Thursday, August 2, 2007

Immigrant Compromise and Equality

Immigrants seem to be one of the biggest problems for politicians. People demand new policies and are even protesting against illegal immigrants. A new compromise brought about on Capitol Hill proposes to make illegal immigrant workers “legal” immigrant workers. The system usually targets the immigrants for their illegal status and actions, but do nothing to target employers who provide the work for them. On the other hand, employers even benefit from this by paying immigrants lower wages for doing some of the toughest jobs. With this plan, Congress could approve a biometric card that employers could use to verify a worker's legality and cut down on some of the abuses that immigrant workers go through. At the same time, this plan targets employers hiring illegal workers and immigrants. More on this compromise here: Immigration Battlefronts: Washington can get on track with compromise.

This would at least be a step to make sure that immigrants are here legally and at the same time protect them from employers. I come from an immigrant family, but we understand there’s a system and we play by the rules. My mother is now a naturalized citizen and we are natural born citizens, yet we still face discrimination. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with allowing immigrants to work here, but its society that needs to accept immigrants as people and not things. The system is used and abused to benefit the unions and “mass society” but now that minorities are growing here in America, there is a bigger incentive to protect their rights as well.

New polls show that minority votes and swinger votes are very important and may even decide upcoming elections. Minority groups are going to follow politicians that have similar ideologies and take them into consideration. This just goes on to demonstrate how politicians and the system always work for their “self and personal interests.” Without the importance of minority voters that are now becoming the majority, then no attention would be put on them or even be targeted for political support.

The system doesn’t work for the people, its working to protect their interests and keep their control of government and the people. This is just another reason why I don’t believe the system works for the people. Everyone in charge always uses the system to their advantage. Celebrities use their status to get away with breaking the law. For example Mel Gibson and Lindsey Lohan, they received special treatment when DWI. If this would have been any other citizen, they would be treated violently and immediately put in jail. The system is just corrupt and no one is entirely equally protected. Until equality for a citizens is truly enforced, the system will be trusted and maybe who knows reduce crime altogether.

3 comments:

Kris S. Seago said...

I think you're on to something really important here. If we wanted to "solve" the immigrant worker problem (assuming there is a "problem"), we can place the burden and punishment on employers. We benefit from the lower wages paid illegal workers yet complain about job theft. We can't have it both ways.

Moonjung Kim said...

Nowadays, the numbers of immigrants from various countries are keep increasing each year. Also the numbers of illegal immigrants are increasing as well in many sates within the United States. This is especially true in the case of Border States. While this holds as fact, the article “Immigrant Compromise and Equality” have brought very important point about immigrant and equality.
I recommend this article since it talks about current discrimination problems against illegal immigrants vs. their employers and it further points out about immigrants’ equality.

Let’s take an example of the immigrant workers’ with Mexican immigrant workers.
These days, Mexican immigration on the United States has great impact on US economy and it has been a major focus of policymakers as the impact of the Mexican immigration grows every year.
Mexican immigrant worker in the US grew by 123 percent while the number of American workers grew by 13 percent in the 1990s. This means that the US employers are continue to seek to hire large number of Mexican workers due to the shortage of workers in the US.
As the article pointed out that the new compromise tries to make illegal immigrant workers legal immigrant workers. Many times, systems in the US usually try to benefit the illegal immigrants like this system or by providing them permanent resident status, while they do almost nothing for the employers or legal immigrant, who actually provide the work and funds. On the other hand, some employers are trying to benefit from the illegal immigrants by paying them lower wages than other employees.
Thus using biometric card will help employers to hire legal immigrant workers and hopefully reduce much discrimination against illegal immigrants. But it’ll be almost impossible to change all illegal immigrants to legal immigrants.

But I think it is better for the US to focus more on preventing illegal immigrant workers than focusing on changing their status from illegal to legal. To do this, the US may reduce conditions that force employers to unknowingly hire immigrant workers pressured to enter the US illegally to obtain a job.

As the article said, it is very important for people to have non-biased views on immigrants. No matter how many systems are launched, discrimination will exist unless people accept immigrants as people just like them. Otherwise, system will fail by people and doesn’t work for people like the article said. If employers don’t accept immigrants as people, then they will figure some ways to benefit themselves out of the system.
Thus, it will be crucial for citizens to accept immigrants as equal as they are in order for the prevention of illegal immigrants and the many systems for immigrant workers to properly work, which will decrease discriminations against immigrant workers in turn.

Moonjung Kim said...

Hi!
This is very nice article you wrote. It made me to think about immigrants once again and their importance in the US economy.