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Illegal immigrants should not have a roadmap to US citizenship. The US, just like any other country, needs to be able to control its borders and without enforcement of immigration laws there is to much incentive for people to come here illegally. As a society we need to have control of who comes here. Illegal immigrants are exploited by business to drive down wages and politicians to attempt to save social programs.

In order to control its border it is important that people from other countries know that if they come here illegally they will not benefit by the act. If we could cut down on the flow of people coming into this country just looking for a job, we could actually get a handle on those coming here to commit crimes. It would be beneficial to actually change the law so that babies that are born in the US to people who are not here legally do not gain citizenship. This presents a few legal issues since the current law says that anyone born under the jurisdiction of the US government is a US citizen. That could probably be amended or clarified to state that one is not under US jurisdiction if one is in US territory illegally.

It is also important that we have control of who comes here. First for health reasons it is important that we be able to screen out diseases that we have eliminated or have under control in the US. Second we want the US to be a melting pot, we do not want the culture to be overwhelmed by any one group of immigrants. By having control over immigration we can more easily make sure that we have a more diverse set of people coming into the country. While Mexico is not the only country that illegal immigrants come from we should not allow those who came in illegally from our neighbour to the south to have preference above those waiting in lines from other countries without a convenient border to the US. We are continuously being told that we should not worry about the loss of our manufacturing jobs because we are becoming an information economy. If that is indeed the case why would we want to encourage low skill, low education immigrants.

Business and politicians are both trying to exploit illegal immigrants for different reasons. We have all heard the argument that, "Americans won't do those jobs". That argument is correct only because the wages for those jobs have been driven down so low that one cannot have an American standard of living while working them. If illegal immigrants were not available to do those jobs they would become more automated in many cases and the wages would go up so that Americans could afford to take those jobs. Politicians want to use the population of illegal immigrants to shore up the shortfalls in social security and Medicare. This is another red herring because in the next speech those same politicians want to give those same benefits to illegal aliens. What are we going to do in 30 years if we legalize everyone here now and make the eligible for social programs are we going to encourage a third wave of illegal immigration to handle the new cost of these programs?

For innumerable reasons we do not want to give illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship. In fact if we just take away the incentives of being here, actually enforce our laws with businesses to make sure they are held accountable for hiring illegals, and enforce our border most of the issue will take care of itself. We want highly skilled scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and doctors not more gardeners. If we are going to have large numbers of immigrants lets invite those that will enrich our society not only with their culture but with their technical skills.

Learn more about this author, Odin Kyle.
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