Argumentative Essay On Immigration

The overall current status of our immigration policy is that, while it has been effective overall, it still isn’t perfect. There are various areas in which the policy could be improved, especially given what has happened in recent events, such as the illegal immigrant crisis of this year. However, the most important thing to consider is its negative effects on the individuals themselves who try to emigrate into the country every year. One of the most significant issues within immigration are the Visa Backlogs: currently, the immigration policy puts caps for every country of origin, and for certain visa categories. But because of those caps, there has been an overwhelming total of 4.1 million applicants (as of 2022) still waiting to be accepted,

Some immigrants could be time-critical, leaving their home country for various reasons, such as economic turmoil, and having to possibly wait years could make their situations even more desolate. Along with this, there are “around 10 million undocumented immigrants living and working in communities across the United States” (American Progress), and without proper documentation, they have also not properly contributed to our country. If a clear pathway to citizenship for these undocumented immigrants were to be created, it would not only improve the lives of those people, but it’ll also boost the economy in a very robust way, possibly leading to hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and possibly even up to a trillion dollars in GDP increase over a decade (American Progress). As well as considering that, we should also cite how these immigration policies have affected the U.S. as a whole too. Currently, immigrants contribute a lot to the U.S. economy, being a strong driving presence in the employed workforce for multiple sectors of the economy alone. However, this has been directly affected by the same immigration policies that affect the immigrants

For instance, the 2010s “saw the slowest population growth of any decade since the 1930s” (FWD.us). This has the onset to cause issues, especially with maintaining the senior-to-working-age ratio as well as fiscal programs such as Social Security. The only way to prevent the U.S. economy from meeting a fate similar to that of Japan or China would be to increase our future immigration. Not only would this strengthen our population, but it will also help us “remain globally competitive with other economies on a global scale”