During my 6 weeks trip around of the US I discovered two faultless ways to lure people to conversation. One of them is very obvious; I mean Syria, it’s very hot and fearful current affair that became dramatically important for all Americans because of they found themselves in step to the war. The second way to provoke people to talk is immigration reform. It works everywhere without misfire: in Congress, in Starbucks, in plane, in nail salon, in laundry etc. The Pew Research Center’s data tell us that in the beginning of 2013 this issue wasn’t the most essential among the Americans, who are much more interested in The economy, budget crisis of the country and the money and opportunities in their own pockets. The issue of liberalization of immigration reform became priority for politicians during the President Election campaign.
“The time has come to pass comprehensive immigration reform,” said U.S. President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address in February 2012.
An outcome of the initiative translated for public by President Barack Obama half a year before the election was described by The Pew Research Center, according their data in the 2012 election 10 percent of American voters were Hispanics and 71 percent of them voted for Obama. Moreover, Asian Americans, who account for only 3 percent of the electorate but are the most rapidly growing minority group, gave 73 percent of their votes to the Democratic standard bearer. Can we name their support as voting of hope? I think so. Since that time the issue of immigration reform has been warming up a lot. I can judge according my unfortunately rare minutes with the television, my every minute push notifications from the US media, my twitter wall, President Obama’s twitter, FoxNews pundits twits and my life here in the states where everyone is ready to share their own perspective about the future of illegals in the USA, about literally future of the country and the future of definition what is American principles. This illustration made by Pew Research Center recently shows how the majority of Americans sees the strong conflict between foreign born and native born that gives us additional color of the big issue of the immigration reform…
The Bendixen and Amandi International consulting group focused on the immigration issue presents an illustration with four the most controversial topics inside the immigration reform issue.
The Bendixen and Amandi defines the POLITICS as a stumbling-block between democrats and republicans, both parties are agree that America has to solve the illegals question immediately, but by two different paths. The biggest concern of the republicans is the democrats will receive the army of new voters and supporters in case of 11 millions of current illegals will get the US citizenship in future. But several times I heard the same concern from the democrats who said that the army of new voters who are mostly Catholics and Hispanics might be a time bomb for Democrats, and in the future in next generations they will support the republicans more. But this political aspect of the immigration issue doesn’t excite average Americans at all. They think about money, income, taxes, payment for education, medical insurance, mortgage, how much does it cost cup of coffee, crime, and unemployment’s level…and just a little bit of them are considering political reasons with passion.
I was excited reading blogs and comments about the immigration issue in the NYT, I understand that the people who comment are unrepresentative, but the same time I hear the same voices around me, and I’ll try to collect the most typical of them and classify into groups.
About the law
The Amnesty of 1986 brought up four times greater the number of illegals
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America is a nation of immigrants; we cannot violent American principals
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We cannot give US citizenship to people who have already violated our law being here illegally. We can give US citizenship to people who are legal here.
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America allows ONE MILLION legal immigrants every year while there are already 11 millions illegals, we have to stop it
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We need high-educated people from around the world with rare skills to develop our country,
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We can give all of them “guess worker” status
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What about 14th Amendment?
About the money
Illegal: this semester, in my chemistry department I’ve had the highest scores on 5/6 exams. How is it fair that I have to pay out of my pocket $5,000 when students who just come to college to hang out pay couple hundred dollars?!
US citizen: What about the millions of American citizens who have to borrow $40,000+ for their college degrees? In most of those cases, their parents were legal state residents and/or American citizens who for many, many, many years paid state and local taxes– a percentage of which subsidize state and community college tuition rates. That there are students who “just come to college to hang out pay couple hundred dollars” is irrelevant.
What allows them to pay a couple of hundred dollars is their state residency. If illegals are legalized our average check to double or triple…
Voices: So your yard work would probably have to triple or quadruple in price. Your food bill would probably have to double or triple. Please you supply the correct statistics. You would have to implement true health care reform. Single payer is the only real way. And the education budget would have to double or triple This country has always had a two-tier worker classification. In the beginning, it was free men vs. slaves. Later, it was white vs. black, male vs. female, adult vs. child. There has always been a class of people who could be paid less and dismissed at will, as opposed to free white men, who made the “standard” wage. When all the other forms of low-wage workers were eliminated by law, a new form of underclass was created, illegal immigrants. If we want to eliminate this category of workers, we need to face the fact that we are used to the benefits that accrue to our society as a whole by treating some workers as second-class. All the high dudgeon about law-breakers ignores the fact that our food-picking and dish-washing, our child care and our cleaning, will have to be done by someone, and if those people are fully-protected citizens, these things will cost us more.
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If illegals are legalized America will collect much more tax
More people = less jobs
We have 12 million unemployed people, and countless others on “disability” and welfare support because they have given up. Why do we need 11 million illegal undocumented aliens?
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Face the fact that most of the illegals already support themselves doing jobs many unemployed workers would never accept: like farmwork and a lot of skilled labor jobs.
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Don’t compel me to pay more taxes to support more unskilled nonfarm labor.
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They are a big part of this economy. Those you label aliens are the people who built this country.
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How many jobs have to be exported, how many jobs have to be eliminated by automation and computers, how crowded do our cities have to get, how expensive does our land have to become, how scarce does oil have to be, before we realize that we don’t need more people, more workers, more bodies It is the employers who created the problem and continue to make it worse. They are exploiting people because they can. Apply sanctions, and they will stop
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Both sides broke the rules, but they are now part of our society, and we owe it both to them and to ourselves, morally, to allow them to integrate. We need more consumers! It demands our economy
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We’ve already had new consumers, illegals consume
I couldn’t find any survey showing for how many people of 11 millions illegals really want to get American citizenship, repeal their own passports and pay taxes here in the US. But I found the Pew Research survey about H-1B visas workers, which amazed me a lot: Among the top ten users of the H-1B visa for skilled workers, which account for nearly half of all such visas issued, only 2.9 of their H-1B recipients go on to get a green card and contribute to the U.S. economy in the long run.
One of the crucial role may play a very deep research of real desires of 11 millions people. Do they want to pay taxes? Obviously if they are legalized they will be paid by higher wage, but how much they will pay tax in this case? Will they make more money? It’s unlikely. Minimum wage gives them more money than higher with tax. Meanwhile, 11 million people live in fear of deportation, and in these circumstances, to communicate with them at least a full sociological contact, it is not clear. May be part of them want to work openly and don’t dream about the US passports, but in future they will have kids here in the USA, and for them it will be the only home. The time will complicate this issue. It is so hot because of no time to wait for. But how to find the compromise?