers with less than a high-school education. These workers, many of whom are African-Americans, are already the least advantaged in our society, and the effect of immigration on their circumstances certainly deserves more attention than it receives from journalists and policymakers.

Nevertheless, the overall negative impact of illegal immigration on Americans' wages is limited. At the same time, however, the economic benefit of illegal immigration is also frequently overstated. Economists again disagree; overall, however, they calculate a gain of at most a few tenths of one percent of annual gross domestic product as a result of immigration.

Yet if immigration has only slightly increased the overall size of the national economic pie, it has affected how that pie gets sliced up.

The owners of capital, business entrepreneurs, and people who can afford the services provided by low-skilled immigrants have clearly benefited. In effect, low-skilled immigrants increase the productivity and national-income share of those who employ them. This uneven distributional impact of immigration has occurred during a period of increasing income inequality.

Indeed, wage stagnation over the past few decades has roughly coincided with the steadily increasing numbers of immigrants arriving since the reform. Incorrectly, but perhaps not surprisingly, many Americans attribute their economic woes to immigrants. As economists Kenneth Scheve and Matthew Slaughter observe: "Less-skilled people prefer more restrictive immigration policy, and more-skilled people prefer less restrictive immigration policy.

The other frequent complaint against immigrants is that they pose a fiscal burden. Illegals in particular are criticized as "freeloaders" who use public services but pay no taxes. Here again, the reality is more complicated. Many also pay Social Security and other payroll taxes, and some pay federal and state income taxes.

The relevant question is whether illegal immigrants contribute as much in taxes as they receive in public services and benefits. Living in households that have, on average, lower incomes and more children than those of non-immigrants, undocumented workers do receive more in public benefits than they pay in taxes.

It is less evident at the federal level, where immigrants are typically net contributors. Overall, however, illegal immigrants are undoubtedly a fiscal drain in the short run and, according to Hanson, in the long run as well. Yet focusing too narrowly on such fiscal and economic effects has impoverished our understanding of the broader set of motivations driving illegal immigrants here in the first place.

As numerous studies reveal, illegals are often "target earners" who come to the U. To maximize income, they work at several jobs; to minimize expenses, they live in spartan, often substandard conditions.

To meet their earnings targets, illegals endure long hours in unpleasant, sometimes dangerous conditions. Over time, their goals of returning home often get pushed off into the future and, as we know, many illegal immigrants end up remaining in the U. Yet the notion of someday enjoying wealth earned in the U.

Employers understand these dynamics. They avoid investing time and money training workers who might leave or get deported. Yet employers also regard illegals as ideal for occasional or undesirable jobs where high turnover is the norm. But as Hanson points out, even on the books, undocumented workers are valuable to employers precisely because they are more flexible and responsive to market forces than are other workers.

Labor organizers have learned this the hard way. Activist lawyer Jennifer Gordon has chronicled her ultimately unsuccessful efforts to organize undocumented day laborers in suburban Long Island. She succinctly identifies one obstacle she could not overcome: The workers were "settlers in fact but sojourners in attitude.

The employers are too small and too varied to make organizing them practical. Not surprisingly, such transience is not confined to the workplace. Young people detached from the constraints as well as the supports of families back home exhibit what one sociologist refers to as "instrumental sociability," characterized by transitory friendships, casual sexual encounters, and excessive drinking to a degree uncommon back home.

Such atomism helps explain why immigrant communities often lack strong leadership and organizations. An immigration specialist will decide which applies to you. Don't worry, getting advice will be confidential - they won't tell anybody about your query.

Contact your nearest Citizens Advice for help finding an adviser in your area. You can also call the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants for help. They provide free and confidential advice to people living in the UK illegally. Whether you can live in the UK legally will depend on your circumstances.

Your application will probably be refused if you apply more than 14 days after your permission to stay has expired. You can read more about what you can do if your child is here illegally.