Immigration

The assertion made by my oponent that "Individuals in other countries face horrible conditions and only enter the United States with the wish to help their families" and that "Americans and the American government choose to limit immigration to the United States strictly out of greed and racism" are incredibly far-fetched and cannot be held true for all illegal aliens. Immigragte to escape awful conditions at home can be done legally. The U.S. offers asylum and refugee status and will offer immigration visas to "people who are unable or unwilling to return to their home countries because of persecution or a wellfounded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion." There is no need for illegal immigration to escape persecution. An immigrant does not even wait and they can recieve asylum if they are already in America. These immigrants are fine and SHOULD be allowed into the country. It is the illegal aliens that must be targeted. On the topic of crime rates and the economy, illegal immigrants run a high cost. B. Lindsay Lowell, PhD, director of Policy Studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University stated that "There is a shadow side to the population that needs to be considered. It's real. U.S. immigration policy... has, with a wink and a nod, encouraged the growth of a low-rate sector that is supplied to a large degree by unauthorized workers. And in that regard, perhaps employers and consumers benefit, but as citizens we're abetting the growth of an underprivileged class, and as taxpayers, we are subsidizing employers... 17 percent, according to best estimate, of those in federal prisons are illegal aliens and they run up a substantial cost. This isn't news at all to the states that seek reimbursement. A roughly similar cost is found in federal courts. And payment for the treatment of the uninsured may run as high as $2.2 billion." 17% of prison populations may not seem that substantial but compared to only 3% of the American population being comprised of illegal immigrants, that number seems to grow. This shows that many illegal immigrants become exposed to crime. At the same time, the point made that about taxes is also skewed. In fact, illegal household create large net costs to the government. Steven A. Camarota, Ma, PhD, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies has supplied data stating that "Illegals Create Large Net Costs....When defense spending is not considered, illegal households are estimated to impose costs on the federal treasury of $6,949 a year or 58 percent of what other households received. When defense spending is included, their costs are only 46 percent those of other households. However, they pay only 28 percent as much in taxes as non-illegal households. As a result, the estimated net cost per illegal household was $2,736. Whether one sees this fiscal deficit as resulting from low tax payments or heavy use of services is a matter of perspective. As already discussed, illegal households comprise 3.6 percent of the total population, but...they account for an estimated 0.9 percent of taxes paid and 1.4 percent of costs." Clearly, illegal immigration has become a huge problem for the nation. The need to limit immigration is NOT based on racism and prejudice but on hard facts that illegal immigration is hurting our nation. http://immigration.procon.org... http://www.mdcathcon.org...