Immigration

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- Concerns and Issues

Work Visas

The process to receive working visas requires updating, both for individuals and through companies or businesses sponsoring individuals. Likewise, there should be harsher penalties to businesses and business sponsors that breach or fail to maintain these visas or hire people without these visas rather than going after individuals.

Immigration Court

There is an extensive backlog of immigration cases which is the fault of the United States Government, not the immigrant or asylum seeker. This backlog must be addressed, and will assist in taking care of immigrants trying to follow the correct procedures. Correcting this court system includes an audit to see how current funding is being used and how the current process can be streamlined, potentially more efficient funding or more funding, expanding legal representation for immigrants, discovery of where technology can be used to make the system more efficient and accurate, and possibly moving this process into an independent judiciary system (an Article 1 court system) for greater fairness and fewer political influences.

Department

Currently, Immigration is managed and maintained under Homeland Security. The purpose of this department is to safeguard the US from terrorist attacks, secure the borders from illegal entry, and responses to disasters. Immigrants are not disasters, and studies show they are less likely to perform a terrorist attack compared to domestic citizens. People from other countries come here to either work or study, so why are they being tracked by an anti-terrorist organization? Instead, they should be moved to the Department of Labor. This is both symbolic and a better view of immigration and immigrants in general. The department tracking labor should likewise be tracking the people in the country performing that labor.

Granting Citizenship

In 1986, Reagan passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act which granted legal citizenship to any individuals who arrived before 1982 provided they maintained good standing during the previous years. This includes paying taxes, were never guilty of a crime, and possessed a minimum knowledge about U.S. history, government, and the English language. It is time to make this our actual, permanent path towards citizenship. If an individual lives within this country, pays taxes, is never found guilty of a crime, and possesses a minimum level of American knowledge, they should be granted American citizenship after a specific time period. That time period is up for debate, but somewhere between 5 and 10 years is likely to be a simple average amount of time, with a minimum age of 18.

Dreamer

A child should not be granted citizenship because the mother made it over the border while in labor. However, If one or both parents are American citizens, then it makes sense for the child to be automatically granted American citizenship upon birth anywhere in the world. Coupled with the last section about granting citizenship to an individual, if they have a child under the age of the years waited (5 to 10 years), then the child should likewise be granted citizenship provided they likewise have a basic understanding of English. Other requirements should obviously be waived due to the age of the child.