Causes of Illegal Immigration in the United States

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Illegal Immigration
Illegal immigration means illegal entry of an individual in another nation's border without the government permission. Foreign national immigrants include people who continue staying in a certain country even after their visa has expired. However, people who stay in another nation illegally lives under strict restrictions and also a high risk of being deported or even detained. Illegal immigration is caused by poverty, trade liberalization, wars and also overpopulation. However, illegal immigration results to slavery, labor exploitation as well as kidnapping. Recently in the United States, the number of immigrants has risen, Mexico having the greatest majority of illegal immigrants. Accordingly, the paper will discuss illegal immigration in the United States. This includes the causes and consequences of illegal immigration. Finally, the paper will discuss ways of limiting illegal immigration.
Illegal Immigration in the United States
In the early 20th century, the United States had open borders and during that period, immigration was legal. However, in1924, the Immigration Act was initiated which enacted visa requirement for immigrants from other countries. Since then, there have been a number of illegal immigrants in the United States. Many of the undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. through the Mexico border and also through the Pacific Ocean. The largest number of illegal immigrants resides in Mexico where nearly one of two immigrants lives (Francisco 185). However, in 2009, the number of unauthorized immigrants was 11 million which represented 3.4% the total population of the United States (Jonson and Laura 2). Illegal immigration has been suggested to raise the size of the economy in the U.S and also subsidize more to the U.S tax revenue. Research shows that illegal immigration does not contribute much to the crime rate in the United States and therefore legalizing illegal immigrants would maximize the gross domestic product in the U.S.
Causes of Illegal Immigration in the United States
There are various inducements that draw immigrants to the United States. However, there are huge numbers of unlawful immigrants who live in the U.S. and the number continues to rise as time goes. Many of the immigrants from undeveloped countries come to the U.S. illegally to seek for better-paying employment. However, most of the U.S adults are educated thus do not take part in low-skilled labor, therefore, the United States employers hire illegal immigrants at a low minimum wage in their food processing, construction, and maintenance jobs (Hanson 5). It is therefore evident that America is a well-developed country economically and politically one of the factors that drive immigrants to the U.S employers. The employers also take advantage of the cheap labor offered by these immigrants. Since 1986, it has been prohibited to knowledgeably hire illegal immigrants and the law requires employers to check whether documents offered by employees are autentic (Seelke 67). However, there are no legal mechanisms for employers to prove the validity of this documents which has resulted in more illegal immigrants securing jobs in the United States and settling there. For instance, in Central America and Mexico, most of the illegal immigrants came because of economic reasons. The Asian immigrants who settled in the United States came because of economic activities.
Illegal immigration in the United States also happens because of insufficient legal economic immigration channels. The United States immigration system that was developed in 1965 only offers few channels for legal migration, especially for low-skilled individuals (Seelke 102). This channels only permits high-skilled workers to have legal and permanent immigration, therefore, claiming to be protecting the American employees from competition with other foreign workers. Currently, the United States system permits only 675,000 immigrants to the U.S. yearly making it hard for low-skilled immigrants into this country (Seelke 89). However, due to the shortage of legal immigration channels, economic incentives have illegally drawn large numbers of low-skilled workers and settled in the United States.
Moreover, unauthorized immigration in the United States has been as a result of civil war. For instance, Colombia has been in civil war for nearly 52 years which resulted in around 7.6 million people to migrate to other countries (Hanson 145). However, the United States was a destination for many immigrants from Colombia where nearly 150,000 Colombians settled in the U.S. Most of the immigrants embedded in this country illegally and some of them have been here holding the largest number of immigrants' population in the United States (Hanson 156). However, in 2014, the estimated number of Colombian immigrants in America was 1.2 million people. Moreover, there are many Salvador and Guatemala immigrants in Central American who immigrated as a result of Cold War and civil wars (Menjívar 1001).
Effects of Illegal Immigration in the United States
Illegal immigration in the United States is basically referred to violating the law of States (Palmer 60). Nonetheless, unauthorized immigrants come with nega...