Illegal Aliens and Their Quest to Stay in the United States

In Biting the Hand that Feeds You, Congressman Steve King of Iowa noted "What would the illegal immigration boycott look like without illegal immigrants?" During the year of 2006 illegal immigrants boycotted in several major cities; thus causing many businesses to close for the day while the illegal immigrants were boycotting in the city. The immigrants were fighting for rights that are afforded to every other legal citizen. During the march there were noticeable images of violence taking place at some of the marches.

Illegal immigrants come to America seeking a better life for themselves and their family.
The immigrants come across the border for better wages, education and housing. Traditionally immigrants have been seeking jobs and wages better than those of their country. The immigrants have been accused of taking jobs away from other Americans, however; studies show that immigrants are taking jobs at a lower wage that no one else wants. Some businesses have been known to hire undocumented workers at lower wages and have actually cheated the immigrants out of their wages because the employer know they will not tell the authorities due to fear immigrants will lose their job or be deported back to their native country.

Immigrants that have come to America illegally will send money back home to their
love ones to give them a better way of life in their native country. The main goal of the illegally immigrants is to save as much money as possible to become a citizen and eventually bring their family over to the states. Trying to bring the family over is a very long and costly process that could take a year or longer to complete. While waiting on the process to get completed some immigrant's will try to gain entry into the country illegally will open themselves up to other dangers such as being exploited, slavery and prostitution.

While many illegal aliens cross the border searching for employment, not all illegal aliens are crossing into the United States to find work. Some individuals have actually come across the border because they have been forced to leave their home country because of their criminal activity by other criminals or the law enforcement. There are currently over 400,000 unaccounted illegal alien criminals with outstanding deportation orders. The criminal activity is so bad that other illegal alien are being held for ransom, kidnapped and smuggled to other cities. Many illegal aliens have an anti-American attitude and have no respect for the laws of America and refuse to confirm. Some illegal aliens have been charged with serious crimes and after serving their jail sentence were supposed to be deported and have slipped away from the proper authorities and have gone on to commit other serious crimes.

Known criminal Mario Roberto had been previously been sentenced to five years in prison
in 1990 for selling cocaine and had been previously deported. When he tried to enter the United States in New York, he was barred however; he found another way to get into the United States because on January 16, 2003, he shot Norfolk Police Officer Sheila Herring killing her as other officers returned fire killing him.

American for years have blamed the immigrants for causing a short fall for jobs, however they are working jobs that Americans refuse to work at the rate the job is paying. Consequently, immigration is pushing American workers out of jobs as the demand for unskilled workers have increased because they can hire them at a cheaper rate. When illegal aliens converse on a town the wages within the town will go down because the immigrants accept the lower wage jobs. On January 17, 2007, the federal immigration agents raided a local chicken processing plant called Crider Inc. When the plant was raided over ž of their 900 employees were lost due to them being illegal immigrants. After the raid, the company was on the brink of closure when Crider did something that people in the area wasn't accustomed, they increased the wages from $7 to $9 an hour. The increase was more than $1 more than the immigrants had been paid to do the same job. Crider started doing something that they hadn't done previously by going to the area employment office, offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in at the company owned dormitory that was located near the plant. The plant was used to hiring immigrants to do the work at a cheaper rate, however; after the raid the plant had several openings and over 200 African Americans were hired.

Uneducated immigrants normally will have uneducated children. When the children are enrolled in school if the parents do not speak English, the children will be enrolled in ESL classes which add an additional burden on the school system. With the teacher shortage, these teachers could be better suited in teaching other classes. Children of illegal immigrants cause an increase on the school budget because other programs have to be added as well, such as additional free or reduced lunches, mandatory summer and Saturday enrichment programs.

Ward Connerly "Illegal immigrants are afforded the opportunity to go to college for free or at a reduced price according to which state they are residing". However; if a citizen from another state or a documented foreign student would like to attend college they must pay the full price of an out of state student. The immigrants should be educated but not at the expense of the American people which adds to the deficit of the school system.

The border patrol will have to do better protecting the borders to keep illegal immigrants from coming into the country illegally. When immigrants commit a crime and have completed their sentence, they should be escorted back to their native country with armed marshals to make sure they do not try to slip back into the country.

When an influx of immigrants comes within an area, the jobs will drop their pay rate in order to start hiring more of the illegal immigrants. The immigrants will take the job because they are just looking for employment and are not concerned with working condition are the pay rate. When the immigrants start working at the establishment the company will stop hiring legal citizens because the pay rate is higher.

Immigrants should be afforded a public school education, however; not at the cost to the American people. Educating immigrants are causing the United States million of dollars every year, including free or reduced lunch, mandatory summer and Saturday school. The teachers that are being used to teach the ESL classes could be used to teach other classes that would help with the shortage of teachers in the school system.

Objective for Essay 3: The Persuasive Argument Essay: Using your selected topic, students will effectively and persuasively argue for their stance concerning this controversial topic. In other words, the thesis for Essay 3 will clearly indicate your stance on the issue. Throughout the body of the essay, students will attempt to either "win" over audience completely through the effective use of logos, pathos, and ethos, OR to convince audience to at least deem their stance valid. Students will also propose solutions and/or compromises in their concluding statements. Students will incorporate 3 valid research sources to bolster their argument.

Here is the directions

Topics should be:

a current or longstanding issue
researchable
issues that students are genuinely interested in / concerned about
issues that have clear pros and cons (advocates for the issue as well as opposition)
ideally, somewhat controversial in nature

professor Comments

Hi Sabrina, you have some good points here; however, the main concern with the draft is that it is lacking a clear thesis as to exactly what you are arguing for or against. Because of this, your audience will have difficulty following your points, as they seem to just present information in a factual way, rather than a consistently organized argumentative way. Some readers might think that your thesis is that there are two reasons why immigrants come to this country (as presented in your opening, and this reflects an informative objective, rather than an argumentative one.) Once we get to your conclusion, it seems more clear what your stance is, but this needs to be just as clearly stated in your thesis--i.e. indicating that you believe immigrants should receive certain rights (i.e. education), that they don't necessarily burden the economy/job force (it was unclear what your stance was on this point as you present that they take jobs Americans wouldn't do and then indicate also that they take jobs away from Americans), and that the border patrol should be strengthened to deter those who may engage in criminal activity. Once you solidify your thesis, organize the body of the paper accordingly to argue your points. Remember, too, that your research sources should be clearly presented through signal phrases--i.e. According to... The study of ________ conducted in 2006 shows that...etc. As is, it's unclear what sources are being used. Try to integrate a few direct quotations to balance the paraphrasing.

Your professor's comments are on the mark. You start out sounding like you will be arguing on behalf of undocumented workers and then suddenly shift gears and start talking about a criminal who happened to be an undocumented immigrant. After that, you offer another case example that seems to contradict what you said earlier about jobs. Because you don't cite sources or give statistics, it's impossible to tell if this one example is illustrative of a general trend or an exceptional case. You state your position clearly in the conclusion but the essay itself has been so incoherent that this comes as something of a surprise.

So, which is it? Are todays undocumented workers, like the immigrants of the past who built this country, worthy of rights and the opportunity to do what other immigrants to these shores have done? Or are undocumented workers criminal menaces who steal jobs from people who have some sort of birthright to them? While you may have mixed feelings about this, your assignment is to convince us one way or another, using logic, facts, and appeals to emotion in judicious proportion. You may, of course, choose a more moderate view than the two I've stated, e.g., arguing that immigrants who have worked for some years, paid taxes, and not gotten in trouble with the law ought to be given the chance to stay while at the same time efforts are made to stop the flow of new immigrants. But, whatever view you choose, you must state it clearly and make sure that all of your arguments are consistent with it. And, of course, you must cite your sources, be as specific as you can when talking about numbers, and make sure that case examples really are relevant.

You also need to set up some background in your intro. So, for instance, why not just grant everyone who makes it into the country legal status? What interest does the government have in regulating who comes in? How would legalizing people who had come here illegally undermine those interests? What alternatives to legalization exist?

Some issues you will have to deal with, either way:

1. By illegal immigrants, you really mean Hispanic immigrants from Mexico. Not, say, Islamic Arabs from Saudi Arabia. The problem is in a sense unique to the U.S., because it borders a country that is much poorer than it is, and because that border is very badly policed, and because the sheer number of people who have already crossed it makes the notion of deporting them all unfeasible.

2. Given that the problem is geographic in nature and ongoing, how is guaranteeing legal status to anyone who slips across the border not going to exacerbate the social problems caused by having masses of newcomers arriving without any real skills, education, or grasp of English?

3. Given that mass deportation is probably unfeasible, and that mass executions would never fly with the American public, how is refusing to legalize the immigrants who are already here going to solve any of the social problems arising from having a class of people who are forced to be a drain on a system they cannot legally pay into?

This is the catch-22 America finds itself in. A nation is only a nation for so long as it preserves the integrity of its borders. Legalizing illegals would be an admission that it can't do that. On the other hand, it hasn't preserved the integrity of its borders, and so it now has to deal with a population of people who can only ever be a drain on society unless they are legalized.