Persuasive Essay On Immigration Reform

With an estimated 11.7 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today, immigration reform has been a volatile issue that hasn’t been adequately addressed throughout the 21st century. With the last major overhaul occurring in 1986, when over 3 million immigrants were granted U.S. citizenship, politicians are saying another major overhaul is needed to address the newer generation of illegal immigrants. Legislations including the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, and the DREAM act of 2012 have all tried to address the depressing need for immigration reform but have failed due to lack of bipartisan support. Still, political leaders urge for immigration reform that is unlikely to pass with such divided political parties. Luckily, the solution was already passed in 1986 but hasn’t been sufficiently enforced for the past twenty years. In order to stop the flood of illegals crossing U.S. borders, the U.S. should enforce the law against hiring illegal immigrants.
Currently around 52%, or around 6 million, of the illegal immigrants in the U.S are from Mexico. With the peak number of illegal immigrants occurring in 2007 with 12.2 million, the Pew Research center predicts the number to be increasing again from the steep decline in 2008 and 2009. Although the true cause of the decline is unknown, Jefferey S. Passel, a senior demographer at Pew’s Hispanic Trends Project noted, “The dates of decrease matched the deepest years of the economic slowdown, with its high unemployment. We don’t know what caused the decline, but it certainly coincides with the recession.” As the recession slows to a stop, illegal immigration is expected to grow despite a reco...

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...rrent. In total, the Obama administration has only collected $31.2 million in fines from 2009-2012, much better than the pathetic $1.5 million collected by the Bush administration from 2003-2008. Still, the Obama administration was supposed to put more of an emphasis on going after employers. This is partly caused by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement doing a terrible job of applying sanctions on businesses. For example, “many offices gave out far more warnings and far fewer fines than other offices and some do not take it seriously and are just going through the motions. Their goal is to rack up enough audits so that the administration can use the numbers to claim that it is vigorously enforcing the law.” As Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for immigration Studies puts it, “Mr. Obama has talked a good game but hasn’t followed through.”