The American Dream: Should US Reform Immigration Policies

Dec. 20, 2016
Communications P2
Akshat Dwivedi
The American Dream? I Think Not.
The American dream. The American dream is that any US citizen can put in an effort, and with some determination, end up successful. But unfortunately, that is not true anymore. This is due to the fact that immigrants, while illegal or legal, are destroying the American Dream piece by piece.This is why the US needs US citizens to take a stand, and reform immigration policies. Now.
One reason we should reform immigration policies is because many illegal immigrants enter the country posing a threat. One way those illegal immigrants pose a threat is by harming the US economy. For example, illegal immigrants cost the US 26.3 billion dollars a year while only paying

As of 2016, 11 million illegal immigrants reside in the US (Barbour 60). That number grows by 700,000 every year, these people are stealing jobs from fellow Americans, thrusting them into poverty.(Kane and Johnson). And adults are not the only ones who are crossing the border, in a span of 8 months 51,000 Unaccompanied Children were let into the US. (Costa et al.) These mass amounts of people being let into the United States mean that the current generation’s social security money is going to pay for these illegal immigrants, which results in their financial reserves being significantly less than what they should

One way to know that is because a lot of illegal immigrants are criminals. Criminal aliens are noncitizens who are residing inside the US and are convicted of a crime. Furthermore, from 2008 to 2014, 13,000 criminal aliens were released back into the US because their countries would not take them back. (Jeszeck). That means that in a span of 6 years we let 13,000 criminals walk free in the country, who in fact should have never entered the US in the first place. As of 2016, 2 million known criminal aliens resided inside of the US.(Costa et al.) That means for every 11 illegal immigrants, 2 are criminal aliens too, and those are only the known criminal aliens, there could be more we don’t know