Immigration touches on the political, economic, social, security, and humanitarian aspects, which has made it a sensitive concern in the US. Policymakers are burdened with the role of establishing a comprehensive immigration reform despite the difficulty surrounding the issue. The primary concern associated with immigration is the escalating cases of terrorism as terrorist access the US disguised as immigrants. Various propositions have been made in an attempt to control the number of illegal immigrants in the US that include deportation of undocumented immigrants, erecting a wall on the Mexican border, and temporarily banning Muslims. However, the directives have attracted public protest and drawn legal, ethical, and humanitarian challenges. The population of immigrants in the US is steadily rising, and considering the undocumented population and the US-born children, the residents feel that there is an increased competition of resources. The recent economic crisis was attributed to the growing population of undocumented immigrants that led to the deportation of some and others were discouraged from traveling to the US. The issue of securing borders is significantly essential for any nation, however, there is the need to modernize the legal immigration process. However, the contentious issue remains on what actions to take on the millions of undocumented workers and illegal immigrants currently in the country. However, some argue that the situation is self-made as the US government has been inconsistent on its policies implementation. Any attempts to grant the illegal immigrants a blanket amnesty has been dismissed as violating the rule of law and will affect the efforts to deter illegal immigration in the future.
Further, such an approach would be unjust and unfair to the legal immigrants who would wait longer in line. Although the immigration policies aim at enforcing border security, the legal immigrants who overstay their visas equally contribute to a considerable portion of the undocumented population. Legal immigration has attracted permanent residency based on family reunification that consequently raises the immigrant community. Other categories that contribute to escalating immigrants include employment, asylum seekers, diversity, and refugees. Whereas immigrants provide cheap labor, a majority of the Americans fell that they contribute to high crime rates as well as take up jobs from the native-born residents.
On the other hand, there are Americans who profess their country’s historic pride as a country of immigrants and want the immigrants to be assimilated. Persons opposed to immigration underestimate the country’s ability to absorb more individuals, without considering the economic and political forces that drive immigration. Notably, the measures implemented to curb immigration such as employer sanctions have resulted in abuse of undocumented workers and discrimination against minority workers. Even today, regardless of the many research on immigration, the laws are based faulty understanding of causes of immigration.