Illegal immigration is one of the major problems that US law enforcement agencies face. The problem is particularly serious in the Border States. These states include California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Law enforcement agencies monitor the entry of people via the border posts to limit the number of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants pose several problems. Illegal immigrants are highly likely to engage in drug trafficking. In addition, illegal immigration put more strain on the social amenities available to Americans. This is despite the fact that illegal immigrants do not pay taxes. Therefore, illegal immigrants rob off the US economy funds that the government could have uses in improving the welfare of legal citizens, who pay taxes. One of the methods that the US government uses to tackle illegal immigration is through workplace raids. However, workplace raids have been ineffective in reducing the number of illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigration greatly affects the American labor market. Illegal immigrants usually come to the US due to various factors that attract them. One of the major factors that help attract illegal immigrants is the high quality of life in the US. In addition, US employers pay employees wages that are far much higher than the wages in the native countries of the illegal immigrants. In addition, most of the illegal immigrants have family members who reside in the United States, whether legally or illegally. Illegal immigrants may move to America to reunite with their family members (Hanson 5). Family members are the people who provide the illegal immigrants with initial shelter and connections that enable them acquire jobs. Therefore, family members play a great part in illegal immigration.
-
0
Preparing Orders
-
0
Active Writers
-
0%
Positive Feedback
-
0
Support Agents
One of the main factors that attract illegal immigrants into the US is jobs. The American employment market has among the highest – if not the highest—wages in the world. Increase in the US level of wages and a decrease in employment rates helps to attract illegal immigrants (Yoshida 3). Most of the illegal immigrants perform lower-skilled job categories. The construction industry has the highest proportion of illegal immigrants (Corsi 109). However, there are extremely low levels of illegal immigrants in highly skilled job categories. People in the highly skilled job categories prefer to work legally rather than work in America illegally. In addition, more scrutiny of people who work in highly skilled job categories deters illegal immigrants from working in these job categories.
Illegal immigrants work in very poor conditions. Their employers usually give them very little pay without many of the benefits that legal employees are entitled. Illegal immigrants also work for very long hours. However, the illegal immigrants cannot report mistreatment to relevant authorities lest they risk deportation. This makes illegal immigrants ideal employees to the employers (Yannella 133). Employers are free to treat them as they wish without fear that employees may report them to labor organizations.
Therefore, illegal immigrants fulfill the needs of the employers efficiently. The aim of every organization is to reduce its production costs using whatever means at their disposal. Reduction of cost of production increases the competitiveness of the organization. Employers use illegal immigrants to reduce their costs of production (Bascio 122). Various companies continue to hire illegal immigrants oblivious of the legal repercussions they may experience due to the employment. Most companies are able to use loopholes in federal legislation that prohibits hiring of illegal immigrants (Bascio 121). The loopholes enable the companies avoid heavy penalties due to hiring of illegal employees.
Illegal immigrants significantly affect the American job market. Their willingness to work at extremely low wages depresses the wages that employers pay to legal employees. Low wages make legal employees unable to compete with the illegal employees in terms of wages. In addition, illegal employees deny Americans jobs (Corsi 108). At no time has the unemployment rate of the US be zero. Therefore, illegal employees increase the number of people looking for jobs thereby, increasing the reducing the chances of Americans getting the jobs they desire.
As explained in previous chapters, ‘magnets’ for illegal immigration are wages and willingness to reunite with family members. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempts to tackle the issue of wages by performing regular workplace raids in business premises that it suspects that it employs illegal immigrant (Gaines and Miller 164). The ICE sues employees that use illegal immigrants. Employers who employ illegal immigrants face sentences that include severe penalties or incarceration. Repercussions of employing illegal immigrants reduce the number of employers who are willing to employ illegal immigrants.
However, several parties are opposed to the workplace raids. These parties claim that workplace contravene the 4th amendment of the US constitution, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. In April 1984, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that the raids contravened the constitution (Arnold 368). Workplace raids lead to the seizure and deportation of employees of an organization. Workplace raids treat the employees as the parties who are on the wrong. However, the major culprits of illegal immigration are employers who are willing to employ the illegal aliens. Relevant authorizes should help to discourage employers from employing illegal immigrants. This may be through increasing penalties due to employment of illegal immigrants or enhancing cooperation with the employers. The government should help employers identify illegal immigrants as in some cases employers employ illegal immigrants unknowingly.
Save up to
25%!
We offer 10% more words per page than other websites, so actually you got 1 FREE page with every 10 ordered pages.
Together with 15% first order discount you get 25% OFF!
Workplace raids result in deportation of the illegal immigrants. This creates vacancies in the places of work. Ideally, legal employees should fill these vacancies. However, other illegal immigrants fill the majority of the vacancies that result from the deportation of the illegal aliens within a short time. This is because unemployed Americans are unwilling to take the jobs (Arnold 368). This clearly shows that workplace raids are ineffective in reducing the number of illegal immigrant employees.
In conclusion, illegal immigration continues to one of the major problems that Americans face. Illegal immigrants are an added burden to the American healthcare and the education system. The ICE uses workplace raids to reduce the number of illegal aliens in various business organizations. However, their effort seems to be unsuccessful in reducing the number of illegal immigrants. Cooperation between the government and the employers is the most efficient strategy that would help reduce the number of the illegal immigrants.