According to the Pew Research Center studies, almost one hundred illegal immigrants gain access to the United States through its poorly policed border with Mexico. While many of these immigrants are political and humanitarian refugees from troubled countries such as Venezuela, Mexico, and Guatemala, their impacts on American society, economy, and security make the issue contentious and severe. At the social level, such illegal immigrants cause increased poverty, spikes in racial tension, and dilution of the American culture. Economically, such illegal and undocumented immigrants steal American jobs, lower the prices of entire cities and towns, and increase budgetary pressure at both state and federal levels. While these are serious issues, the recent move by former racist President Trump to isolate them in poor conditions and build a tall steel wall along the border with Mexico is ill-advised and irrational considering the border’s size. Consequently, there is a need to study the border patrol issue of illegal immigrants plaguing the United States along social and economic lines, but without the biases of politics and foreign policy.
Emergent Border Patrol Issue in the US
For decades, the United States southern border with Mexico has been an entry point for illegal immigrants who pose various problems for the large, affluent country. The immigrants, who are often Mexican, Cubans, Guatemalans, Colombians, or Venezuelan, take advantage of the thousands of miles of the poorly patrolled border, which also constitutes harsh terrain and desert. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the United States, through Border Patrol, has been struggling to contain the surge of illegal immigrants with varied success. Consequently, millions of illegal immigrants have entered the United States, causing various economic, legal, and social problems even as the Federal and state governments scramble to design new strategies for containment and deportation.
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The issue of border control seems to pervade all attempts by the state and Federal governments to contain it. Former President Donald Trump, a renowned bigot, and racist tried an unconventional method of a tall steel wall along the notorious portions of the US-Mexican border with limited success. (Hoekstra & Orozco-Aleman, 2021) These illegal immigrants directly link with increased economic pressure, social problems, increased crime, and even the proliferation of racism. The DHS even associates the increasing number of illegal immigrants with serious crimes such as terrorism, gun-running, drug trade, human trafficking, and sex slavery. Therefore, the concerns that illegal immigrants have caused in Washington at the federal and state levels in regions such as Texas and Florida warrant closer attention.
Economic Impacts of Illegal Immigrants on the US
Economic problems are the most pressing issues the US Federal and state government have faced due to the influx of illegal immigrants. Between 2013 and 2019, the average annual influx of illegal immigrants into the US averaged 90,000 (Gramlich, 2021). However, between 2019 and the beginning of the Covid 19 global pandemics, the numbers rose to more than 100,000 immigrants (Gramlich, 2021). Illegal employment is the first major economic problem that the US government faces due to the ongoing influx of illegal immigrants. Once these immigrants gain access to the US labor markets, employers take advantage of their illegal status and offer low pay without health insurance and other welfare that usually cost significant portions of operating capital for businesses. Consequently, the US labor market loses millions of viable employment opportunities to illegal immigrants who are usually vulnerable and desperate for some form of livelihood, raising its economy's unemployment rate.
Illegal immigrants also affect the taxation and tax revenue structures of the US economy in the long run. Once these immigrants gain access to the US economy, the Federal structures automatically budget for them even as they do not contribute to the tax revenues going back into the IRS. Therefore, the US government has to struggle to budget for illegal immigrants who continue to benefit from its tax-facilitated infrastructure at both Federal and state levels (Hoekstra & Orozco-Aleman, 2017). Additionally, these immigrants lack the Individual Tax Payer Identification Number (ITIN) or the Social Security Number (SSN), meaning they cannot pay tax back to local, state, or Federal governments even when they can do so. The US economy has struggled for decades to support these illegal immigrants who neither contribute to the tax revenue nor contribute to the tax information required for budgetary planning.
When illegal immigrants gain access to the US job market, they systematically drive the prices of most essential items associated with consumption down due to their low wages. This systemic effect has both positive and negative effects depending on the perspective. The local American citizens benefit from such immigrants through lower prices and living costs because local and territorial economies respond favourably to their lower spending power occasioned by lower wages (Orrenius & Coronado, 2017). However, the local, state and Federal government economies suffer severely from decreased spending because it lowers production in the long run. Consequently, illegal immigrants cause a systemic decline in prices and spending at various levels of the American economy resulting in varied outcomes depending on the perspectives of consumers and the governments involved.
Social Impacts of Illegal Immigrants on the US
Slow but sustained increases in poverty and living standards are the first social impacts of illegal immigrants that continue to affect the US government. Many illegal immigrants sneak into the United States through its porous borders with nothing but their clothes and a few personal items. Once in the United States, they find temporary shelter and find any form of employment to acquire basic needs as they seek better opportunities than what they leave in Central and South America (Mangum & Block, 2018). This proliferation of jobless broke and undocumented immigrants increases the poverty levels of border towns. It also slowly lowers the quality of living in these cities and towns because the low spending power of these immigrants’ forces businesses to lower prices and production, reducing spending and economic prosperity.
Illegal immigrants create an influx of crime in every town and city they proliferate due to their lack of jobs, desperation to meet basic needs, and general determination to acquire the American dream. The rate of crime in states and towns or cities bordering Mexico is comparatively higher than that of the continental United States and its northern states. Many illegal immigrants resort to robbery, theft, and murder to acquire primary and secondary needs. Additionally, the general discontent among American citizens who watch helplessly as illegal immigrants invade their towns and cities creates tension which often culminates in attacks and mob action. Existing gangs and criminals in the United States sometimes take advantage of the desperation within illegal immigrant groups and enlist them for criminal activities.
Eventually, social and ethnic tensions rise when illegal immigrants access the United States society and its infrastructure. The United States has traditionally been a racist community, as evidenced by its slave labor and minority oppression history. When the illegal immigrants succeed in getting into the US, the Hispanic refugees and immigrants are often greeted with slurs, assaults, rape, prostitution, unwarranted arrests, and other forms of racism-motivated oppression (Hoekstra & Orozco-Aleman, 2017). The increased rate of Hispanic immigrants in the United States in the last four decades has caused a sharp rise in racist sentiment at both social and political levels of interaction in many southern states of the US. Unfortunately, illegal immigration in the United States seems to worsen the already dire racism problem in the country’s societies.
Conclusion
The United States has battled the illegal immigrant problem at its Mexican border for several decades with limited levels of success. Studies show that almost one hundred thousand illegal immigrants have entered the United States through the same border with Mexico over the last decade. The effects of such immigration are varied and complex, more so if studied from the biased perspectives of American scholars. However, the Department of Homeland Security contends to social, economic, and security problems that warrant additional attention from both the academic and industrial community. The Border Patrol is currently struggling to contain these illegal immigrants due in part to the size of the US-Mexico border, its terrain, and the ingenuity of the immigrants. However, these illegal immigrants cause economic problems such as decreased employment opportunities for local Americans, reduced spending in local economies, and increased poverty. Socially, these immigrants cause increased poverty by lowering living standards, raising racism-based tensions due to discrimination, and raising crime significantly.
References
Gramlich, J. (2021, March 15). Migrant apprehensions at U.S.-Mexico border are surging again . Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/03/15/migrant-apprehensions-at-u-s-mexico-border-are-surging-again/
Hoekstra, M., & Orozco-Aleman, S. (2017). Illegal immigration, state law, and deterrence. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , 9 (2), 228–252. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.20150100
Hoekstra, M., & Orozco-Aleman, S. (2021). Illegal immigration: The Trump effect. NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH , 1-25. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28909/w28909.pdf
Mangum, M., & Block, R. (2018). Social identity theory and public opinion towards immigration. Social Sciences , 7 (3), 41. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/3/41/htm
Orrenius, P. M., & Coronado, R. (2017). The Effect of Illegal Immigration and Border Enforcement on Crime Rates along the U.S.-Mexico Border:. The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies , (131), 1-23. https://escholarship.org/content/qt2jh5h00q/qt2jh5h00q.pdf
