Illegal Immigration

Illegal immigration is a widely controversial hot topic between the state and federal government. While on the state level some are adopting harsher laws than others and on the federal level the upcoming presidential election has sparked increasing debate on how to resolve the problem. In Tennessee, the state requires city and county jails to report any inmate to U.S immigration who may be in violation. During my internship with the Public Defender’s office this semester, most of the time I put in is in the court room and I have witnessed firsthand the amount of inmates that are released to immigration. The numbers were shocking for the relatively small town that I live in. Recently, Tennessee passed a law that requires that all employers check the status of citizenship of their newly hired employees through a system called E-Verify. There is no cost for a business to use this system but there are potentially severe consequences if they don’t. The first two times a business is caught violating the law it will result in increasing fines but the third time will result in the loss of their business licenses. They are hoping to see a decrease in crime similar to the decrease other states have experienced by not welcoming illegal immigrants.  I recently got the new E-Verify system at my place of employment and if I choose to hire a new employee I must wait until their citizenship status comes back before I can actually make the offer to hire them.

Additionally, there is important issue of high unemployment rates in a tough economy and the huge deficit that continues to grow at an exponential rate. Is it fair that we have legal citizens who cannot find work while companies and individuals are hiring illegal immigrants who may not even pay taxes to help curtail the expansive deficit?  It seems that many of the menial jobs that illegal immigrants are taking are the blue collar or “dirty”  jobs that legal citizens are not necessarily lining up to apply for. There is always the issue of illegal immigrants receiving state benefits such as free public schooling and medical services, while some states are on the verge of bankruptcy. On the other hand, what actions should states take when illegal immigrants have lived here and paid taxes for over twenty years? Should states give them a chance to apply for citizenship or just deport them back to their country of citizenship? If they have lived in this country and have supported the economy and abided by the law, in my opinion they should be given an opportunity to apply for citizenship.

Illegal immigration can be a “Catch 22” for some states. For instance, the recent controversy in the state of Alabama has left some laws to question if they are worth the ending results of the harsh laws. There has been an uprising of complaints from the farmers of the state claiming that their crops are rotting on the vine due to the lack of legal workers that are willing to endure the uncomfortable elements and working conditions involved in harvesting the crops. The state has lashed back at the farmers stating that they are insulting the people of Alabama. The state assumed that since unemployment was high, the farmers should not have trouble finding workers that were willing to do any job for money. However, the majority of the farmers found that it took five times the amount of American workers to get a day’s job completed versus the previously employed illegal immigrants. In return, the current workers made about twenty dollars a day for their work at a standard “pay per piece” rate and did not return for a second or third day of work in the fields. The farmers of Alabama claimed that the American workers were not in good physical shape and could not endure the long hours. One of the negative factors of this law in Alabama resulted in thousands of crops dying in the fields while far too many children and families in America go hungry and have no food to eat on a regular basis.

  

I believe that illegal immigration laws should be left entirely up to each state for deciding how they should react to this controversial issue. Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona went as far as suing the Obama administration for claims of failure to enforce immigration laws and protecting the state’s borders from Mexico. However, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit. I believe that some states should have harsher immigration laws than other others based on the fact that some states have to deal with more difficult situations than others like being located on the Mexican border. What do you think?