In the year 2012, there was an estimated 11.4 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. I am arguing that these undocumented immigrants (if they contribute positively to the United States) should not be hunted down, jailed, then sent back to the country they came from. I will show how illegal immigrants are beneficial to the United States.
During the American Civil War, slaves would be abandoned by their slave owners once the fight between the North and the South would be fought on their plantation. These slaves would seek refuge with the Union soldiers at camps. A specific case of this would be at Fort Monroe in 1861. Benjamin Butler, a general for the Union Army, took in three slaves that had escaped confederate control. General Butler had them working on the fort, helping the Union soldiers with maintenance jobs. In a letter that Butler writes to the Secretary of War, he describes that the escaped slaves were immensely helpful with their work on the fort. Butler says that they saved the soldiers’ energy by taking a little work off their hands. He called them “Contrabands of War” in the letter, starting the nickname for escaped slaves that worked for the Union for a cheap price. Letting the slaves in Union camps was a big problem due to the Fugitive slave act of 1850 that made it illegal for them to not return the slaves back to their owners. The slaves were seen as property, not as humans. The escaped slaves were illegally immigrating into the North, and the North was illegally harboring these escaped slaves. Jumping to current events, the United States has always been extremely concerned with illegal immigrants coming into the country. With the recent Trump campaign and presidential election, illegal immigrants have been painted as “criminals” or “bad hombres” by Donald Trump. This creates a bad image for illegal immigrants. We do not see them as humans, we see them as criminals like the South saw the escaped slaves as property. While there are problems with illegal immigration, the benefits to illegal immigration outweigh the problems.
Undocumented immigrants contribute greatly to the work force. The United States need undocumented immigrants in the workforce. Without them in the workforce, there would be a reduction of economic growth. This reduction would make out to be around $250 billion dollars. But that data is not coming from undocumented immigrants voluntarily leaving the United States. The reduction of economic growth comes from mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Mass deportations do the exact opposite of what they are supposed to do. According Cato, getting rid of undocumented immigrants reduces the workforce and labor input by 1.6 percent. “Employment of U.S. workers falls slightly as more of them shift to lower-skilled occupations with higher structural unemployment rates. Certain industries contract and others expand, although the changes are not dramatic..” This quote shows how undocumented immigrants contribute to the workforce. Although it is a slight difference, it still affects US workers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture states that, “about half of the hired workers employed in U.S. crop agriculture were unauthorized” and that if any reform were to happen, it would hurt the agriculture business.
Undocumented immigrants should not be hunted down and deported because it exposes United States natives to different cultures. In this graph, it is shown that undocumented immigrants come from all over the world, not just Mexico and Central America. Because only seventeen percent of US citizens have passports, it is not a bad thing to have multiple cultures living amongst the US population since nobody really leaves the country.
The most important reason on why we should not hunt down undocumented immigrants is because they help the US economy. The argument that undocumented immigrants hurt the economy because they do not pay their taxes is just not true. According to ITEP, they found that “Undocumented immigrants contribute significantly to state and local taxes, collectively paying an estimated $11.64 billion a year”. This shows that undocumented immigrants are not taking tax payers’ dollars. They are contributing to the United States’ economy by paying their taxes. Another way undocumented immigrants contribute to the economy is that they lower prices for consumers. In 2009, the National Milk Producers Federation found that milk prices would nearly double milk prices. This shows how undocumented immigrants help the US consumers.
Some might argue that it is against the law to live in the US without legal permission. This is true, I do believe in a strong border and not letting people come in and out of the US as they please. However, many illegal immigrants are staying here past the time their visa expired. Over 700,000 of illegal immigrants are illegal because they are extending their stay. That is a little less than ten percent of the whole undocumented population. These people are no threat to anyone and are contributing to the workforce. ICE spends about $10,000 on each deportee according to USA Today. Therefore, it is a waste of time and resources to hunt down these people.
Another argument is that illegal immigration is a big terrorist threat to the US. This is a reasonable argument because of how dangerous Northern Mexico is and the extreme gang activity that is involved there. But, there are no overwhelming reports of undocumented immigrants committing more crimes than a legal US citizen. The terrorists who crashed into the WTC came here legally.
In conclusion, Illegal immigration should not be one of the nation’s worst fear. It has more pros than cons. Immigrants boost the economy, help the US citizens be exposed to other cultures, and they contribute to the workforce heavily. In my opinion, if the illegal immigrants are adopting American values, not wasting welfare money, and contributing to the workforce, they should be able to stay. I believe that there is an overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants who are helping the US out, and the ones that are not contributing to the United States’ wellbeing should be hunted down. Illegal immigrants are people working for a better life, to take that away from them is un-American.
