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mmigrants Escaping from Poverty For a long time, illegal immigrants have been entering the United States, and it has been a big issue concerning the world today. Hispanics today form the fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States. An example of how many illegal immigrants migrate to the U. S. is found in the book Voyages by Cathy Small; she explains that many Tongan immigrants migrated in the year 1976. Out of 1,993 Tongan’s, Olunga had grown approximately 2%, so by all means that at least 40% of its population had migrated between the years 1956 and 1976.
By 1970 the inhabitants’ population growth was already dropping. This means that there were 200 people less than the past years. Many immigrants want to migrate to the United States to gain a better life for their families, for economic opportunity, and to escape political persecution. Many immigrants are working illegally and the government is not aware of how many of them are actually getting away with it, and others of course are being detained and isolated from their work force.
Now so many illegal immigrants are being evicted easily from their work force or even from off the streets. In the book Disposable Domestics, Grace Chang explains that there had been sixty law enforcement agents from Virginia’s sheriff’s office who joined the federal agents. They were joined together by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to rummage around a construction site where workers were building a court jail.
Later, agents had gathered one hundred employees together in an array against the wall, searching for undocumented employees. Soon after the whole fiasco, a deputy secretary of Virginia Health and Human Resources department was informed that fourteen people were detained and removed from their work force for not having documents. Grace Chang also discusses a case of a nominee for United States Attorney general. Zoe Baird admitted that she employed two undocumented Peruvian immigrants.
We also learn that employers hire illegal immigrants for the benefit of saving money. If employers wanted legal workers they would be able to get them, but it would cost them more. Putting some thought in this subject, illegal immigrants have some of the hardest jobs, that require so much labor, and don’t get paid as well, while a legal person would think it is not worth getting exhausted over. Grace Chang mentioned that legal people earned as much as 500 dollars more than an illegal person did.
So if there were no illegal immigrants, who would perform these jobs that legal citizens would not want at such low wage rates. Barbara Bradley made a comment about the raid of illegal immigrants, saying that it’s an experiment in welfare reform. She also explained that the INS planned to coordinate with Virginia’s social services to replace undocumented employees with welfare recipients. Many people had a misconception believing that having many kids gives them eligibility for welfare.
For example in the video “Faces on Main Street,” a family had so many children and everyone would stare at them thinking that they are on welfare because of how many children there were in that family. In Disposable Domestics, it argues that this is not the case. It shouldn’t be so easy for illegal immigrants to escape the boarders in the first place, why should we encourage them that is ok for them to enter the United States, by hiring them. Of course they will come to the U. S. if they know that many illegal immigrants are being employed without documents. Immigrants would work any job to get paid fair enough for them; even if the job requires hard labor, because at any wage they will still live a better life here in America, then they ever would have back where they migrated from. Instead of worrying about how much the supervisors are saving, they should be more concerned about the fact that they are committing a crime by hiring undocumented employees.