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Adolfo Levano Steven Hall English 1010 April 7th, 2014

What should immigration reform in the United States look like? Glen, Patrick. Health Care and the Illegal Immigrant. Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine 23.1 (2013): 197-236. Online. The United States has passed the Affordable Care Act which states that every American should have some type of health care coverage and provides financial assistance for lower income Americans to meet this requirement. As far as also covering illegal immigrants that live within our borders, The United States is not required to give them any health care coverage; however it may be a good public policy and it could benefit the country more than we think. There are a couple of reasons why including illegal immigrants into our health system can benefit the United States. First of all, the cost of providing medical care in emergency rooms in a lot higher than regular checkups or preventive care and illegal immigrants without health care coverage are more likely to use emergency rooms thus adding unnecessary costs to the healthcare system. Second, the more healthy people in an insurance pool, the cheaper the health premiums are for everyone in that insurance plan. Statistics show that illegal immigrants are healthier than the average population of the United States and for that reason including them in the health care system could bring insurance premiums down.

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Hinojosa-Ojeda, Raul. The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CATO Journal 32.1 (2012): 175-199. Online. The current immigration laws in the United States are based strictly on enforcementonly tactics; however, this strategy does not provide the greatest economic benefit to the United States. The author of this article applies the computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to determine the economic benefits of different immigration approaches. The first one is based on a comprehensive immigration reform and includes a path to legal status and a more flexible way to adjust immigration based on labor demand in the future. By following this approach the economic model showed that the United States GDP would increase 1.5 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. More importantly, it shows that Americans as well as immigrants recently legalized would see higher wages. The second immigration approach that was applied to the CGE model is based on giving the illegal immigrant a way to temporarily work in the United States without a path to becoming legal. Like the first approach this scenario would increase the United States GDP however, it will not be as lucrative. Over the next 10 years, it will increase 792 billion dollars. Unfortunately, we would see lower wages for Americans and new immigrant workers. The third and final immigration approach is based on deporting every illegal immigrant and closing down the boarders. This scenario is based on Arizona law SB-1070, which was passed in Arizona however, not enforced because it has some constitutional concerns. The economic model showed that there would be a loss of 2.6 trillion dollars to the

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United States GDP plus what it costs to deport so many people. Also the less skilled American workers would have higher wages and the higher skilled Americans would not only lose wages but also see a decrease in jobs. Molina, Keila E. and Lynne Marie Kohm. Are we there yet? Immigration Reform for Children Left Behind. Berkeley La Raza Law Journal 23 (2013): 77-108. Online. Unfortunately, in our current immigration laws we have forgotten about one of the most important pieces of our society which is the family, the nucleus of society. We have forgotten the biggest victims of immigration laws, children of immigrants that are left behind to the care of our state social services when their parents are deported. Rather than children being the victims of immigration laws, they should be the top consideration as we look at immigration reform. For now we see that the federal government and state governments are not working together to protect the future of children. Instead, the federal government is responsible for deporting individuals, which often leave children behind for the state to take care of, but the federal government does not give any help or resources to states for the care of these children. In conclusion, I ask myself What should immigration reform in the United States look like? Immigration reform should be based on how we can make this country a better place. If the bottom line is to improve the American economy and American society, then we need to consider drastic measures such as health care coverage and paths to citizenship in immigration reform, and always protect families and put children first.