Understanding Unauthorized Immigration

Unit 3: Migration

12/9/16

Original article can be found here 

Synopsis:

          Unauthorized immigration has grown throughout the years. People are migrating more and more throughout the world without legal documentation. This keeps occurring even with the preventive methods of walls, fences, barriers, guards, and patrol ships so it is important to know why. The dynamics of most unauthorized immigrants is the same even though they come from different countries. Most people dismiss the notion of understanding unauthorized immigrants but it is essential in order to try to find a solution that benefits everyone. Being narrow-minded about these immigrants won’t result in anything. Hundreds of thousands of lives are lost in failed attempts at migration so it is an important issue that people need to understand. The global pattern shows that people move from developing countries to developed countries because their home countries can no longer provide for them. This root problem needs to be solved or else the problem of unauthorized immigration is going to continue on.

Analysis:

          Most people are concerned with stopping unauthorized immigration but they don’t take the time to stop and understand it first. Excluding refugees who are more than 21 million people, there are another 50 million unauthorized migrants. The countries with the largest numbers are the US with 11 million, India with another 10 million, and the Russian Federation at 4 million. On the news a lot, especially in the US, unauthorized immigration is a focus of a lot of political parties. For example, President-Elect Donald Trump’s campaign revolved around building a wall between Mexico and the US to block out these unauthorized immigrants. Everyone talks about it but no one seems to want to resolve the problem by understanding it first. A common way people become unauthorized immigrants is by overstaying their visa. Additionally, based on a recent international survey the number of people who express a desire to immigrate to another country is estimated to be around 1.3 billion. This number shows that people all over the world are not happy with where they live and everyone as a whole should work to solve this. The people wishing to migrate don’t have a legal way to move so they resort to doing so illegally. In class we talked about reasons why people might want to migrate called push and pull factors. Unauthorized immigrants are pushed by high unemployment, low wages, difficult living conditions, separated families, poor governance, human rights abuses, and limited prospects and they are pulled by the opposites. Essentially it is a combination of political, environmental, and economic factors that contribute to their decision. The economic success of the countries they wish to migrate to gives them hope. This corresponds with Ravenstein’s law that “long-distance migrants to other countries head for major centers of economic activity”. They feel like even with the risks of unauthorized immigration it would still be better than their current situation. This shows that even with countries doing so well with a good standard of life, other countries struggle to provide food, shelter, and a good life for their population. It is important to try to help these countries instead of just banning and trying to prevent unauthorized immigration because these methods do not seem to be working. As long as there are unlivable conditions in some countries, people will try to do anything so that they can get a better life. They will risk their lives and travel far to these lands in order to live a better life. The governments of the successful or stage 4 countries need to fix the root cause of unauthorized immigration first rather than simply “building a wall”. Unauthorized immigrants will always find a way unless their home situations are better which is what everyone should work towards.