The immigration reform establishment in the United States
In the United States, the issue of immigration has become a sensitive issue in recent times, especially the building of the Mexico wall, which was supported by the president. Immigration involves the movement of people to a particular destination, which it is not their original homeland, and they do not acquire the necessary legal documents that allow them to settle. However, in the U.S., the issue has an essential place in the legal and social system because it directly affects the set laws and the social life of American people. Immigration is a socio-legal issue in United States where there are claim that the country was built by immigrants and thus it has been the leading beneficiary of the labour and innovation. Additionally, many people argue that the state should not discriminate against any immigrants because the country itself does not belong to any particular race or people as the native red Indians were the original community in the state. The number of people who are continually trying to migrate to the U.S. has been increasing in recent times, mainly due to instability around the world. The ballooning number of immigrants, however, is posing a threat to the country, and thus it resulted in formulating laws that made immigration a crime. Immigration reform was particularly formulated to curb the increasing number of immigrants entering the United States in an attempt to protect the social, political, and economic stability of the country. The immigration reform has continuously been tailored as tools of perpetrating inhumane and unfair practices on immigrants and minorities and not necessarily because they are the cause of the country economic instability.
The immigration reform establishment in the United States has historically taken major changes through the enactment of various restrictive exclusionary laws meant to stop immigration. The earliest enactment was Immigration Act of 1924 which was meant to curb people from Asia in entering and working in the U.S. The current government seem to be dealing with the same issue today and the mixed reactions about the reform because of the increase in the number of immigrants who live and work in the country. Felter et al. (2020) states that “Immigrants comprise almost 14 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 44 million people out of a total of about 327 million, according to the Census Bureau.” The increase in the number of immigrants in the country has called for reforms a way of dealing with the undocumented Americans. The reforms have been changing over time to accommodate immigrants or asylum to people coming in from a hostile environment. The existing mixed reactions when it comes to the issue of immigration have thus made reforms issue a complex thing for the government to make any substantial reforms. The increasing number of immigrants who make up the U.S. population has made it hard to make any reforms. The effort by the Obama administration to find a solution to the immigration crisis did not add much into solving the problem because with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals being stripped off by Trump in 2017. The attempt by the Obama administration to address the issue had suffered a major blow, with the effect becoming a more sensitive issue. The current pr4esident argues that the issue can only be solved by “controversial plans to build out the border wall with Mexico, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and temporarily ban Muslims” (Felter et al., 2020). The sentiments have elicited controversial debates with many people advocating for these actions to be taken, arguing that immigration is posing as a national security. The socio-legal issue of immigration continues to be a debate that might not be easy to solve, especially in a country that has a significant number of the population consisting of immigrants.