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Immigration Issues, Today's Decisions Affect The Future Of The United States

Author : Bozhou Marine

Update time : 2020-10-28 15:43:24

The last national debate in the US presidential election involves the issue of immigration. As you can see, Trump and Biden spend time debating illegal / undocumented migration. Because there are at least 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
Biden said it would pass legislation within 100 days of assuming office, giving 11 million illegal immigrants access to legitimate citizens. No issue, like immigration, will affect the quality of American democracy in the coming decades because of the decisions of today's politicians.

IRCA act of 1986

The American political struggle over illegal immigration reached its peak in 1986. In that year, 1.8 million people were repatriated from the U.S. border. The sense of urgency prompted the two parties to reach an agreement and passed the immigration reform and Control Act (IRCA), signed by President Reagan.
Today, looking back at the IRCA act passed in 1986, it not only triggered the largest subsequent document fraud, but also laid the foundation for the division of American politics.
IRCA not only failed to solve the problem of illegal immigration, but also worsened the problem to a greater extent. There are loopholes in the provisions of the bill itself, as well as the lack of implementation by the administrative departments.
There are three elements involved in solving the problem of illegal immigration, namely, punishing employers who employ illegal immigrants, amnesty for illegal immigrants already in China, and strengthening border management. The IRCA act only achieved amnesty, and the subsequent "blocking" failed completely. It did not provide sufficient funds to strengthen border management, and did not impose employer punishment. It became a failed legislation to encourage illegal immigration in disguised form, and it also gave birth to the largest document fraud in American history.
Because the amnesty is aimed at illegal immigrants to agriculture, on the condition that they can obtain legal status only by showing that they have worked on American farms for more than 90 days in a given year.
In the absence of Employer Sanctions and no enforcement of site enforcement, a counterfeiting industry has emerged.
A large number of illegal immigrants pay 1000 dollars to bribe farmers, forge one such document and become legal citizens. This method has spread among the illegal immigrant communities, as well as to the villages and neighborhoods in Mexico.
As a result, the United States granted an amnesty of 2.7 million illegal immigrants in 1986 and encouraged a new wave of illegal immigrants. In the 1990s, the average number of illegal immigrants increased by 500000 per year, compared with the average annual increase in the number of legal immigrants was only 900000. Within a decade, the United States has an additional 5 million illegal immigrants.

Demographic changes in California

Most of the 2.7 million illegal immigrants granted amnesty are in California, and the Los Angeles area alone has absorbed 800000 of them at one time. Today, the official number of illegal immigrants in the United States is 11 million, about a third of whom live in California.
According to a California Hispanic journalist, almost every Hispanic family he knows may have illegal immigrant members.
On the one hand, there was a net inflow of undocumented illegal immigrants; on the other hand, California residents moved out during the same period, with a cumulative population of more than 6.8 million. This directly changed the demographic structure of California. In 1964, California overtook New York to become the most populous state in the United States. At that time, the population was mainly white and middle-class in the suburbs. In 2014, California's Hispanic population surpassed white to become the state's largest ethnic group. The amnesty in 1986 enabled California to complete the transformation from red state to swing state and then to stable blue base camp in the following decades.
Most of the illegal immigrants are educated in primary or secondary schools and cannot speak English. Their children are the people for whom the DACA act is today. In the 1990s, the state government of California was in a tight financial situation. For a time, the state Congress had a fierce fight over the need to pay $1.5 billion for education to illegal immigrant families.
And the influx of illegal undocumented immigrants is not only changing California. Next to California, Arizona is the next traditional red state to turn blue. Of the state's population under the age of 16, 46% are Hispanic, accounting for the first place. Phoenix City, the capital city with the most dense population, has been similar to the border city for more than ten years.
From 1990 to the beginning of this century, the number of Hispanic immigrants in the United States increased from 23 million to 36.5 million, a growth rate of four times that of other immigrant communities. Whether legal or illegal, the number of undocumented Hispanic immigrants has increased rapidly. Some will help to immigrate their entire village villagers to the United States in ways that are not limited to legal channels. 96% of Mexico's counties are illegal immigrants.
Mexico, too, has been hit. Along the border, on one side, a large number of low-level workers illegally flow into the United States; on the other side, Mexico is facing the loss of more than 11% of the population, especially the agriculture in some border cities has been severely hit. What's more difficult is that after illegal immigrants to the United States, they send the money earned from their jobs back to Mexico through underground channels, forming a black net money laundering industrial chain, which has brought impact on the public security and tax revenue of Mexico.
In recent years, illegal immigrants of Hispanic origin in the United States are no longer mainly from Mexico, but gradually into Central America.

Forces supporting the opening of the border

The forces supporting illegal immigration mainly come from expansionists, who believe that the United States should open its borders to all immigrants. They often quoted the sonnet from the statue of liberty, the new colossus. Poetry was born in 1883. At that time, the population of the United States was only 50 million, and industrialization was not very developed. The per capita productivity was basically linked to the number of people. The GDP mainly focused on the population.
In the 21st century, the most competitive power of a country comes from the competition of scientific and technological strength. Similar developed countries like the United States, such as Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, have long adopted a skilled immigration system. In contrast, the legal immigration system in the United States originated from the family based immigration policy established 60 years ago. Skilled immigrants, including spouses, account for only about 16% of the total.
The quota itself was established under the economic level and social pattern of the 1960s, coupled with the influx of a large number of illegal immigrants in a short period of time, making the structure of new immigrants in the United States characterized by a small proportion of skilled immigrants, low per capita wealth and insufficient average education level.
However, expansionism is supported by many forces. The Koch brothers, the billionaire libertarians, believed in free trade and founded Cato, a think tank. On the issue of illegal undocumented immigration, the conservative Cato and the leftist pioneer civil rights organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have found a common ground.
In addition, there are powerful organizations in the fields of farms, construction companies, hotels and restaurants, which inject huge amounts of money into illegal immigrants every year.
The attitude towards illegal immigration is no longer a simple left-right division. For example, compared with the United States, Canada has a total population of about 37.59 million, and the proportion of illegal immigrants is only 0.05-0.32%, less than one tenth of that of the United States.
In 2011, the second highest Canadian court ruled that illegal immigrants in Canada were not eligible for free medical care. However, there is no public opinion survey on this issue in Canada as a whole, which can be seen from the attitude of citizens towards illegal immigrants.

Illegal immigration and economy

Illegal immigrants compete mainly for jobs of local low-income and low skilled people, that is, those low-income workers on the minimum wage line. Because of the surge of illegal immigrants, the U.S. agriculture experienced a negative wage growth of - 8.7% in the 1990s, compared with the overall wage growth of 11% in other industries. In addition to lowering the wage level of the industry, it also reversely eliminated the small owners who insisted on employing legal workers.
Illegal immigrants can't compare with Americans who have the right to vote in bargaining power and fight for their own protection policies. For example, the four most dangerous industries in the United States are mining, forestry, fishing and agriculture. Over the past few decades, the rate of industrial accidents in the indigenous dominated mining industry has fallen by two-thirds. On the contrary, in some high-risk industries that employ more illegal immigrants, the industrial accident rate has remained basically unchanged for decades.
The problem of illegal immigration has increasingly become an economic conflict. Cultural anxiety has become economic anxiety, which ignites the populist power behind it.
PBS made an Emmy winning documentary, the state of Arizona, in 2014. Tell the story of illegal immigrants. A small Hispanic boss interviewed revealed that he was filmed by the film crew at that time and talked about the problems brought about by many illegal immigrants. For a time, he thought his content would become an important part of the documentary, but after editing, it was not adopted at all.
This Hispanic employer is not an isolated case. In fact, even within Hispanics, their attitude towards illegal immigration is very divided, with 46% against it and 52% supporting it.
At the same time, it also reflects the problems of today's American media, selective reporting, and even making some intentional or unintentional mistakes that are conducive to strengthening our position.
Different from the 1980s, when the media was still dominated by newspapers, there were a large number of people related to physical work such as printing, truck transportation, transporting and distributing newspapers. There are also some high school graduates among the reporters. The whole media practitioners are close to the working class and the general public.
Nowadays, the media practitioners are highly elitist and urbanized. Many of the young and strong school graduates come from rattan schools, and the proportion of rich families coming out is high. Most of them lack the experience of living in backward places in the United States and have not engaged in low-income jobs on the basic wage line. Thus formed a group of people who emphasized the ideology of small circles and pursued moral standards, but divorced from the general needs of the public. But they have a strong voice.
Even in 2006, when Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate in economics, wrote an article on immigration in the New York Times, he still reminded the negative impact of illegal immigration on low-income and low skilled workers. By 2007, the editorial department of the New York Times has begun to show signs that illegal legal immigrants are no longer distinguished, and they are collectively called immigrants. And "illegal immigration" will be replaced by "undocumented immigration". In fact, many illegal immigrants enter the country legally or forge documents, not without documents.
The New York Times is increasingly representing the ideology of a part of the left-wing elite centered on Manhattan, but it is gradually drifting away from public demand. Common sense communication often gives way to moral bidding.

Low wage workers

Every year, there are various immigration reform bills in Congress, many of which involve supporting illegal undocumented immigrants. The lobbying groups behind them are nearly 1000, and they often spend billions of dollars in a few years.
On the other hand, according to former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, there is no political lobbyist behind the working poor. But they are the people most directly affected by the problem of illegal immigration.
Except for the white blue collar workers whose interests have been touched, the black community is equally divided on the issue of illegal immigration. Black workers' organizations demand that they strive for jobs for themselves and actively oppose illegal immigration, while black politicians follow the party and stand with the Hispanic community to support the democratic coalition.
Take North Carolina, the eighth largest state in the United States for illegal immigrants. The Hispanic population increased from 76000 in the early 1990s to 600000 in 2008, half of whom were illegal undocumented immigrants. Smithfield, North Carolina, has the world's largest pork processing plant, with 32000 pigs processed and chopped in a day. It used to employ a large number of African American workers, but now it has become a major place for Hispanic workers.
In early 2016, Von Jones, a well-known African American CNN, was keenly aware of the impact of trump on black voters in the debate on immigration issues. He reminded that on the issue of immigration, many African Americans have been dissatisfied with Hispanics and Latinos for a long time. Although the number of black voters trump was only 8%, and 88% of them voted Hilary, the overall voting rate of African Americans was not high enough, which reflected the negative impact of immigration on black voters' enthusiasm.
Over the past few decades, the United States has been pouring in low paid migrant workers (undocumented or illegal) on the one hand, and outsourcing industrial jobs overseas through globalization on the other. The blue collar middle class suffered the most in this process. They are one of the main driving forces of the US election of trump, and the middle finger of the two party occupation politicians who formulated these policies.

In six days, we will know a new round of public opinion.

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