Immigration

By Jason Corea

Introduction

Immigration is something really strict in the United States. And many people have different views, in which some debate that immigrants take away jobs others need, and some even think that immigrants lower our economy, and add to our country's poverty issue. While other people believe that because of the people coming into the U.S, it allows a lot of cultural and race diversiy, as well as to boost our economy up.Undocumented immigrants are increasingly settling throughout the 50 states. Traditional “gateway” states such as California, Illinois, Texas, New York, and Florida continue to be home to large percentages of our nation’s foreign-born. But immigrants are increasingly dispersing to metropolitan areas outside these states. Fifteen states—Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Utah—experienced at least a 200 percent increase in their immigrant populations between 1990 and 2009.

Facts

Here are some facts towards immigration:

More than 1 million immigrants became legal permanent residents (LPRs) of the United States in 2011.
Of the new US residents, 14% came from Mexico, 7.9% from China, and 6.4% from India.
80% of Central American Women and Girls are raped while crossing into the U.S.
Immigrants from over 75 countries illegally cross the U.S Border.
11.5 million undocumented immigrants were living in the United States in January 2011, an increase of one-third since 2000, when there were 8.5 million undocumented immigrants.
86 percent of undocumented immigrants have been living in the United States for seven years or longer.

Current federal and state immigration policy

Here is more info towards the policy:

The Obama administration has directed an unprecedented amount of resources to ensuring our southern border is secure and undocumented immigrants (criminal and noncriminal) are deported. In June 2012 the Department of Homeland Security announced they would allow DREAM Act-eligible youth to apply for deferred action, granting them protection against deportation and the ability to get work authorization.Notwithstanding these efforts, in the absence of lasting solutions that fix our broken immigration system, state legislators have passed a wide array of immigration measures, ranging from Arizona’s famous “papers please” measure that has risen to the U.S. Supreme Court, to immigrant-friendly DREAM Act measures.

American Public Opinion and Immigration

Here is more info towards the opinion of Americans:

Presidential candidate Donald Trump brought the issue of immigration back into the forefront of the news media focus with his June 16 announcement speech, including his widely-quoted views on illegal immigrants from Mexico.Seven percent of Americans say immigration is the most important problem facing the country today. That may not seem like a high number, but at the moment there is no one dominant problem in the minds of American, and immigration actually comes in as the fourth-most-frequently mentioned problem, behind the economy, dissatisfaction with government and race relations. This month, immigration is mentioned as the top problem by one percentage point more Americans than is unemployment/jobs. Immigration flares up from time to time on this most important problem measure. Last July it was at 17% of all mentions, for example. Republicans are only slightly more likely than Democrats to mention immigration as the nation's top problem.