Welfare system challenges and reform approaches

¶ … drive debates around new and existing immigration policies in the United States. The paper also has a secondary objective of presenting aspects of the present immigration policies that may need reform. Immigration is a response to a stimulus of the philosophy of push and pull. All immigration or migration, whether it occurs on local, national or international scales happens because of some combination of underlying factors that pertain to the philosophy of Push - Pull. Push factors are impelling reasons to leave a country such as demographic growth, living standards, economic opportunities, political repression or war. Even natural hazards or disasters help people decide to leave their host countries. Pull factors represent the attraction of a receiving country such as the United States. The pull for this country equate to freedom of religion, employment opportunities and political freedoms. These United States offers demand for labor, availability of land, excellent economic opportunities, political freedoms, education, medical care or political stability. With these in mind, nations should create their immigration policies.

To truly understand our present immigration policies, we have to look back to our past. For instance, the first Chinese immigrants came to the United States approximately 1847 but the real mass immigrations occurred near 1848 for the gold rush. This pull phenomena and Chin's economically depressed Canton region served as the push. The majority of Chinese who migrated to the United States were poor males. The Americans and Chinese were very different in nature, culture, beliefs and racial characteristics which led to backlash of violence against the new immigrants as well as mass intervention by the government to curb hostilities. Chinese immigration was changed to cover new immigration treaties which gave the Chinese more privileged travel and residence status but did not legally permit them to naturalize as citizens.

Actually, the favored nation status did not stop the government from creating the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which was aimed at barring any large immigration movements by Chinese. "The Act barred the further entry of Chinese male laborers (and subsequently their wives) and prevented the Chinese from becoming naturalized citizens. The combined effect of these two aspects of Exclusion along with the enforcement of anti-miscegenation laws in many Western U.S. states severely restricted family formation and the emergence of a second generation." (Chew and Liu)

Ellis Island)

Bringing us into the twentieth century, immigration brings to mind a vision of historic Ellis Island and its many pre and post World War mass indoctrinations of new Americans. That vision does not seem to be a reality anymore. Our nation's immigration policies are far too often fueled by fears and racism. For example, many immigration and naturalization policies in the early 1900's were obvious attempts to restrict the civil rights of new immigrants and certain social or ethnic groups - Germans, for instance, had obvious difficulties immediately during and after World War I with restrictive laws such as the 1917 espionage Act, the 1918 Sedition Act, and a draft of the Civil Service Act.

Our immigration policies seemed to repeat themselves with World War II and what occurred with Japanese, Italian and German citizens. The next cycle came with Polish, Russian, and other Baltic state immigrants being targeted during the 1940's and 50' with events like the Red Scare that swept across America. There is no doubt that all of these periods had very restrictive immigration polices directed at the target groups and there were specific legal policies implemented to curb future immigration. but, perhaps more worrisome was that there were also underlying mass racism movements during all of these scenarios directed against these immigrants whether they were enemies of our nation or not.

Again, our immigration and naturalization policies needed reevaluation after September 11, 2001, which was an obviously horrific day in our history. That event made us view our existing immigration, naturalization and work as well as student visa policies. In other words, we were doing the same things that were done to the Chinese, German, Japanese and Baltic state immigrants - this time, the targets were individuals of Middle Eastern decent and practicing Muslims. Current immigration policies are extremely anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and in some sense could be considered to be racist theories. The cycle revolves against anti-immigrant sentiment that targets whatever group represents the most recent immigrant population problem.

The concern therefore is that our mass illegal immigration concerns in California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and other states are not addressed by our current immigration laws. Jay Leno recently pointed out that there is a huge hole in the fence from Mexico to the United States and the ride across the open seas of shark infested waters from Cuba are gradually becoming downhill rides. Our immigration policies in these cases have been slow to react or simply oblivious to the inherent immigration problems. Unfortunately, the only answer to stop illegal immigration may be for our nation to go to war with whatever country the policies are missing or to not allow them to create next generations - hey, it always seemed to work in the past.