Is There a Solution?
Immigration has always been an icy topic across American. What are the right answers? What are the wrong answers? Do we keep strict laws on immigrants or give them the same rights as American citizens? Do we kick them out of our country all together? There are so many questions on the table, along with so many answers. How do we fix the problem at hand here?
According to the Census Bureau data, “Immigrants comprise about 14 percent of the U.S. population: more than forty-three million out of a total of about 323 million people.” This is a decrease from what it has been in the past couple of decades. The numbers really started to decline after the economic crisis in 2008. Shockingly, more than half of those immigrants have lived here for over a decade and consider the United States their home.
Lets talk about what Barack Obama and Donald Trump have done when it comes to immigration. Barack Obama started a program in 2012 called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, otherwise known as “DACA”. It was a way for undocumented immigrants to get a renewable, two-year deportation deferral and work permit if they had no criminal record and had arrived to the U.S. as children. To sum that up, Obama thought that if they’re here, they might as well be working. “As of March 2018, more than eight hundred thousand had taken advantage of DACA.” He then went on to create a program called “DAPA”, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans. It was a way to extend the benefits from DACA to five million undocumented parents of U.S. citizens. Obama’s administration was quickly sued for this program by two dozen U.S. states, claiming that it violated immigration laws and the U.S. Constitution.
When Donald Trump came into office he tried to phase out the DACA program, pushed boarder control on Mexico by building a physical wall between our country and theirs. He signed an executive order that if an immigrant couldn’t prove they had been in the U.S. for more than 2 years, they were to be removed. He also signed an order for terrorism prevention. It “banned nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the United States for at least ninety days; blocked nationals from Syria indefinitely; and suspended the U.S. refugee program for 120 days.” This was a huge deal at the time. Lastly and the most commonly know, the zero-tolerance policy at the southern border. This resulted in more than two thousand child migrants being separated from their families or guardians and sent back “home”. Trump ended the family separation policy after many protest across the nation.
As usual, there are two sides to every story. A lot of Americans think that immigrants are a good thing for our country. They provide for the economy by creating businesses and boosting earnings for American workers. They pay taxes just like everyone else. They are less likely to commit a crime than a native-born American. A lot of them consider America home just like citizens do. The other side is immigrants cause a terrorism threat. They steal jobs from Americans. They cause unnecessary overcrowding. They are more likely to commit a crime. They have benefits that citizens don’t have like free grant money to start a business.
Everyone should be treated the same, even though that seems impossible. If you’re on American soil, law enforcement and our justice system should hold everyone to the standards of our U.S. Constitution. One person shouldn’t get a slap on the back of the hand with a warning and then the other sent out of our country for the same crime. You’re either strict on everyone or lenient with everyone.
We tried Obama’s way, treating immigrants better and with a grain of salt by giving them benefits even if they don’t have the right documentation to be here or haven’t been here very long. Now we’re trying Trump’s way, kicking people out, building walls to keep them out, only letting certain people in. Immigrants get a bad wrap when in reality a lot of them are good people and contribute to our society while waiting to get their citizenship approved if they don’t have it. If we kick them all out, where will they go? What will happen to the U.S. economy? Should we be afraid of the immigrants or our own citizens? What is the solution? What is fair? Will their ever be a good answer to this problem that we’ve created?
