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Immigration In The Us

Immigration in the United States

"This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives." – Lyndon Johnson

These words, spoken by President Johnson in late 1965, detail the lack of foresight shown by the previous administrations of these United States. Prior to 1965 the United States experienced a period of approximately 25 years of net emigration. After the passage of the Hart-Cellar Immigration Bill the pendulum of migration began its fateful swing the opposite way. This bill, in my opinion, was originally introduced into legislation solely as a rider to the massive wave of civil rights propaganda and legislation being passed around Capitol Hill. This was an appeasement technique to help secure some votes for more than likely several politicians who were trying to gain support from their constituents. The immigration pattern that resulted from this legislation has inadvertently led to the waste of millions of dollars of social and economic resources over the past forty or so years.

What these politicians did not realize is that by opening the floodgates to 290,000 new legal visas each year, we also were allowing uncountable numbers of illegal immigrants into the country as well. The Center for immigration Studies states, "the unexpected result has been one of the greatest waves of immigration in the nation's history — more than 18 million legal immigrants since the law's passage, over triple the number admitted during the previous 30 years, as well as uncountable millions of illegal immigrants" ("Three Decades of Mass Immigration").   Now, finally in the year 2006 the administration is beginning to readdress this mistake that its predecessors made. Our elected leaders are finally beginning to try and fix or undo the harm that has been caused. I look at the topic similarly to a polluted waterway, once the ecosystem is destroyed it is near impossible to fix; but...