Running head: UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY

Final Paper: Undocumented Immigration and the Economy ENGL 112 Kara Weaver Professor Julie Kares April 23, 2013

IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY Undocumented immigrants have had a very adverse effect on our economy, with problems tracking expired visas, border protection, and finding illegal aliens once they enter the country. Undocumented immigrants not only weaken the employment opportunities of our country but also make already established American businesses and companies suffer due to being able to provide a cheaper source of work with the same quality outcome. This paper examines the specific causes of the downfall of our economy and how it relates to illegal

immigration, statistics of small business failure and its struggle to compete in a country that uses illegal businesses in order to pay less money, and I will also emphasize the importance of all the undocumented immigrants that are currently overcrowding our already swollen U.S. federal prison system be deported back to their respective countries, as well as the effect on our country when undocumented immigrants come here to commit heinous terrorist acts and how these acts effect the economy in the long run. Work visas and school visas bring many people in from all over the world, and give these people a great opportunity and a possible future to become naturalized citizens. In fact, nearly half of the nations estimated 12 million illegal immigrants actually entered the U.S. legally but overstayed their visa, according to a federal report (www.judicialwatch.org), avoiding becoming naturalized, law abiding, and tax paying citizens. This brings me to the point of how it eventually weakens the economy due to illegal businesses being opened, and the burden of the average U.S. citizen having to work for almost nothing to make their living due to competitive wages set out by illegal workers. The common blue collar man or woman working in America struggles to find work, and on a higher level, companies who have been in business for decades get put out of business due to the opening of illegal businesses running under the table type companies that are utilized by people all over the country to get more bang for their buck.

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Undocumented immigrants come to the United States to take jobs that offer them greater opportunity, and they are often welcomed by U.S. employers who are able to hire them for wages lower than they would have to pay to hire U.S. workers. This employment is illegal under a law enacted in 1986, but some employers ignore the law and hire illegal workers in the underground economy. Others simply accept fake employment documents and hire the illegal workers as if they were legal. Because there is no requirement to verify documents presented by workers, employers can easily evade compliance (http://www.fairus.org/). American owned businesses fail in their first year by a rate of 85% (http://www.startupbusinesshub.com/), imagine the causes of that failure? You have to hire employees, get a good customer base, and worry about paying a large amount of taxes leaving your business with not much of a profit if any at all. If you are an illegally owned business, you pay people under the table, supply no benefits, and do not pay taxes. This is a major profit gain for those doing this, and puts a big hurt on the honest citizens of the country trying to do it the right way that cannot thrive due to others beating them at the price game. Large corporations do depend on the ability to hire workers on a visa in order to make their companies survive. They come here, get a great opportunity to make some money for their family and then when the visa expires they go back to their respective country. In order to prevent undocumented immigrants from living and working here illegally the border must be protected more, and by saying that nothing works better than man-power, and by giving our law enforcement men and women an opportunity to not only have more jobs, but to protect our economy and fellow citizens jobs as well as our welfare. The overall goal is to ultimately have immigrants who come here for better opportunities, not to abuse the benefits they are likely to receive by maintaining and off the radar life after their visas expire, taking

IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY jobs from young Americans who have college degrees but no jobs, or by obtaining student visas and not actually attending school. With the decreased funds available for law enforcement agencies across the U.S. our

border patrol and Homeland security agencies are struggling as well. The lack of funding for new surveillance equipment is also creating certain areas of almost 2000 miles of fence, vulnerable by water, and air that is a potential route for illegal immigrants to trickle into the country. Deporting even just the illegal aliens that are in the U.S. prison system alone would take a huge weight off of the economy, the taxpayers, and the law enforcement budget. In 2000, a staggering 27% of all federal prison inmates we reported non-citizens (Leonhardt 2007). I think we can afford to turn these people over to their own country. Not only is there a problem with people committing crimes, but if you came here from a different country to break the law and be disrespectful, sorry but you can go back to where you came from and do that all day long. The severe importance of maintaining a strong presence along the U.S. border is clear. In 2009 alone, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized over 3.8 million pounds of marijuana, 206,246 pounds of cocaine, 4,398 pounds of heroin, and 15,810 pounds of methamphetamines (cbp.gov). Increased presence of Mexican drug cartels, human trafficking rings, and unnecessary and burdensome competition for U.S. jobs in a struggling economy are just some of the negative consequences that arise from a poorly patrolled border. The even more recent issue of immigration and tracking the visas of radical Islamic terrorists is a huge topic along with the immigration reform and the bipartisan Gang of Eight responsible for making it a fair bill that still gives foreigners a great opportunity to come here and live a good life, yet buckle down on the abusers of the system. Terrorist attacks from

IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY undocumented immigrants are hurting the economy as well. Its been over 11 years since

September 11th happened, on this tragic day 19 hijackers commandeered commercial airplanes to kill almost 3000 people and not just American citizens. These actions that day sparked an act of war that was unavoidable by our country, sending the country into a financial crisis that has helped our nations debt counter go through the roof. Imagine if these hijackers would have been tracked and deported due to expired visas and warrants? The 9/11 terrorist all came through the front door. None of them slipped over our border under cover of night. A routine check of expired visas would have allowed us to kick seven of the hijackers out of the country, including ringleader Mohamed Atta. Indeed, traffic police actually stopped Atta a two other hijackers months before 9/11. But the cops had no way of knowing either that they were on terror watch lists or that their visas had expired, so the terrorists were released (Morris 2007) In 2008, the conservative tally of debt was $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50 percent of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health care costs will total $600 billion to $900 billion. The social costs reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups are incalculable (Stiglitz 2011). Much of this blame gets pointed at former President Bush, but the way it should be looked at is a law enforcement failure and the failure of the rest of our government agencies for not tracking these dangerous people in order to prevent horrible things from happening, and thus not forcing ourselves in to an endless war. After you take routine background checks along with proper information in the police systems track able not just by the FBI and Homeland Security, but by all law enforcement entities and you would have had the prevention of the worst terrorist attack known to the United

IMMIGRATION AND THE ECONOMY States of America. These simple acts would not only save the lives of people, but the waste of funds in an expensive war and the horrors of injuries physically and mentally that plague our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airman for the rest of their lives.

In conclusion, I hope you will see the main points of this paper as a simple explanation of how undocumented immigrants and expired visas can be detrimental to the U.S. economy, and that those things also are a warning sign to law enforcement agencies, not a tool for profiling or bigotry. That also the United States should not just cut off the people that want to get visas and come here for school or work purposes, but fix the problem of those who have come here and not left or renewed their visas to stay here illegally, making sure that these issues are available to all law enforcement, even on regular traffic stops, can help weed out the individuals that give immigrants a bad name. Protecting our borders is not only useful to us in the war against drugs, gangs, and human trafficking that overflows into our country weakening our economy, but in the war on terror. When we successfully combat these migrants abusing our lax immigration standards and planning terror attacks, it significantly lowers our governments chance of spending ungodly amounts of money on chasing undocumented immigrants and going to war with other countries as well.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection - Publications. (2012). CBP.gov - home page. Retrieved April 19, 2013, from http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/publications/admin/ Wagner, D. (2011, February 9). USA Today. U.S., Mexico Police unite to fight border crime. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-02-09-usmexico-police-border_N.htm