1005091

3/15/16
Period 5
#1
Immigration In America
A serious political issue in today's society is immigration in America. In the last
few decades, There are different positions on the subject of allowing immigration to
happen in America. Getting rid of immigration altogether is a difficult option considering
America has a deep rooted history with the subject. this is an important issue that can
not be ignored, fortunately there are specific solutions that have the potential to solve
the issue.
Surprisingly, according to Daniel T. Griswold, this amount of immigration is
nothing in compare to the rate of immigration in America accounted for during the great
Migration that occurred in between 1890-1914.

In recent years there has been an increase in illegal immigration of

unaccompanied minors. According to Michael Scherer, in his article, Flight of the
Children, he claims, For the smugglers on the southern border of the U.S., children are
easier and more profitable cargo than grown ups. They are more easier to handle due
to the fact, when they cross the Rio Grande they do not need to evade the authorities.
Unlike adults, many are immediately sent to live with some relative in the U.S,
meanwhile their cases are being handled in the courts. According to the article, in the
year 2014, approximately 9,850 unaccompanied minors, from El Salvador, traveled to
the U.S. which is a huge increases from the year of 2009, as of which 1,221 minors

were counted. The same increase happened to the immigration of unaccompanied

minors from Guatemala and Honduras. Surprisingly, the opposite is happening with
Mexico as there is seen a huge drop of unaccompanied minors migrating to the U.S.
from the same years.

Unfortunately there are many reasons why these minors are coming to the U.S. Their
countries can be facing high violent crime rates, economic problems, and the most
common being drug wars caused by feuding cartels. According to Loan Grillo, in his
article Desperate Voyagers, Grillo states, more than 43,000 unaccompanied minors
from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in the year of 2014, traveled illegally to the
United States, which is ten times as large as in 2011. According to the surveys by the
U.N., many are leaving for different reasons, however, the most common being to flee
from gang violence that is shaping their countries in the most negative way.

On February 8, 2013, Whitney A. Reitz proposed to bring back, an adoption program for
orphaned children who have faced horrible tragedies in their lives. Speaking on behalf
of senator Mary Landrieu, Reitz brought, to the attention of the Pepperdine Law School
International Adoption Conference in Malibu, California, the potential alternative for
orphaned children that have lost everything by unfortunate tragedies. Reitz mentions his
work with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services to establish an adoption
program. She brings up the fact that institutions are not like mothers, they do not
nurture, love or protect a child like a mother would. In addition, Reitzs also states there
are institutions that simply do not care for the children at all. Working with immigration
services Reitz has personally worked on hundreds to thousands of adoption cases. She

has visited many countries where the children come from and has seen first hand what
is going on in those countries. She shares stories of inspirational cases that has
personally touched her heart. One being an American family who would simply not give
up on their soon to be son, Wilson, who they first met in 2007. They visited Wilson every
six weeks for about six years; bringing him presents for Wilson and his friends, and
when Wilson developed a chronic skin condition, they went as far to smuggle
prescription medication for him to treat him. The American family was still not able to
bring Wilson home but that has not stopped them from fighting to keep their son. Reitz
referred to the Guatamala adoption program, even though many say it was a horrible
mistake for all the harm that it caused, Reitz says differently. She states that we are only
focusing on the bad part and are overlooking all the good that was caused by the
program. She claims eliminating the program was not the solution and that it was
canceled in order to prevent any more bad from happening. She understands the good
and the bad of these adoption programs, after all, every immigration program are flawed
to a certain degree. She can not rule out the possibility of bad things happening,
because it is the matter of making human judgement and people are capable of lying
and deceiving. Reitz says it does not matter because the good of adoption programs far
outweighs the bad. She states since 1999, 234,000 children from around the world have
been adopted and immigrated to live with their families here in the United States. She
states the scientific fact living in an institution is no way to live and is simply brain killing.
She brings up the sad fact that many families are wanting to adopt, however due to
being denied by bureaucratic hurdles they are not able to. Surprisingly according to
Russias own reports approximately 95% of russian children who grow up in their

orphanages end up on the streets, most of them end up dead by their eighteenth
birthday.
Open border policies that encourage immigration has the potential to increase our
economy. Universities everywhere in the United States have been searching for the
brightest minds however, they do not hold back from searching outside the U.S.
Surprisingly foreign students have occupied the top spots in the searches. According to
statistics National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates, in between 1960
and the the last decade, the share of PhDs of foreign student increased dramatically in
many different subjects, including mathematics, computer science, and engineering.
According to the same survey