Undocumented Immigrants - 3/15/20

The size of the undocumented immigrant population the us is difficult to measure. This is a difficult topic for me to discuss because I have not had any first hand experience with this issue. It is no surprise that most of the undocumented population is largely from the country of Mexico. What surprised me the most about the current research on this topic is that most undocumented persons come from visa overstays. This is alarming to me because I think that citizenship should be granted to someone who is employed for some time in the United States. In contrast to President Donald Trump's statements about building a wall to curb illegal immigration, building a wall will not stop illegal immigration if the case of undocumented persons is stemmed from visa overstays. According to an article written by a staff writer at NPR, there have been 7 consecutive years when Visa Overstays have exceeded the amount of illegal border crossings. My take on this issue is that there are a lot of businesses that abuse undocumented workers and pay them low wages and give them zero benefits. The research on the true numbers of undocumented workers wages is quite slim. According to the Econofact website, Undocumented persons have low bargaining power, and these people really cannot get the wages they deserve. The wages of Undocumented workers are estimated to be as high as 42%. (Ortega, 2019) These numbers are alarming because wages are already an outstanding issue in this nation. With the US minimum wage still standing at 7.25 an hour, even the higher wages in the states themselves still are not high enough to meet the needs of standard living. According to basic knowledge you need to make 4 times what your home is costing you per month. The reality is that most people do not meet these standards. Even with Higher wages in states like California and and Massachusetts, the costs of living are so high in these areas that not very many groups of wealth can afford to live in these areas. Areas like Texas still have a quite low minimum wage (Still standing at 7.25) and have rapidly rising rent/property prices that it is becoming harder and harder finding places to live and work. To tie all of this together, if we document undocumented workers, it will put a lot less stress on our economy so we can build things up from there. There is a lot to be done to fix these issues, but I think it starts there.

https://econofact.org/what-explains-the-wages-of-undocumented-workers

https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-many-undocumented-immigrants-are-in-the-united-states-and-who-are-they/

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