Immigration took the fore front of the last presidential debate. One candidate’s plan was the most drastic plan for overhauling immigration in our country’s history. Donald Trump’s plan for immigration was unlike any other policy the United States has ever seen. President Trump’s plan for illegal immigrants included mass deportations of illegals living in the United States, and bans on seven middle eastern countries. There was immediate outrage over Trump’s plan. Those opposed to Trump’s ideas began protest during and after this. The United States has always been the land of golden opportunities for immigrants. Even though there are risks involved allowing foreigners into the country, people should not be left out or the country and should be allowed to look for opportunities to improve their life. 

Donald Trump’s original immigration policies created controversies that spilt that public down in half. Trump’s immigration policy included bans placed on Muslim immigrants from 7 middle eastern countries: “Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen” (Citation). A ban was placed on these countries due to their connections to terrorists’ organizations. A fully enforced ban on a whole country or people is not an effective way of enforcing immigration. Only a handful of the entire country’s population may have any connection to a terrorist group. The belief that all these countries citizens have terrorist connections is misguided. Not all people from these countries are members of ISIS. There are already members of terror groups who live everyday as U.S. citizens.

President Trump plan includes building a wall along the U.S. and Mexican border. The wall will be built across the entire border between the United States and Mexico. President Trump wishes for the wall include: stopping all illegal immigrants, creating jobs, and having Mexico fund the project that creates a physical border between the two countries.  This wall is the first plan of its time, to build a 30-foot wall to keep immigrants from entering the country illegally. Trump’s reasoning for building the border along Mexico is that Mexican immigrants make up most of the undocumented immigrants in the United States. However, this is not entirely accurate, “the number of unauthorized immigrants from to Mexico in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at 6.9 million and has declined since then, to 5.8 million in 2014” (Cohn). The percentage of illegal immigrants from Mexico has been in decline for nine years. In 2014 “Mexico accounted for 52% of unauthorized immigrants… but that is down from 57% in 2007” (Cohn). At the same time as Mexico accounting for less illegal immigrants in the United States, there is a rise in undocumented immigrants from other countries. Second to Mexico for number of unauthorized immigrants was Central America. Central America is responsible for “1.7 million, or 15% of the unauthorized immigrant population” (Cohn). These numbers are up slightly from 2009. Mexico is still the home country of most the illegal immigrants who currently reside in the United States. However, the drastic punishment does not fit the crime. Mexico’s rate of illegal immigration to the U.S. is dropping while other countries have seen a rise in recent years. Yet, President Trump’s biggest plan involves building wall, that estimates have costing between 12 and 15 billion dollars. That is a large amount of funding to allocate towards fixing only half of the United States immigration problems. Donald Trump may be right that Mexico is a huge part of the illegal immigration population, but the data shows that illegal immigration is slowing down from Mexico. Due to the decrease of illegal immigrants from Mexico and the rise in immigrants from other countries, Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S., Mexico border is expensive and does not begin to slow illegal immigration. 

Illegal immigrants do not commit violent crimes at the rates that President Trump believes. President Trump believes that illegal immigrants commit all crimes, violent and non-violent at a higher rate than that of legal immigrants and U.S. born citizens. Trump fear mongered this belief about illegal immigrations committing violent crimes. Both legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crime than born citizens. In “2000 immigrant incarceration rates are one-fifth those of the native born” (Cato). When comparing incarceration rates of illegal immigrants and native born citizens, the illegal immigrants have lower incarceration rates. One comparison was made between poorly educated young men, who are more likely to commit crimes. Young, less educated men from three Central American countries have an incarceration rate lower than that of native born citizens. The ages of these men ranged from 18-39. The incarceration rate of young less educated men from Mexico was 2.8 percent, and the rate for Guatemala and El Salvador was 1.7 percent. The incarceration rate for native born men was 10.7 percent (Cato). Researches from William and Mary studied 159 cities and concluded that “violent crime is not a deleterious consequence of increased immigration” (Cato). Following another study the researchers concluded that “it appears that anti-immigrant sentiments that view immigrants as crime prone are not only inaccurate at the micro-level, they are also inaccurate at the macro-level…increased immigration may actually be beneficial in terms of lessening some crimes” (Cato). Studies and research show that illegal immigrants are not committing crimes at higher rates. In fact, immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than those of native born citizens. The belief that illegal immigrants enter a country and then commit a rampage of violent offenses is wrong. Most illegal immigrants are looking for opportunities to improve their life and are trying to get away from horrible situations in their home countries. The opportunity to improve their life is a motivator for illegal immigrants and keeps them from committing any crimes. If these illegal immigrants were caught after committing a crime would be deported to their home country and return to the life they were just trying to escape. Illegal immigrants are not responsible for a mass uptick in crime rate. They would be risking getting caught and sent back to their homeland before they could become citizens. 

President Trump’s plan to build the wall is smart economically as it saves money for each immigrant it keeps out. President Trump’s wall is estimated to cost between 12 and 15 billion dollars. The wall will, however, eventually pay for itself. Illegal immigrants cost taxpayers “$75000 per person over their lifetimes” (Dinan). Every immigrant who is kept out of the United States would be saving American citizens money. Over time the wall would pay for itself in tax payers money saved. “Stopping just 200000 border-jumpers over the next decade would save some $15 billion” (Dinan). The wall does not even have to stop all illegal immigrants from entering the United States. Steven Camaroata the author of the report stated “if a wall stopped half of those expected to successfully enter illegally without going through a port of entry at the southern border over the next 10 years, it would save taxpayers nearly $64 billion-several times the wall’s cost” (Dinan). The wall would be a good investment if it kept out illegal immigrants and saved money. Rather than paying for the cost of capturing and holding illegal immigrants a wall would save money, and keep money in the pockets of actual United States citizens. President Trump’s plan to build a wall would beneficial for the U.S. and its citizens. 

President Trump’s immigration policies are unique and unlike any other plan for immigration ever conceived. Instituting a ban of multiple countries, building a 30-foot wall along the entire U.S., Mexico border, and rounding up all any illegals and deporting them. The United States has always been a cultural melting pot of diversity and people from all over the world, and Trump’s plan would begin to change the demographic of the United States. Trump’s reasoning is wrong. Immigrants are not committing violent crimes at higher rates than native citizens, illegal immigrants are coming less from Mexico and other countries. Immigrants do not create the problems that President Trump has spoken about. Most of these illegal immigrants are looking for opportunities to improve their lives and their families, they are not looking to be negative members of society. Removing and keeping certain people out of the U.S. is not the right thing to do, the U.S. is the land of opportunity, and these opportunities should not be numbered for people. 
