immigration control

I think that Immigration should be a controlled process, not just for the sake of Americans but for the immigrants as well. Immigration is such a vast and hotly debated issue that leaving it up to individual states would inevitably result in conflict: Texas demanding that California reimburse them for the money the state lost when illegal aliens who got in through the California boarder, started working in Texas, and so on. Thus immigration should be left up to the federal government, specifically the DEA. Giving the DEA official jurisdiction would help focus efforts on one of the major sources of, and problems with illegal immigration, which is too often overlooked in discussions such as ours, the Mexican-American drug trade. Cutting this trade route, while resource and time intensive, would eliminate much of the crime and violence seen near the Mexican boarder, most likely on both sides.

The other major problem besides drugs is of course work. The congressional bill to allow immigrants to work toward citizenship in a sector of America’s job market that’s hurting, i.e. lacking people, yet usually requires little training, is a plan that, as far as I can perceive, will benefit everyone. To truly make this plan work however, the financial expenses and time required by immigrants to legal enter the country must be lessened perhaps making legal channels become more feasible than illegal ones, if possible. Having many legal, rather than illegal immigrants would make it easier for the government to oversee the quality and safety of the jobs in which immigrants work. Without the ability to exploit immigrant workers, businesses would quit hiring them exclusively, and American unemployment would lessen. This would likely have the affect of funneling immigrants into sectors such as farming, as would this congressional bill. The revival of American farm production would strengthen the U.S. economy, and perhaps lead to the revival of U.S. production in other fields as well.