Yaren Obando
Professor Ross
Engl. 1020
5 Dec. 2011
We Need a Fence!
America within the last decades has quietly being divided by one of the most complex problem this nation has faced, Illegal Immigration. Prior to the 1970’s, the US.-Mexico border rarely received national-level attention reflecting immigration and boundary enforcement because they were largely non-issues until relatively recently (Nevins 21). America as a country that was completely built on immigrants there is nothing wrong with the idea of immigration. The problem comes when people do it illegally. Typical illegal immigrants come to America primarily searching for the “American Dream”, meaning better job and a better life while adding value to the U.S economy. A study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates that illegal immigration now costs federal and local taxpayers $113 billion a year (Illegal Immigration Organization). According to the nonpartisan research organization in Washington D.C., the Pew Hispanic Center, there are around 11.2 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States (U.S. Immigration Support). And when 3 out of every 100 people in American are undocumented (or, rather documented with forged and faked papers), there is a profound security problem in our borders that calls for attention. Therefore the real problem presented by illegal immigration is our homeland security security, not just the threat to the economy. In fact, the problem is much bigger than we all think and should be dealt with at once and there is two ways to deal with this issue. Or whether we make every illegal immigrants contribute into Uncle Sam’s big bucket or we find a way to stop illegal immigrants from coming into the U.S. The first would be impossible to accomplish in real life, to actually do that we would have to legalize every illegal immigrants that already is in the United States. And here is when we realize that the best solution for this problem is number two. The United States needs to build a complete fence in the entire U.S.-Mexico border. Illegal immigrants might pose no direct security threat. But the presence of millions of undocumented migrants distorts the law, distracts resources, and effectively creates a cover up for terrorists, criminals and for the big fat market of drugs. In fact, illegal Immigration leads to a chain of problems which are turning into Americans burden. The main problem with illegal immigration is not that they are here, is that they are here using up all of our resources without contributing anything. They use our hospitals, our school, get health insurance, and end up in our jails without paying taxes. So we might ask ourselves, well where do these extra resources come from? Our American pockets. Ever since the illegal immigration problem has quickly arisen the government of the United States has tried to manage this issue from different angles. In the past decades Uncle Tom has tried almost if not everything to stop this. The Government has passed several legislations and laws regarding this issue, even tried building small weak fences between borders, but overall nothing big has been accomplished yet, Illegals still get through. Each year, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehends about one million people attempting to enter the United States from Mexico. Border apprehension rates have increased by a multiple of 15 over the last 30 years (Andreas 45).
The graph proves the overwhelming increasing number of illegal immigrants throughout the last decades and it will not stop there unless we take action. Clearly we all know that illegal immigration is a broad problem which all American pay-taxers are supporting. But different people have different views and perspective to this issue and might not see this issue as a problem. At first is the Constitution of the United States which contains nothing regarding illegal immigration. Second, the actual illegal immigrants and their families back home support it. Because is primarily off what they live, meaning maybe one immigrant is working here illegally but back home his supporting his entirely family, therefore for them is a benefit rather than a problem. Also, some Americans benefit from this problem too. The agriculture and construction industries and fast-food restaurants are a few to mention. They all benefit from this problem by hiring illegal immigrants under the table. What is so good about this is that it increases the company’s revenue much more, by hiring undocumented workers and paying basically nothing to work for them so as they reduce expenses, revenue increases. And almost every industry in the country takes advantage of these opportunities. Even economists say that the undocumented workforce is helping our economy grow and keeping us a float.
However the truth to this is that the Constitution was written way back where illegal immigration was not a problem at all. Of course illegal immigrants and their families will never think that coming here illegally and make money is not a problem because they are the ones that truly benefit from it. And such industries are just making it worst because instead of hiring hard working Americans they are hiring cheap undocumented workers. The seasonal farm work often performed by foreign labor usually pays little less that minimum wage, something that according to economists is unlikely to attract U.S. citizens to apply for the jobs (U.S. Immigrant Support). Illegal immigrants are not taking our jobs is our employers that choose to hire them because is cheaper and is just hurting our economy more and more. At last, the economists only show you what you want to hear and the positive side of things and hide what is really going on, one of the factors that help our economy to reach this stage of stagflation we find ourselves in today was ironically illegal immigration the millions of immigrants that now live in the United States.
As detailed throughout the previous sections of this proposal, much of the problem of illegal aliens is a direct consequence of little to no border security. If nothing else, proper border security would prevent all the illegal aliens and the previously deported from simply returning and committing more of the collateral damage. Proper border security is absolutely necessary to keep people out who do not belong here. And it is only getting worst with more illegal aliens. Therefore, building a fence is mandatory to reduce and finally stopping this problem once and for all. Such fence will block the entire U.S.-Mexico border and will stop illegal immigration in any form. Many people have seen photographs and television images showing it to be a concrete wall. Those pictures are deceptive. The concrete wall portion of the barrier will be roughly four percent of its overall length. Most of it is a fifty yard wide multi-layered composite obstacle comprised of several elements:
· A ditch
· Coils of barbed wire
· Two tall, sturdy wire fences, with sensors to warn
of any incursion.
· A patrol path for vehicles between the fences.
· A smoothed strip of sand that runs parallel to
the fence, to detect footprints.
· Closed circuit TV cameras and motion detectors.
Something that might end that looking like following picture shows. A fence which is not too fancy but it will get the job done. It will definitely stop the cross of pedestrians, any vehicles and even those who build tunnels under surface to cross our border. The first thing that the proposed solution brings up to debate is the cost. Well we are already paying $113 billion dollars to support illegal immigrants, I am sure that we could use $9 or $10 billion dollars to build this fence. Second, is that this will not stop illegal immigrants from entering our country, but is more than clear that this solution will reduce if not completely stop this problem. Well if you build a 30-foot wall, you might say well the 35-feet ladder business will get real good and which might sound funny; but the contrary is proven already in parts of San Diego border where little fences have been implement to try this new approach. The outcome of this experiment clearly showed the reduction of illegal trespassing by 80%. (P.F. Wagner). Additionally, the fence is mandatory to significantly decrease the amount of drugs that are pouring across the southern border. Illegal immigration into the United States is massive in scale. More than 10 million undocumented aliens currently reside in the U.S., and that population is growing by 700,000 per year (Nevins 21). On one hand, the presence of so many aliens is a powerful testament to the attractiveness of America. On the other hand, it is a sign of how dangerously open our borders are. That is why I propose that action must be taken now. Each day we delay results in another few thousand immigrants entering our country.
As we go start looking at this problem more in depth implementation will play an important role in the effectiveness of the proposed solution. The biggest challenge for the implementation of the proposed solution is that policymakers and some government entities need to not just support it and take part in the solution but act upon it as well. Once the government decide take this as the best approach to defend ourselves from illegal immigration, we need to actually build the fence. We can achieve this two ways. If we want to save money we can use military personnel to build the fence or maybe we can provide jobs by hiring people that would want to work under the government to build it. The materials to use in the construction of fence are to be provided from government agencies or the government can hire certain companies to provide such materials. The cost of a border security fence has been estimated to cost between four and eight billion dollars. If we started today, a proper physical border security along the 1,951 mile long US-Mexico border will take a few years to build (We Need a Fence). Although, it might take some years and might seem expensive in terms of initial outlay, in the long term it is both less expensive and more accurate once it takes full effect. Also, if teamed with the right surveillance from border officers will make our fence more effective than any other solution currently being proposed.
On the other hand people might argue that some of the consequences after the solution is implemented are that it might increase the pressure for immigrants to stay here longer, or to not even comeback to their home. As we tightened border controls, illegal immigrants must rely increasingly on "coyotes" -- professional smugglers -- who take them across the border for a fee. The more difficult it is to cross the border, the more expensive the journey becomes and the less people try to cross our border (Andreas 45). It also might affect the U.S. international affairs with Mexico and other allied countries down our south border. Which might also be truth but the fact any country has a right over their own homeland security would defeat any issue or claims regarding neighboring countries. And also that due to building the border fence many of the wildlife and natural settings of our borders might be hurt, which indeed could happen that is why the government needs to make sure that careful measures are taken so we do not hurt our earth in any way, plus the fence will only take 40 to 50 yards wide.
Overall, it is indeed important for us to deal with illegal immigration for various reasons. So we can control the overwhelming Government spending that only hurt our pockets and our economy, so we can stop pulling families apart, and foreign women from using newborns as anchors to obtain citizenship here, to stop fraud and the market of faked papers, faked Social Security Numbers and people from breaking our laws, and finally to secure our borders and country from drug trafficking, human trafficking, weapon trafficking , terrorists, fugitives, gangbangers and all the dangers that enter our country illegally. These are all the reasons why we need to act now and the thing that makes the proposed solution the most accurate option to encounter this issue, even though it might seem expensive and might take a couple of years to take full effect is that is it completely solves the entire problem. It has been proven throughout this piece that the Border Security Fence is in fact one of the most if not the only realistic solution that would control activity on our borders and will secure them and our country from any threat, whether is the right thing to do or not. What really matters at the end of the day is that we all are humans and we need to understand that illegal immigration is such a complex problems affecting two different worlds with millions of people in it that find themselves in different situations. We are a lucky few, but we take it everything for granted, just for not knowing what really is going on the other side.
Works Cited
Andreas, P (1994). "The making of Amerexico: (mis)handling illegal immigration". World policy
journal(0740-2775), 11 (2), p. 45.
A Record-Setting Decade of Immigration: 2000-2010http://www.cis.org/2000-2010-record-setting- decade-of-immigration>.
Illegal Immigration Organization. “The $113 Billion Dollar Drain on the American Taxpayer”
Web. 25th Sept. 2011. <http://www.illegalimmigrationstatistics.org/illegal-immigration-
a-113-billion-a-year-drain-on-u-s-taxpayers/#more-331>.
Nevins, Joseph (2008). "Barricading the Border - The Secure Fence Act of 2006 ordered the
building of 850 miles of at least two layers of "reinforced fencing" along the U.S.-Mexico boundary. The utility of these barriers, as " NACLA report on the Americas (1993) (1071-4839), 41 (6), p. 21.
Let Freedom Ring, Inc. “The Solution”. We Need a Fence. Web. <http://www.weneedafence.com/the_solution>.
Let Freedom Ring, Inc. “The Problem”. We Need a Fence. Web. <http://www.weneedafence.com/the_problem>.
P.F. Wagner. “Border Security and Border Fence”. The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration.
<http://www.usillegalaliens.com/border_security_and_the_border_fence.html>.
No comments:
Post a Comment