Immigrant State

The state of immigration to the United States is one of absolute travesty. A country founded by immigrants has, for its duration, frowned upon immigrants even to this day. Just this past week President Biden has dispatched FEMA aid to the border in an attempt to reunite immigrant children who were detained and separated from their families. Much of this effort has been and will likely continue to be in vain. While this is certainly a tragedy and needs to be addressed I have to say that I am ultimately disappointed in the American people for how hypocritical we are when it comes to immigration on several different points.

Multiple times in my life I have heard that immigrants are bad because they will take our jobs, our healthcare, our homes. This is the fear of the unknown and is largely misplaced and utterly archaic in its premise. For a country that prides itself on being “capitalistic” and that “competition in business is good”, we sure are afraid of competition when it comes to our own jobs. If we were to apply the same logic we use to prop up major businesses and use it towards our own blue collar workers then it would only go to say, more competition in the job market is better. Additionally, many immigrants are not taking white collar jobs, many are forced to take blue collar and heavy manual labor jobs. So to me, the idea that we should make immigration as painful as possible to protect the jobs of those who are already here is asinine. If you are worried about losing your job to an immigrant who you claim lacks job skills and an education then maybe that should reflect on your own job performance. Perhaps we should look deeper into educating ourselves, gaining new skills and career options, and renew the entrepreneurial spirit, not keep others out who are willing to work hard in search of safety and a better life for their families.

Ironically to this point, the American government has a long history of promoting the forceful immigration and assimilation of highly skilled workers that often occupy our top jobs in medicine and science. Jobs that are associated with the highest pay grades and satisfaction. It wasn’t so long ago that we were absconding with German scientists in an effort to better our national defense. Is this white collar immigration any better than those who are carrying all of their belongings to the border and begging for help? Besides, since when did we become the country to no longer aspire to help those in need? We talk the talk but have, for most of our history, not walked the walk.

Aid at the border

While President Biden has promised to deliver FEMA aid to the border there are some stipulations on the level of aid the organization can deliver without the formal request of the Texas Governor. According to the New York Times, “Roughly 4,000 youths were in Customs and Border Protection facilities this week, more than the roughly 2,600 children and teenagers held in such detention facilities in June 2019. Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said last week that 9,457 children, including teenagers, were detained at the border without a parent in February, up from more than 5,800 in January.” For a moment, think about the size of your highschool, not just your graduating class, your entire highschool, now, double that or even triple it and that’s how many children were without parents at the border seeking help alone just last month. Put into perspective that if your entire highschool lost their parents, they would sleep on the floor of the school gymnasium and get 1–2 meals a day with sparse water and little to no medical care. Imagine how your community would rally around those children. Do we not rally around these children because they are more often or not brown?

Aid has been slowly increasing to the border under the new administration but in the same NY Times article a representative was quoted saying, “‘I have serious concerns that this will strain a FEMA work force and budget that is already spread thin,” he said, “with a pandemic response ongoing and the Atlantic hurricane season less than three months away.’” This simply highlights the BandAid we are attempting to close a gaping wound with. For our fiscally and socially conservative folks out there, without actually fixing our immigration system we will continue to drain taxpayer resources on a recurring and treatable problem, something I suspect we can all agree doesn’t seem like the best use of resources.

A broken immigration system

Answer the following questions:

1. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
2. If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
3. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States now?
4. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
5. When was the Constitution written?
6. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers
7. Who was President during World War I?
8. Why does the flag have 13 stripes?
9. Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States
10. Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the states. What is one power of the states?

These are sample questions from the US immigration test. There are a hundred total possible questions you can be asked. If you don’t score at least a 6/10 you fail the test and are not allowed to receive citizenship that day. So how’d you do… the answer key is below on the last page.

While I am certainly a history buff and see tremendous value in learning about our pasts in a way to avoid repeating mistakes and understanding how we arrived at the society we have today, I also am certainly not a fan of such hoops to acquire citizenship. Beyond the citizenship test, there is paperwork that must be filed specifically and correctly without error, there are waiting periods and a multitude of other hoops to jump through. An easier path to citizenship would likely prevent issues at the border, allow for a more cohesive societal feel and generally just be nice for those seeking help. For reference I recently applied for an emergency nursing license in Connecticut to help transition my practice. This was processed and awarded within two weeks yet a green card application can take months. Our society would rather rush the license of the person pushing your sedating medications than that of the person who is fleeing poverty and violence.

Many people raise concerns over vetting foreigners under the guize of terrorism or fear of espionage etc… There were 95 deaths from terrorism both foreign and domestic in the United States in 2017 according to this world report. On average deer kill 200 people a year via car accidents, bees kill 100 people via sting reaction, cows kill 20 people a year on average and while not quite as much as terrorists in the US, still, cows. All of this just to say the fear of foreigners bringing harm to you is just as irrational as wanting to lock up all the deer in the U.S. for fear of a car accident.

If that wasn’t facetious enough for you, here is some real data on immigrant crime. This recent study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of The United States (PNAS) shows, “That undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes”.

What to do, what to do?

Beyond being humane, generally against child murder and trying to be a relatively good person I think it goes without saying that we should pursue significant legislation to ease the path for citizenship, allow for more temporary green cards and generally do a better job assimilating our immigrants into society as frankly, we were all born of immigrant families at some point and just because it may have been hard for them doesn’t mean it should be for everyone else. That’s why we are always striving for a better life for our children isn’t it?

-The SubjectMatters Team

Answer Key

1: 435 members

2: The Speaker of the House

3: Justice Roberts

4: Thomas Jefferson

5: 1787

6: ▪ (James) Madison ▪ (Alexander) Hamilton ▪ (John) Jay ▪ Publius

7: Woodrow Wilson

8: To represent the original 13 colonies

9: Mississippi and Missouri

10: provide schooling and education ▪ provide protection (police) ▪ provide safety (fire departments) ▪ give a driver’s license ▪ approve zoning and land use