Contemporary America
For the final blog task of the year I have chosen to look at illegal immigration. I feel that this website represents contemporary America strongly as recently (in the last 20 or so years) as there has been a lot of focus on illegal and legal immigrants and how they are changing society.
Immigrationcountes.com provides live numbers of illegal immigration in the United States. The website uses the latest government and private sources, analysis and data.
This website only provides counts for illegal immigrants and the numbers seem to go up very quickly. There are many different counts such as the numbers of people and the cost of these illegal immigrants. One section is labeled "Other than Mexican Illegals in Country". This suggests that most of the illegal aliens are of a Hispanic background. In my opinion, it is immigration at the moment that is shaping a new identity for America. There is a count on the amount of illegal children in public schools which has lead to debates such as the national language and whether it should be changed to Spanish.
One section that I found most interesting was "Anchor Babies since 2002". I has to research this further as I had never heard of the term. An "Anchor Baby" is a term for a child born in the United States to immigrant parents. Being born in the United States gives them instantaneous citizenship and then can later facilitate their relatives. There has been many controversies over this matter however despite restrictions in the law, courts have sometimes been reluctant to deport parents of a U.S-born child.
One element that we don't usually think about is the economic factors of all these illegal immigrants especially in the workforce. American employers now can pay illegal immigrants less than minimum wage because as the counter suggests there is always going to be someone else to take their place if complain or get fired. Over the years there has been a lot of Press regarding the standard of living these immigrants and it begs the question as to why these immigrants are getting paid pittance yet they still want to immigrate to America. This counter has shown some hard problems that politicians must solve soon.
I also found it very interesting that at the top of the website it makes a comment that gives the immpression that they are not totally against immigration but as long as it is done legally and it will not affect the country.
"Immigrationcounters.com supports legal immigration and respect for all humanity yet higlights the significant impact of illegal immigration."
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