External Border Control

925 Words4 Pages
Immigration to the United States is not a new concept; in fact, some could argue that the country itself was founded by immigrants. However, in the more recent years of our history, this topic has become a huge source of debate among those running the country. Immigration policies and laws have been more and more pressing in politics today, partially due to the severe amount of people crossing the border and seemingly invading our country as some Americans might put it (Crossing Arizona, 2006). In order to reduce the amount of illegal immigration while still keeping the U.S. economy intact, the President should increase the amount of work visas provided, enforce the current immigrant labor laws more effectively, and enact the policies of the…show more content…
Despite programs like Operation Gatekeeper, Operation Hold The Line, and Operation Rio Grande, “highly motivated migrants driven by powerful economic incentives have found ways to circumvent tougher border controls” (Cornelius and Tsuda, 8). Even though those programs make it more difficult for immigrants to enter the country, they still find ways to get in, and sometimes they do not leave due to the difficulty of crossing. There is too much physical and fiscal risk to crossing that “undocumented migrants were staying longer on each trip they made to the U.S. or were settling there permanently” (Cornelius, 782). This begins to suggest that the external border control policies that politicians have been so fond of the last couple years are doing more harm than…show more content…
Many U.S. employers heavily rely on the work of these foreigners to complete the more menial and lower-wage jobs that most native-born Americans don’t want to do (Tsuda, 3). Even though, “demand for foreign workers… has become ‘structurally embedded’… within many developed nations, due to the ‘relative shortages’ of willing, native-born workers to perform lower-wage jobs,” the laws that prohibit employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants should be enforced (Cornelius and Tsuda, 9). Over the past couple of years, these laws have not been enforced, causing employers to ignore them and continue to motivate immigrants to come over illegally. If they were penalized for collecting fraudulent paperwork from their workers, they would be forced to hire migrants that came legally into the United States. This would remove the incentive for immigrants to cross illegally, because that strong driving opportunity of a higher paying job is gone. This also would not affect the economy because employers would still be able to hire the same amount of and type of workers, just through more legal
Open Document