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Andy Cheng
Mrs. Stanford
ENG 124
6 January 2017
In the Eyes of an Immigrant
In the Presidential election of 2016, President Elect Donald J. Trump had several key
issues that surrounded his candidacy, but the one defining issue was the plan to build the wall.
This simple phrase riffled up many people into strong negation against him, but it also resonated
with many different racial groups in America, including one group who is the focus of today's:
immigrants. All the immigrants who have came into this country form the backbone of America
today as this is a nation of immigrants who strive to make their mark onto the world through
achieving their own American Dream. An immigrant's drive to achieve their American Dream is
a force that has permeated the centuries of this nation's existence, but has recently come under
strenuous pressure which has weakened its being. The cause of this pressure is ascribed to the
relentless stream of illegal immigrants who are flooding into the country from across the
Mexican-American border and through other means. Illegal immigration is a rampant problem in
the US and its causing a decrease of the draw that the American Dream has towards immigrants
through the grief that is involved with the immigration process.
Illegal immigration is not a new problem in todays country, but it is a problem that is
very persistent and will not fade. A large number of immigrants enter the United States illegally
by crossing the Mexican-American border and escaping the security around the border. Some of
these immigrants may use means such as drug traffickers to cross the border, but many of these

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illegal immigrants cross via border crossing stations. A study conducted by Palmer
Morrel-Samuels, a professor at the University of Michigan, on the measure of illegal
immigration at border crossing stations concluded that there were a recorded 560,000 people
turned away at border crossings for various reasons out of a total sample size of five million.
This study also stated on the fallacies of their data with,
Specifically, if we assume that the 0.56 million excluded travelers were correctly denied
entry, then the 500.56 million people seeking entry at US POEs last year contained
anywhere between 6.01 and 3.51 million people (i.e., 0.56 million plus 5.45 million or
2.95 million) who should not be granted entry according to US federal laws.
(Morrel-Samuels 2002)
The relevancy of this data on border crossing stations is there were 560,000 people rejected at
these stations but up to 6.01 million people should have been denied. All of these people who
should have been rejected potentially make up the illegal immigration problem and are getting
into the U.S while skipping the long, tedious process that all other immigrants go through. This
process generally involves having to wait at least a couple years before being accepted for a visa.
In some cases even, this application process can drag on for up to 20 years, especially in cases
with immigrants from the Philippines and Mexico (Anderson 2012). Picture the thoughts of one
of these immigrants who has waited patiently in the U.S immigration process for 10 years and
found out one day that certain immigrants just skip the whole process and cross into the U.S.
This would be incredibly frustrating and it could leave a bad taste in the immigrants mouth about
living in the US. From this disdain, the American dream is being harmed as legal immigrants are
less enthusiastic about pursuing their dreams in the US. The illegal immigrants who are causing

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this problem arent even helping the nation either as legitimate immigrants would, instead they
are harming America.
When an illegal immigrant enters America through any number of means, one might
think that America should help them out so they could become a new member of society who
will benefit the economy, the workforce, and other parts of America. This idea stems from the
thought of America being a prosperous nation who should help the underprivileged immigrants
who are entering the country illegally. The reality is an entire upheaval of the idea that these
illegal immigrants will help America if they are allowed to enter on the counts of threats to
security and harms to the economy. Roberto Coronado and Pia M. Orrenius of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas elaborate on the crime aspect of illegal immigration in their paper Crime
On The U.S.-Mexico Border. This paper focuses on correlation between an increase of illegal
immigration and an increase of violent border crime. Coronado and Orrenius state that the cause
of the crime increase is, The underlying relationship is likely one in which migrants' reliance on
human smugglers and the pervasiveness of drug smuggling contributes to violent
crime(Coronado & Orrenius 2007). As a result of this research, the claim of illegal immigrants
being entirely beneficial is one based on fallacies. The next point of interest is the effects of
illegal immigration on the US economy. Shelby D. Gerking and John H. Mutti of the University
of Wyoming share their view on the effects with Costs And Benefits Of Illegal Immigration: Key
Issues For Government Policy. This article talks about the positive and the negative effects of
illegal immigration on the U.S economy. What the article concluded are results consisting of the
negatives of illegal immigrants being mainly related to wage loss for American workers. The
article elaborates on this with, Legal domestic workers who compete for employment directly

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with the incoming illegal aliens suffer a decline in their wage rate. On the flipside of the
spectrum, Gerking and Mutti state that to benefit from illegal immigrants, a country has to pacify
all the negatives involved with them (Gerking & Mutti 1980). Overall, these two points show
that there would not be a net benefit to the nation as the wages would decrease for the lower
class Americans competing with immigrants and also how an increase of illegal immigration into
the country is speculated to be correlated with an increase of violent crime. The issue with
solving these problems to get a net benefit from illegal immigrants is the obvious problem of
money; the concept which rules this world. How money affects the ability to solve these
problems is through the droves of corporations who strive to lower expenses through means such
as wages and one way to do that is to hire cheap, illegal immigrants. The issue of violent crime
also requires extra money to be spent through paying for more law enforcement to crack down
on the violent crime. All of the listed problems show that illegal immigrants will not be entirely
beneficial to America but some might still argue the point of Americas role in the world of
being the light in the darkness for the impoverished masses. The overall problem with this kind
of statement is it would go against the due process of the current immigration process and would
cause the masses of waiting, legal immigrants to be left in the dust.
Being screwed over and left in the dust is a terribly feeling for anyone when its just a
person whos close to them that has caused the issue. When its the government screwing the
people over, its an even worse feeling which is akin to getting punched in the gut. This is what
potential immigrants are feeling when they go through the long immigration process while illegal
immigrants cross into America and become part of society. A way that illegal immigrants have
become citizens are the various pieces of legislation throughout American history which has

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granted them the privilege. One such piece was Section 601 of Illegal Immigration Reform And
The Immigrant Responsibility Act which had a specific clause that allowed people illegally
residing in America to legally live there. This clause was supposed to target the One Child Policy
in China at the time and allow people who underwent forced abortion in China to seek asylum in
America. Instead, section 601 was used by many Chinese-Americans illegally residing in
America to seek asylum and become citizens (Xiao 2015). Illegal immigrants being able to find
loopholes in government legislation which allows them to become citizens is something that
potential immigrants find appalling. This is shown in the study Asian American Attitudes
Towards A US Citizenship Path For Illegal Immigrants by Frank L. Samson, an assistant
professor at the University of Miami. Samsons results state that 34.3% of Asian American
immigrants, both potential and current, are in favor of a path for illegal immigrants, 50.6% are in
negation of a path towards citizenship, and 15.1% are in abstention (Samson 2015). This data
shows that a majority of Asians do not support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and
only slightly more than a third actually support a path for them. While the results of Samsons
results may have had multiple factors, what it preludes to is a disdain on the part of potential
immigrants towards the ways that illegal immigrants could become citizens and also in general
towards the immigration process. Seeing illegal immigrants skipping the entire process is
something that would anger anyone who has waited several years to be cleared to enter the
country. The immigration process is something that all legal immigrants have to go through and
the government letting some people who came into the country illegally forgo it is something
that should not be allowed as doing so will harm the immigrant American dream of moving to
America.

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The political and social views of all the immigrants in America are hard to sum up in a
single statement and there is much uncertainty on their views for many of them. One of the main
issues that is being looked over thoroughly in these times is illegal immigration and what
America should do to alleviate the problem. An immigrant's view on this issue is a very
important part of the whole argument as they have a personal connection to the topic. What must
be looked at through the eyes of an immigrant is the stress and worry that is involved with going
through the lawful immigration process and the disdain that would be involved with seeing
illegal immigrants going through a morally incorrect process to get into America and still
becoming citizens. This is an issue that must be resolved through the government having to
decide whether to help these illegal immigrants and lift them up from the darkness or to defend
the realm of honor and trust that is had with these immigrants by upholding the due process. A
thin line runs between whether a view is beneficial or malicious in nature and its not always
easy to unveil in which category it will fall into. The populace are the ones who must decide
whether or not they support a view and as a whole, these decisions will decide in which way the
nation will flow.

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Works Cited
Anderson, Stuart. "America's Incoherent Immigration System." CATO Journal 32.1 (2012):
71-84. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2016.
Coronado, Roberto, and Pia M. Orrenius. "Crime On The U.S.-Mexico Border: The Effect Of
Undocumented Immigration And Border Enforcement." Migraciones Internacionales 4.1
(2007): 39-64. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2016.
Gerking, Shelby D., and John H. Mutti. "Costs And Benefits Of Illegal Immigration: Key Issues
For Government Policy." Social Science Quarterly (University Of Texas Press) 61.1
(1980): 71-85. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2016.
Morrel-Samuels, Palmer. "Measuring Illegal Immigration At US Border Stations By Sampling
From A Flow Of 500 Million Travelers." Population & Environment 23.3 (2002):
285-302. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2016.
Samson, Frank L. "Asian American Attitudes Towards A US Citizenship Path For Illegal
Immigrants: Immigration Reform As Racialized Politics." Journal Of Ethnic & Migration
Studies 41.1 (2015): 117-137. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2016.
Xiao, Luo. "The Unintended Consequence Of Section 601 Of The Illegal Immigration Reform
And The Immigrant Responsibility Act: The Rise Of U.S.-Based Claims And Their
Impact On The Board Of Immigration Appeals, Federal Judiciary, And Mass Media."
Asian Pacific American Law Journal 20.1 (2015): 31-69. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 8 Dec. 2016.