Illegal Immigration

Something all of us have heard on and off lately is the discussion about an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants in the United States. There is an estimate of 12 million illegals in the United States and some estimates say there are more than 20 million. Now is immigration a bad thing, of course it is not, but it has to be done legally. There are many issues that are not being spoken about, with and from our politicians about the illegal immigrants. What are the pros and cons concerning giving anywhere from 12 million to 20 million plus amnesty? Currently we have a ‘Dream Act’ going on, through executive order from the president, and in a way it is an alright idea. You can not punish a child for the sins of the parents, but I believe there is a different way to go about ‘statuses’ for children brought here and ones born here of illegal parents.

From the Bureau of Labor, in February there was a 13.1% U-6 unemployment rate. U-6 is total unemployed plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons. With the total population of the United States at 313.9 million people, that is a scary 41,120,900 million people that fall under the U-6 standard. Okay so 40 million to make it easier, that fall under the U-6 standard, but that doesn’t include the people that were unemployed, receiving unemployment and were taken off the books after they could find a job. So I’ll take a guess and say 45 million in total. Now we have 45 million that have no job, that are barely holding on to their jobs, others that are working part time because they cannot find anything better or full time, and others that have been forgotten about. What will happen if amnesty is given to 12 – 20 million illegals?

Ask yourself a question. What kind of jobs do illegal immigrants do? They do the jobs that some say your average American won’t do. I believe that is so far from the truth it’s not funny. The reason why this is said is because Americans won’t work unless they are paid as Americans should be paid. That means illegals are doing jobs that pay cash, paid well below the minimum wage rate and with no benefits. These jobs are usually; farming, landscaping, and cleaning services, textile services and construction. If they are awarded amnesty, they will now have legal status here in the United States, which means, they can walk up to Farmer Joe and refuse to work unless they are getting paid at least minimum wage, same goes for the landscaping company, the cleaning company and construction companies. Again the reason why American citizens and legal immigrants won’t do these kinds of jobs is because of the pay and refusal by these companies and farmers to pay good wages. Now, could it be that, they really couldn’t afford to pay workers good wages and be profitable? This might be the case, so when the newly made legals come asking for their higher wages, what will happen?

It’s not just the wages that will increase for these jobs, but also benefits as well. It was originally said that the millions that are given amnesty will not be able to apply for social benefits or the ACA, but that has been shown as incorrect. It is said that the ones given amnesty, if they have children/dependents and their jobs cannot give their children a certain level of living standards they may apply on the behalf of their children, this goes with the ACA as well. So we have a farmer, which has been getting away with hiring and paying illegal workers under the table, way below the minimum wage. Now unless he can find more illegals to replace his newly made legal workers and in a quick turnaround, he will be forced to pay at least minimum wage, plus due to the new ACA regulations, give health care benefits to his workers. This goes for all the labor industries that currently employ illegals. Now, I believe we will see countless businesses and numerous farms barely keeping their head above water, and will finally sink. What will this do to everyone else? Higher food prices, because the demand is higher than what the supply can keep up with. Construction costs will go up, including home building and so much more. Another issue is, the former illegals might not want to stay at their labor demanding jobs and will want to find employment at places where they used to not be able to, due to their illegal status. That means we could possibly have millions attempting to find jobs that would be reserved for citizens or ones of legal status and we currently do not have enough good/decent paying jobs for 40 million people in our nation. Where are these jobs going to come from? Are there going to be enough job opportunities for the 40 million and the newly made legals? The easy answer is we won’t have enough job opportunities and we as a nation will not be creating 50 million plus jobs that quickly and that soon.

When these places can no longer afford this kind of pay and benefits, they will have to fire countless workers, just to make an attempt of staying alive. Here is where we start seeing the applications for social programs like welfare and food stamps kick in because when they were fired or went to go find a job they couldn’t do when they were illegal, they were left out to dry. It was estimated that in 2013 there were 151,014,000 million people on some kind of government assistance. That is a little less than half of the total population. The big numbers that are concerning are the Food Stamps which is about 49 million, the Women, Infants and Children program which is 23.25 million, Supplemental Security Income which is about 20.25 million, Public or subsidized housing at 13.5 million and 5.1 million who get unemployment. That is a total of 111,100,000 million Americans on government assistance. 
We currently have a country that does not have enough funds to keep funding and paying for the defense bills, social programs, infrastructure jobs, education and our debt as is. Now with a best case scenario in my opinion, I’ll say there are no more than 12 million illegal immigrants, and maybe 4 million will need unemployment and social benefits. That pushes the total to 115.1 million, and I believe it will go up even more, when small businesses and farms start going under. What will we do, with the increased demand for such programs and added unemployment numbers? Will we have to cut defense spending even more? Will we have to cut more funding from infrastructure programs? Will we have to cut Education funding? Will there be more tax payer bailouts in the near future? 

I and most of us will not be able to answer these kinds of questions, but from our past and common logic, we are not headed in a good direction. There seems to be a storm coming and it won’t be pretty for us as a nation and it won’t end well. Again, this is the time, that we the ‘Citizens’ come together, and tell our representatives that we all stand for a common good and that is the ‘Well Being’ of the United States of America.