Immigrating to the US

Donis A. Belisario
May 29th, 2002

The United Nations calculate that there are more than 125 million people without home in the world today. Every day, other 10,000 people have to change residence due to wars and violence. Economical problems also force people to emigrate and migration has increased since the sixty's.

Even though the American Government is pushing the globalization, the merchandise mobility, information and money crossing the frontiers, it is also trying to restrict or to limit the movement of people. Many poor people in the countries of the third world have very few options, them only to emigrate illegally forcing.

Inside the United States, the average of salaries per hour has fallen gradually, but consistently. The corporations export production and work to poorer countries, which compete by way of low salaries, suppression of unions, inadequate rules about environment. Often, these measures are forced by the terms of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and International Trade Treaties. They also have been extending the poverty and creating a crisis in education, health and infrastructure of the poor countries.

But the situation for immigrants in the United States is not much better. The access to specific benefits varies from state to state. Illegal immigrants cannot receive certain basic benefits including: medical emergencies; immunizations and other programs of basic help.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, an immigrant usually contributes over $ 1,800 in taxes to what he or she receives in benefits. The Federal Government stays with approximately two-thirds more of the dollars from immigrants' taxes.

However, the state and towns provide most of the services that the immigrants use, the most remarkable being the education, the health and public attendance. As a result, states and towns are often forced to provide these services without enough funds.

In 1996, the American Congress passed three law proposals that integrated rules that limit the rights and immigrants' benefits. From 1996, states and local governments have added measures that limit the rights and immigrants' benefits to dissolve the well-known initiative as "Affirmative Action" limiting the access to social services and the bilingual education.

The process of entering legally in the USA and acquiring and maintaining the state of permanent residence has become more difficult, because of several recent legal decisions. Most of the resources directed to the immigration have only concentrated on the maintenance of laws, the construction of new detention spaces, the training and the mobilization of border patrols and other agents, and the use of high technology for the surveillance, in spite of violating human and civil rights.

We will conclude saying that in spite of all the strategies that the Government of the United States has implemented to restrict the increase of illegal immigrants, this demonstrated that the politicians of frontier control are less effective than those of interior. To this we add that the excessive use of force in the frontier, by part of the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) seems to respond more to the objective of obtaining big budgets that to the one of minimizing the number of illegal immigrants in the country.

We can also say, there is not definitive proof that the illegal immigrations are an eminently negative phenomenon for the receiving country. Therefore, we could affirm that, although this phenomenon should be controlled, economic reasons that justify its total elimination don't exist.