Immigration Email
This is an email I sent to my assed backwards, professor, who I severely dislike at the moment.
Warning, it’s unedited, and may be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. (And, no I do not recommend you send your professors emails that are so messed up, but I wrote this in about 10 minutes between studying for an exam. I did not have time to edit it, and I let my Prof. know.)
Names have been removed to preserve Professors’ (in other words, more than 1 professor) privacies.
Immigration is Dangerous, and here is why:
I may or may not have said before that one of the issues I have with looking at the “overall benefit” with using illegal immigrants is the time frame that we consider. You stated that we may be able to change our analysis concerning the issue if we consider the additive value of the work that those immigrants bring.
However, I would ask that we place into this discussion the future benefit or cost of illegal immigration. Yes, right now and during the past few years illegal immigrants offered the country and its business like the agricultural industries and service industries that require little skills a cheap, convenient way to conduct business that in turn led to cheaper prices for consumers.
Yet, the issue that I have been seriously–and privately–contemplating over the past few weeks is whether this “break” in prices and costs now will break me and my fellow college students later.
At some point someone, probably myself, will have to pay for the profits that those corporations are making. Nothing is free, there is always a cost, and maybe we are not paying for it at present. Is it possible that we are living in ignorance masked by opulence? Is it possible that we have become so accustomed to the beauty of the “American dream”–no matter how false it is because it is quite obviously that the exploited illegal immigrants are still blinded by it–that we fail to question why things have lasted for as long as they have?
I am currently taking financial accounting, and this course, in addition to my other courses has opened my eyes to the “deferred liability.” Our governments and major corporations are literally putting off their debts, in hopes (or maybe that is too kind, to spite would probably be closer) that the the future generations can handle the debt that they lay upon our shoulders.
The “baby boomers” generation is set to begin retiring next year, more costs added to our shoulders. The cost of living is being ignored by our governments, more debt added to our shoulders. Americans have a growing sense of entitlement–whether justified or not–more baggage added to our shoulders.
I would love to be optimistic, but our elected officials do not seem to care that decisions that they make now will greatly affect the way that I live in the future. Moreover, immigration is a huge albatross camouflaged as the savior.
I do not disagree that we as a nation should take steps to uplift the economic situation of people in Mexico, China, the Caribbean, Africa (and as a side note, I highly agree with the premise of Student 4’s paper, I actually studied that topic (although for East Asian countries) last semester in my “Politics of the Global North” course). I think that course of action may be the best one because barring a reason to stay home, Mexicans and etc. have little reason not to do everything they can to come to the U.S. legally or illegally. Moreover, it is actually the policies that the U.S. government erroneously enacted that has actually led to such drastic increases in illegal immigration.
Our government has tried falsely in the past (and is attempting to do so now) for comprehensive reform. The so called “caps” that they have created for legal immigration are not only pierceable, as “Professor #2″ argues, they have also increased the incentive for Mexicans and other immigrants to come to the U.S. illegally because the process is so badly handled and slow going that breaking the law is their only option.
I think that “Professor #3″’s paradoxical observation is quite interesting, and something that I have not heard before. The only thing that I would say right now, because I want to try to think of something better to answer this, is to look at Europe’s attempts (and the U.S.’s previous attempts) at guest worker programs.
After World War II, Northern and Eastern Europe found their infrastructure was completely devastated by the fighting. They needed workers to rebuild, but millions upon millions had died during the war.
The plan was to enact a guest worker program bringing workers from Italy, Turkey, etc. to the North to work, rotate them for a year each, and then when they found it possible, end the program.
However, in the 1970s, with the oil crisis, natives who were in need of jobs were unable to work, and as we discussed today in class, they wanted to stop immigration (with at this time although not permanent, was legal). Yet, they quickly found that they could not stop the process. Employers did not rotate workers because they found it was unnecessary to re-train new employees when they already had good, hard-working, dedicated people.
These workers put down roots, they brought over their families, or married, and had no desire to return home. Moreover, one of the other problems was, contrary to the purposes of the program, they did not help the poor countries. The immigrants who went to work in Norther Europe sent home money, and yes, their families got to benefit. But, unfortunately their neighbors had eyes that could see their new purchases; purchases that they could not afford. Inflation rose, poverty rose, and no one was happy.
Europe is still dealing with this issue, and now so is the U.S. It is nice to say that giving these workers the right to work temporarily will help them, but really if you consider the overall impact, barring their right to work leads to almost, if not as much, devastation.
This is why I believe that our country should severely limit immigration, do more to stop illegal immigration, allow natives the chance to work and survive, in addition to helping Third World countries learn how to survive for themselves because that is the only way that we both benefit with less cost to current and more importantly future generations.
Note
“Professor #2″ is one of my professors who teaches about immigration.
“Professor #3″ is a professor that “Professor #” consulted with after my original discussion on immigration because they were not very knowledgeable.