As the United States elected a new president, the topic of immigration has taken a back seat to economic concerns.  However, if action is not taken soon, our broken system may result in devastating consequences.   According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the number of illegal aliens in the United State has grown by four million individuals between the years 2000 and 2007.  This has put a strain on our emergency rooms, our public schools, and on the wallets of legal, taxpaying citizens.  Therefore, the policy of the Obama administration towards illegal immigration should be hard-lined, so that in order to reduce the number of aliens arriving illegally, stringent enforcement of current and future laws must occur.  The reasons for this are as follows: first of all, illegal immigrants using services in this country cost the federal government several billion dollars a year in taxpayer money. Secondly, the influx of illegals takes away blue collar jobs from U.S. citizens here legally. Finally, illegal immigration poses an enormous security threat to our country.  If we can not keep tract of individuals who enter our country, how could we enforce what weapons they could bring in?  This goes to show that the only rational way to solve this issue is to take a rigid stance against those entering illegally.

Source

Illegal Immigrants Wither Away Our Economy

According to Mr. Robert Longley of About.com’s guide to U.S. government, the Federation for American Immigration Reform has concluded that the education, health care, and incarceration of illegal immigrants cost the state of California upwards of $10.5 billion per year since 2004.  73% of that money (about $7.7 billion) has been used to educate illegal immigrants, who are estimated to make up 15% of the student body.  The remaining $2.8 billion is used equally to both provide healthcare to and incarcerate illegal aliens.  Just this July, the Wall Street Journal reported that California dealt with a budget gap of $26 billion by cutting education, welfare, and funds from local governments.  Legal United State citizens are now the ones hurting, because these local governments still refuse to cut services to those here illegally, saying that it will result in less diversity. 

Undocumented Workers are Creating an Unbalanced Employment System

Along with the concrete costs of allowing illegal aliens to take refuge in the United States, there is also the moral issue of these aliens taking the jobs that would otherwise be filled by legal, taxpaying U.S. citizens.  According to The Christian Science Monitor, in 2004 undocumented workers accounted for 25% of construction workers, 20% of cooks, 22% of maids/ housekeepers, and a whopping 29% of agricultural workers.  This is not only filling in jobs that many qualified Americans would love to have (especially in these economic times), but it also distorts the role of supply and demand.  Normally, if only a few American workers want to, say, pick carrots in a field, but there is a huge market demand for carrots, employers would require more employees than are willing to work under the current conditions.  Therefore, wages and compensations would rise to meet those demands, and more American workers would be willing to labor in the fields picking carrots.  In this example I referred to American workers because illegal aliens are destroying the above concept.  Because these illegal immigrants are willing to work for below minimum wage, with no compensation whatsoever, this puts U.S. workers in a rock and a hard place.  On one hand, they cannot work in the carrot fields in those conditions per federal law, but they also won’t be hired to work in positions that they are not qualified for.  The result is skyrocketing unemployment in lower class demographics (like we have right now), which has historically been the backbone of American commerce.  Therefore, though illegal aliens may be benefiting large-scale employers, it ultimately hurts the Americans that deserve those jobs.

Lax Immigration Enforcement Makes the United States Less Safe

Granting amnesty to illegal immigrant is perhaps the biggest national security threat our country is facing.  It was discovered shortly after 9/11 that five of the nineteen hijackers had violated national immigration laws.  Four have those five had been pulled over at one time or another for speeding.  However, no arrests were ever made.  If people are able and even allowed to enter and live in the United States undocumented, how easy does it make for our enemies to wreak havoc on U.S. soil?  Even if it is not terrorists, illegal immigration has resulted in a huge crime problem. Edwin Ramon, an illegal alien, was living in San Francisco, but was never arrested because of the left-leaning city’s sanctuary law, which shields illegal immigrants from deportation.  In July of 2008, Ramon’s car a traffic conflict with the car of the Anthony Bologna and his two sons, Michael and Matthew.  The Bolognas are in the U.S. legally.  A heated argument led to Ramon pulling out an AK-47 and shooting all three of the Bolognas.  This drew public outrage, and Ramon is facing a possible death penalty, but it was an incident that could have been prevented if immigration laws were enforced.  This cannot be stressed enough.  If steps aren’t taken to close the immigration loopholes in our country, our mistakes will not be taken seriously until it is too late.