
Migration is a natural system of movement by people that has been seen throughout all of history.  In current times if you decide to migrate from your country to another there are certain legality's and steps that must be taken in order for it to be done legally.  This is what has created the problem of illegal immigration, people coming uncounted and unregistered into the states.  Immigration can be defined as the movement of people into a country.  There are a variety of reasons people immigrate, they can be for cultural, economic, and/or environmental reasons. Anyone should be able to leave devastation and tragedy but sneaking into another country and uprooting your life there is the problem.  Immigration requires you to be recognized by the governments of the countries involved and all required paperwork. Lately, we have seen this becoming a huge problem regarding the Mexican-US border.  The devastating effects raise the question of, do current immigration laws need to be reformed?  Illegal immigration hit its peak in 2007 and has since then dropped, border enforcement was increased and the positive effects were shown, however after an initial drop the number has plateaued, leading most to believe that some type of reform is necessary.  The complications of immigration legislation, the laws are only relevant too the states bordering Mexico and has no significant effect on the other forty-six remaining states.  This creates the problem that over ninety-five percent of the population and representatives from these states that vote on these reforms have no real experience or see the first hand effects of illegal immigration.  This problem is very relevant to our country, seen in the upcoming presidential election and has forced all major candidates to take serious stances of immigration and immigration reform.  Beyond that illegal immigration destroys cities and economies for the bordering states, these Americans do not deserve to be pushed out of work and pay additional taxes because of the lack of border enforcement and lackadaisical attitude towards illegal immigration in the United States.  Due to the rising problem of illegal immigration that transfuses economic loss through job loss, tax evasion, health care, and education costs, bordering states should have more authority on the legislation and reforms related to illegal immigration.

Immigration has always been a complicated issue and is constantly changing, in every sense, the amount of people immigrating or immigrating illegally, the current legislation and how we combat illegal immigration.  All these variables are changing some more rapid then others but they all cause this to be a complex situation and controversial topic.  To put things in perspective "the US immigration system recognizes 1.1 foreigners a year as legal immigrants", and an agreed count of "300,000 to 400,000 unauthorized foreigners who settle every year" (Hollifeild 47).  These numbers shock must people when first heard, and by public opinion polls "find widespread dissatisfaction with the "broken" US immigration systems", citizens are fed up and tired of paying more and losing jobs (Hollifeild 48).  We need to take action and allow the people affected to be the main contributors to new illegal immigration legislation.  These problems are not going away and the numbers are not getting smaller, "in 2010, it (US) had over 11 million unauthorized foreigners, meaning that over 25 percent of the the foreign-born residents were unauthorized" (Hollifield 53).  This huge influx of people has a direct effect on the workers located where these immigrants settle, "5 percent of US workers are unauthorized" (Hollifield 53).  Immigrants move to places where they know their current skills will give them job opportunities.  Think about if you were an illegal immigrant, as soon as you successfully trespass into the states your first objective is to find work at any means necessary, which results in working for very low cash wages and traveling to wherever work is abundant but not open.  In 2013, the four bordering states "had a combined number of 3,535,400 jobs taken" (Passel n.p.), potentially 3.5 million US citizens are jobless and are forced to move, the illegal immigration in "Texas and California accounts for over 3.1 million" of the jobs taken from the bordering states.  This makes sense because these are larger regions with more possible job opportunities for illegals to take jobs and find a job that their skills are applicable for.  In total as a country "about 8.5 million jobs (were) encumbered by illegal aliens" (passel n.p.). Without action this problem will grow and continue to force working class families to uproot their lives and move to somewhere else in the country. That brings up the point that illegal immigration has a more direct effect on the working class or labor jobs, "lower-educated individuals are on average more nativist and culturally intolerant of foreigners", these are typically the jobs that illegal immigrants would be working and taking from Americans (Malhotra 5).  Although this an an example of the effect on a specific class, and may not apply to you, these are still citizens of your country and deserve the opportunity of any other US citizen in the states.  No one should be forced to move from there home to find work because of illegal people in their country destroying the job market, they shouldn't be there, you shouldn't have to deal with that. Clearly are current laws and tactics are not working and some new form of reformation is needed.  

 The country as a whole has attempted to combat illegal immigration through increasing border patrol and enforcement, as expected these tactics slowed the influx of unauthorized foreigners entering the country.  By increasing the law enforcement on the border you are also bring sector immigration jobs into the job market and creates job opportunities, "as a result of this investment of money and resources to strengthen enforcement along the border, more arrest are now being made in ...  border regions", a stronger and higher presence of law enforcement at the border deters the Mexican civilians from coming into the country illegally as well creating government job opportunities for American civilians to enforce and strengthen the border (McEwen 79-80).  However, the "the number of immigrants deported by immigration and custom enforcement decreased", so we see that border enforcement is necessary but in order to combat illegal immigration we need not only strong border enforcement but also a way to find these people once they make it to the states (McEwen 80).  Additional legislation is required to combat this problem completely, we have tactics to prevent them from coming in but nothing to find them and remove them once they make it in the states.  The damage done is not leaving the country and immigrating to a new one, the damage is done when it is done illegally.

Tax evasion is the illegal nonpayment or underpayment of tax.  Taxes are paid by all US citizens and are a key income to our countries and states in order pay for public services and other needs in our country.  That's brings us to the issue of illegal immigrants and their direct effect on tax evasion.  If you are not a US citizen then how do you pay taxes. How do you pay taxes when you're working under the table and receiving cash (like so many unauthorized foreigners do).  The answer is you don't, if you're not in the governments system and/or our receiving cash payments.  On average "the unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services while paying some $10,334 in taxes" (Heritage n.p.).  In this instance you see the black and white picture that we are supplying unlawful immigrants with great sums of money and see no return.  As a result, this creates fiscal deficit, "an average annual fiscal deficit of $14,387 per household" (Heritage n.p.).  Let me remind you this is per household for illegal immigrants, one family can put the the government at a deficit of over $14,000.  As mentioned earlier in 2010 the US had over 11 million unauthorized foreigners (Hollifeild 53), and the average unauthorized foreigner accounts for about $14,000 in fiscal deficit (Heritage n.p.).  For everyone of those 11 million people the government goes $14,000 dollars in the red zone, this is an absurd and almost unfathomable number to think that we are paying this for illegal immigrants when they have no right of being here anyway, really no right.  This is a burden to the US tax payer, "more forceful implementation of immigration laws could save each US household, in the neighborhood of a couple thousand dollars every year" (Fahmy n.p.).  Citizens are paying additional taxes to pay for illegal foreigner's education and health care, citizens should be paying taxes for stronger border enforcement and combatting illegals once they are in the states.   Without a new approach and tactics this problem will only grow stronger and more devastating to the citizens involved.   

The economic costs of Illegal immigration is much more than just tax evasion and job loss, these are expenses associated with health care and education provided to these unauthorized foreigners. In the US "Illegal immigrants through the law are allowed to receive emergency medical care, but many can't pay for it", although this is an ethical policy it devastates bordering sates (Higdon 64).  For example, Arizona in 2014 "paid $400,000,000 for uncompensated medical cost", this shows the extent and effect illegal immigration has on the state government and economy (Higdon 65). In Arizona, the dollar amount associated cost of "Mexican immigrants represented 73.7 percent of total health care costs", further raising the need for reform and the reality that bordering states are affected ten fold more then the remainder of the US states (McEwen 81).  In addition to this Arizona "paid $810,000,000 for the education of illegal aliens and children of illegal aliens" (Higdon 65).  These are expenses that Arizona citizens and the state government must pay.  One a side note the country as a whole spends "$761,405,907 to educate unaccompanied minor immigrants", that accounts for 37,472 youngsters (Harper n.p.).  As well, Arizona "paid $80,000,000 for incarceration" (Higdon 65).  To put this in perspective we are educating and providing health care to illegal immigrants, and then once found illegally paying to send them back to Mexico.  That being said the total cost to the state of Arizona in 2014 from illegal immigration is "$1,033,000,000", can you imagine the devastating effect this has on a state economy, this increases taxes and increases the expenses a state has effecting the state negatively as a whole.  In addition, Arizona faces a variety of other indirect costs, "Arizona has higher car insurance rates", because illegal immigrants steal cars that they use to move further into the country (Fahmy n.p.).  Cost like these are the ones so commonly forgotten but affect literally every citizen in that state with a car entirely because of the place they live.   This is only one of the states major effected by the the plague of illegal immigration, yet the damage that was done to this single state would devastate practically any low developed country in the world.  

The oppositions of border enforcement for illegal immigration are typically based on moral or ethical concerns rather then any type of factual or information based opposition. One idea the opposition brings up is "what about the the employers who hire the illegal workers", "what about them, they're bad too".  My answer to this is simple they shouldn't be there in the first place, illegal immigration is a chain and effect process.  This doesn't justify taking advantage of the government, but this is reality what is logically going to happen next when someone is willing to work for a lower wage and perform the same job at the same level of craftsmanship and speed.  Its economics, the lower wage worker will always win.  Also, we have a stellar example set by US, where most of our products are manufactured overseas. Its cheaper. Another theory is that it illegal immigration has a positive effect on US adults with at least a high school education, "undocumented workers do not compete with skilled workers- instead they complement them" (Davidson n.p.).  The idea is if there are more undocumented workers working labor jobs it allows skill workers to focus more on what they do best, "in states with more undocumented immigrants, skilled workers made more money and worked more hours" (Davidson), allows skill workers to move to the next job requiring their skill and not making skilled workers perform basic tasks.  This idea is valid and makes sense but its unethical towards US citizens, not everyone is a skilled worker, not everyone has the opportunity to get a college education or attend a trade school.  This theory trashes all of those people and says we don't need you will just hire illegal/ unauthorized foreigners for less money.  As well, this idea still does not solve the expenses of illegal immigrant costs that still result in US workers skilled or unskilled having to pay higher taxes to account for expenses of illegal immigrants.  The tax payer is still forced to pay additional fees that would not be there otherwise.  On the other side, people will say that not allowing people to escape economic depression and violence is wrong.  I agree, however do it legally and follow the proper steps to have legal access to the US.  No one should be forced to live in a place they don't want too, but no one should just be allowed to enter a country undocumented and expect to settle and start a life. 

Immigration will always be a factor of the US and will always be a thing, people will keep coming to gain economic opportunity, cultural freedom, and the American dream.  That being said there must be regulation in order to handle this large influx of people at such a fast rate, one way in one way out.  In order to control illegal immigration, reforms must be made to our current immigration laws.  Border protection is essential in the start of controlling illegal immigration in the states affected Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.  These states should have extensive say and contributions to any new form of legislation regarding illegal immigration, it just makes sense.  A representative of Idaho is going to care a whole lot less about illegal immigration then one of the bordering states.  In order to control this problem we need to know what actually goes on, tactics illegals use to get across the border, how they remain low once they enter the states to prevent deportation, what cities suffer significantly from illegal job take over, etc.  In order to attain this information we have to communicate with the people living it, and going through it.  Those people are the bordering states so allow them to have more jurisdiction in enforcing illegal immigration and allow them to make reforms that will actually be effective in stopping illegal immigration because they know what is actually going on and interact with illegals.  Without reform illegal immigration will only increase, leading to more unemployment for US workers, and higher tax payments for the US tax payer.  The effects of illegal immigration are blatantly obvious through tax evasion, unemployment, education, and health care cost.  These are factors that can't be disputed, illegal immigration cost the country more money and puts unskilled US workers out of work.  

