Introduction
Immigrants seeking greener pastures and other forces driving migration, including poverty and war, have made countries, including the US, experience their upsurge. Most non-citizen individuals believe that moving to America will become the source of their betterment of life due to massive job opportunities. Even though there is no proof of whether they will commit serious crimes, the United States has put harsh immigration policies shaped with more fear and stereotypes. Immigrants experience criminality stigmatization resulting from an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. The government has established new classes of ‘felonies’ applied solely to them and subjected deportation as a form of minor offense punishment (Ewing et al. n.p). The paper will discuss the views of immigrants upon entering the US and explain why the American government permit set laws and policies to criminalize immigration. It will further suggest how the federal authority can adjust to give fair and equal treatment to all individuals.
Main body
Both legal and unauthorized immigrants in the United States are perceived to be the source of economic development. According to the statistics, 40 percent of all immigrants have received a high school and college education. They fit in most unoccupied high-skilled job vacancies driving innovation (Mathis et al. n.p). Immigration offers blended cultural diversity required for country growth, and most immigrants become entrepreneurs, which creates employment for unskilled laborers. Besides, cost-benefit analysis showcases advantages of immigrants outweigh the drawbacks, whereby they tend to drive the economic development of the US contrasted to committing felonies. Nevertheless, they continue to receive negative views from other Americans (Ewing et al., n.p). Most Americans view foreigners as the source of crimes, including but not limited to rape, terrorism, robbery, violence, murder, and aggravated assault. According to statistical reports, 65 percent of native-born Americans commit more crimes than immigrants, but the presence of laws has created negative perceptions and stereotypes about them.
Even though immigration is not attached to higher crime rates than native-born, multiple US policymakers succumb to prejudices and worries about imagining what immigrants will be in the future. Instead of being established on substance, most immigrants are drafted based on stereotypes. These policies criminalize the ever-broadening swath of the alien populace by subjecting a double standard concerning the offense behavior ramification. Several laws since 1996 up-to-date have been developed engendering criminalization of immigration (Mathis et al. n.p). Due to the belief that most immigrants have not been documented, the government established the Immigration and Nationality Act (Bosworth et al. 99). The felonies act of the law suggests the deportation of immigrants as they do not meet the prerequisites to stay in the country. The Immigration and Reform Act disputed the authorization of converting workers and multiplied its funds in guarding the US border to deter immigrants’ entry (Menjívar et al. n.p). The policies commanded the US chief legal advisors to extradite all foreigners convicted of detachable felonies. The regulations are directed toward immigrants who have committed offenses and sentenced, expanding immigration policing.
Furthermore, US presidents, including Mr. Trump, signed several executive orders deterring the entry of settlers and illegalizing immigration since they cause the decline of job opportunities for indigenous people, serving as the reason for misdemeanor rate escalation. The law enforcement agencies and local administrators have the authority to examine diverse entry cases, make apprehensions, and arrest settlers grounded on domestic and unlawful settlement infringements (Abrego et al. n.p). As a result, a negative prejudice is projected towards newcomers, whereby most of them continue to be arrested and face criminal prosecutions even though they have not committed any crime. Over the last 30 years, the US federal government has been redefining the meaning of the felony alien by utilizing increasingly stringent criminality standards that do not apply to citizens. The US immigration policies engender many criminal foreigners, with an approximately 55 percent deportation and detention rate, casting a broader dragnet atop the country’s foreign-born populace while searching for any individual expellable (Chacón, n.p). Although the argument is to secure communities, the apprehended immigrants are imprisoned in a growing countrywide network of undesirable for-profit and private jails before their deportation.
Currently, a non-indigenous guilty of a misdemeanor, like driving a car with broken headlights, can trigger eviction from the country. The US is experiencing a period of great expulsion of foreigners, both unauthorized and lawfully present, who are not threatening and non-violent and have deep roots in the nation (Bosworth et al. 96). The unstoppable deportation campaign is constantly justified as a war against unpermitted immigration. However, it does not prove the banishment of legally permanent residents who have US-based families and have committed less serious crimes (Abrego et al. n.p). The policies serve not as an offense-fighting tool but as a method of prohibiting settlement. The administrative leaders and other policymakers should draft and embrace open-minded and rational regulations, including naturalization to adopt citizenship and issuing work permits. The technique will adequately fight illegal immigration and reduce fears and stereotypes projected toward foreigners.
Conclusion
In conclusion, upon examining the development of immigration laws, regulations, and enforcement mechanisms over the last three decades, the federal government’s effort scope to outlaw immigration and broaden enforcement dragnet reach becomes immediately obvious. The 1996 Congress passed bills act as instances of policies that unfair justice system for non-US citizens that varies from the one applied to the citizens. This drives negative beliefs and a stereotype toward the immigrants as the ones who commit crimes. Like Secure Communities and the Criminal Alien Program (CAP), having initiative policies continue to dig deep the foreign people and criminalize them. The government should work on issuing work permits and adopting naturalization to fight crimes against immigrants.
Works Cited
Abrego, Leisy, et al. “Making Immigrants into Criminals: Legal Processes of Criminalization in the Post-IIRIRA Era.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 5.3 (2017): 694-715.
Bosworth, Mary, and Sarah Turnbull. “Immigration Detention, Punishment and the Criminalization of Migration.” The Routledge Handbook on Crime and International Migration. Routledge, 2017. 91-106.
Chacón, Jennifer M. “The Criminalization of Immigration.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. 2021.
Mathis, Cherra, and David Androff. “The Crimmigratory Agenda: Historical, Economic, and Political Dimensions of the Criminalization of Immigration in the United States.” Journal of Policy Practice and Research 2.2 (2021): 105-118.
Menjívar, Cecilia, Andrea Gómez Cervantes, and Daniel Alvord. “The Expansion of “Crimmigration,” Mass Detention, and Deportation.” Sociology Compass 12.4 (2018): e12573.