Immigration Reform Border Wall in a Border Town

The Impact of Immigration on the United States

The business world, the media, and policymakers have all given immigration a great deal of attention. The current immigration reform may give illegal immigrants in the United States a road to citizenship (Sequeira, Nathan, and Nancy 12). People have tried to dispute whether immigration benefits or damages the United States on various discussion boards. It is necessary to remember that illegal immigration has played a significant role in the expansion of the American economy, including the agriculture industry among other sectors. Primarily, critical areas of the United States economy such as manufacturing and agriculture entirely depend on an illegal immigrant who provides cheap labour. A report by Susan Combs states that if the illegal immigrants were not in Texas, the workforce in the States would decrease by 6.3% meaning that the gross product of Texas would decrease by 2.1% (Sequeira, Nathan, and Nancy 18). Similarly, the report goes on to say that more than half of the workers employed in the United Sates crop agriculture were immigrants with most of them coming from Mexico.

The Contributions of Immigrants

Moreover, the immense strain on money spent on welfare, and social services do not match the contribution made by the legal and illegal immigrants (Sequeira, Nathan, and Nancy 9). The immigrants contribute a lot of taxes to the government, and the long-term tax revenues from the immigrant exceed the cost of service provides to them. This is to say that immigrant benefit the United Sates.

Challenges Faced by Immigrants

What challenges immigrants face

Immigrants in the United States face a lot of problems which include firstly, cultural barriers. Most of the immigrants coming into the United Sates are not familiar will the cultural practice in the country. This becomes very hard for them to integrate with other people in the community, and it takes a long time before they get to learn and accept the cultural practices in the U.S. Secondly, the language barrier, the U.S is not a multicultural nation, and the primary language in id English (Scranton et al. 456). Most of the people coming to the U.S do not originate from a country that speaks English as their national language. For instance, most of the immigrants are from Mexico which is a Spanish speaking country. This means they will have a hard time communicating with United States citizens. Other challenges the immigrants face include transportation, difficulty in accessing social services, low paying jobs, security of work, and difficulty in obtaining housing.

The Symbolism of the Wall

Symbolism of the wall

The building of the wall has a lot of symbolic meaning to the people of both nations. The individuals in the United States view the wall as a way of keeping away illegal immigrants in the country who come to take the jobs of the residents (Hooghe and Sofie 30). On the other side, it tells the people from Mexico; you are not welcomed to our country which is a bad thing as they are the immediate neighbors. The building of the wall mainly negates the ideas that the problem of immigration should be solved comprehensively, and it should look past the border security. The main idea should be looking for a long term practical solution to the problem not only for immigration to for the cause of immigration or the need of more workers to supplement the reducing United States workforce. The building of the wall will affect the economic and agricultural sector of the U.S as they heavily rely on the cheap labor provided by the immigrants.

Works cited

Hooghe, Marc, and Sofie Marien. “The wall with Mexico is a utopian project for Trump’s supporters.” USApp–American Politics and Policy Blog (2016).

Scranton, Audrey, et al. “Networks of Passing: Experiences of Undocumented Latin American Immigrants’ Identity Negotiation.” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 45.6 (2016): 449-469.

Sequeira, Sandra, Nathan Nunn, and Nancy Qian. Migrants and the Making of America: The Short-and Long-Run Effects of Immigration during the Age of Mass Migration. No. w23289. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017.