by Brenda Bowers

Created on: May 04, 2008

Immigrants whether legal or illegal are here to stay and we Americans must accept this fact and do what we can to help these people become assimilated into our society and culture. Education is the key. Without education the new immigrants will remain a low paid underclass, and will be dooming their children to the same fate.

Immigrants all over the world are migrating from poor countries to Europe and North America. Immigrants to the US are mainly Hispanics from South and Central America with the majority from Mexico. The immigrants, both legal and illegal, are coming for jobs and to provide a better life for their families. Many send their sons first who work and send money home to help the family survive. Later the sons try to bring their entire families. Many pregnant women brave the hazards of the trip across the deserts of the southwest to have their babies in the United States so the babies are then citizens and the mothers are therefore permitted to stay.

We certainly can not blame these people for wanting to come to the United States. If you were in their position and could not support your family in your home country and a wealthy country with many jobs was available just by wading across a muddy little stream you too would take any chances necessary to get to that rich country.

The sooner we as a country do something to help those who are already here while at the same time securing our borders to stop this flow of desperate people the less problems we will have in the future. Our borders must be made impenetrable or we will find ourselves with a huge group of what I call "standing room only immigrants". People there are simply not enough low paying menial jobs for. This is will overburden our system and increase homelessness, crime and discontent both from the immigrants themselves and for the naturalized citizens.

Europe should be a lesson to us in how not to treat immigrants. After WWII a great deal of labor was needed to rebuild Europe so cheap immigrant labor was imported. These immigrants then brought their families. The Europeans used these people and isolated them in their own ghettos. Now they have second and even third generation native born "immigrants". These native born "immigrants" not having known what their parents left behind are not grateful for the low paying jobs and better living conditions. They see the disparity of their life to that of the general population. Because they were isolated there are still language and cultural barriers,

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