Immigration Essay

Immigration

There has been a debate on immigration for years on how to fix it or just improve our existing policies. Recently President Obama gave his resolution to the problem by allowing undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for more than five years to stay in the United States without penalty as long as they start the process to become legalized citizens and start paying taxes. According to President Obama, this is a start to a change in policy for immigration.

President Obama in his address talked about changing immigration policies, but it was more so for the undocumented immigrants that have been living in the United States for years.  If policies are going to be changing, there needs to be changes in the policies for all incoming immigrants as well as the undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People immigrate to the United States for many different reasons. They immigrate for employment, for academia, or taking refuge because their home is in chaos. Should preference be given to someone because they hold a degree in an area we could use more professionals in? I don’t think that should be a reason to allow or not allow a person to immigrate to our country. However, there needs to be balance in the people who immigrate, we do not want to just take the most intelligent or the poorest. In order to keep the country viable, the immigrants that are coming into the United States need to be a mix of intelligence, both rich and poor, and we also need to help those that are in dire need of refuge.

I don’t think that any preference should be given to one person over another because of the country they are from. We are a land of many races and many different cultures, we should welcome all nations. I understand that there are people, like refugees, that need to immigrate in large groups to the United States because their country is in war. Those immigrants might get preferential treatment because of humanitarian side of the situation. So, there are times  the needs of certain peoples need to be given priority. But if we are looking at individual or families immigrating to the United States, we should not give one race or nationality preference over the other. They need to submit their application like everyone else and wait their turn.