Letter to Sen. Bejamin Cardin - essay 3 (Persuasive Paper)

Benjamin L. Cardin
509 Hart Office Building
Washington DC 20510

Dear Mr. Benjamin Cardin,

I am ...., a new resident of the United States and I am lucky to be a legal immigrant in this nation while many others are illegal. Illegal immigration has always been a divisive topic, and a complicated problem in the United States for years now and its consequences are obvious. Why do we have illegal immigrants? It is because of our nation has such a restricted border policy? As a law maker, do you think an open border policy would reduce the number of illegal immigrants? I would appreciate if you could take time to consider this issue and to push for a change to our current restricted border policy.

Imagine you were not American and had to apply for visa to enter the United States for some reasons. Then at the visa interview, you would be considered to stay unless you proved that you would return after the visit. How would your feeling be if you were treated as if you attempted do something illegal? Yes, that was what we all had to experience to have a visa to enter America.

Regardless of a strict border policy, the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the United States was about 10.8 million in 2009 according to The Department of Homeland Security (DHS). None of these people ever wanted to be illegal in America. If they could come and return freely, most would move for a certain time. Usually people don’t want to leave home at all, let alone leave it forever, they want to go work in the United States for a while to learn English and earn enough for a better life back home when they return. But the U.S. border controls make many stay. Crossing the America border is so hard, so risky and costly that once a person has entered America he tends to stay. Many people have died trying to cross from Mexico to the United State. I once saw a Mexican hit by cars on freeway 5 California in San Diego, near the border while being chased by border polices. Along freeway 5 in California we often see signs saying that “watchof people cross the freeway”. Why do we let this sad thing happen in our nation, the nation is proud of freedom, human rights and democracy? This is very touching and sad. Mr. Cardin, I urge you to do something to stop this. I urge you to consider the situation. I urge you to interfere. I urge you to push a change in our restricted border policy.

I believe that an open border policy would reduce the population of illegal immigrants and therefore its problem and consequence. Open borders does not mean we accept a free flow of immigration to our nation. Open border is just having an easier non-immigration visa policy, giving more working visas. Open border is letting people to cross our borders to work easier. These people can register to the Department of Homeland and Security (DHS) to stay and work in the United States. As long as people could come and leave easily, stay and work legally in our nation, they would not want to become illegal citizens. About the current illegal aliens in the United States, we could grant them the working permits to legalize their presence in our nation. By this way we would create a fair competition labor market. The employers could not hire low paid illegal workers and then lower the nation minimum wages. Moreover the DHS could keep track easier of register aliens than illegal immigrants. I don’t think that if we grant all of the undocumented workers resident cards while continuing to close the borders will sold the problem because more people would try to enter the United States and stay illegally with the hope that they would have resident cards one day.

There are fears that immigrants threaten American workers. Steven A. Camarota, the director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) noted in his article “Keeping the Borders Open Harms U.S. Workers” that “Common sense, economic theory, and a fair reading of the research on this question indicate that allowing in so many immigrants (legal and illegal) with relatively little education reduces the wages and job prospects for Americans with little education” (Camarota). But according to the Department of Homeland and Security, every year, the United States issues 65,000 H-1B visas for foreign workers to come and work and the population of H-1B is 650,000 in 2009. This tells us that our domestic work force does not supply enough and we still have a demand on labor and foreign labors are not the main reasons that take away Americans’ jobs. Martin Oppenheimer alleged “Keeping the borders open does not harm U.S. workers”, he said in his article “Rob Paral, at the Immigration Policy Center, a branch of the pro-immigrant American Immigration Law Foundation, argues that immigrants are hired to supplement, rather than displace, the U.S.-born, at least in some job categories. Thirteen occupational categories collectively would have been short more than 500,000 workers during the 1990s without recently arrived immigrant employees, even if all unemployed natives with recent experience in those categories had been re-employed" (Oppenheimer). With the same concern, Anthony Gregory stated “The United States is a free country whose immigration policy should reflect this fact. Immigrants have contributed to the wealth and culture of the United States, and the government should adopt open immigration policies so that this trend may continue to enrich the nation” (Gregory).

Mr. Cardin, freedom of movement is one of the most basic human rights. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, also states, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” I hope one day in the near future there is no more illegal immigrants in the United States. I hope one day everyone can enter the United States easily to visit, to study or to work. I hope one day everyone will have equal right to work and be able to compete fairly to work in the United States. I hope our law makers will consider this issue and work toward it to solve the problem about illegal immigration.

Sincerely yours,