Emigration, Immigration, and Humanitarian Crisis
An article published on the BBC website on 19th Feb 2020 focused consequences of Brexit. The title of the article is ‘Immigration: Eight ways new laws will affect the industry.’
The new law that was passed brought into action 31st Dec 2019 plea of termination of UK-EU Visa, which allowed free movement. The Authors’ list of effects has no boundary on industry, race, ethnicity, or even nationality. Even the citizens and their economic systems will experience a significant impact. Some prominent challenges will be lack of economical labor, inadequate healthcare providers for needy population, general shortage of human resources in blue-collar jobs, complication of hiring foreigners, and barriers to higher education research.
After going through the content, I found myself thinking of our state after the enactment of a new immigration policy. In my quest, I started my research on citizen’s opinions on the matter. The PEW research center published the answers I got and would like to share.
Let me start by reminding you of some of the proposals that the government made over the immigration policy. All illegal immigrants were to be repatriated to their countries, construction of physical wall, and introduction of a restriction on green-cards issuance. Our policy for a while had been an excellent policy offering opportunities to different people from other states. Our economy had employed many immigrants accounted to be over 34 Million. One of the problems we had with the policy is that it had facilitated the influx of illegal immigrants. In 2018 the government reported there were over 12 Million illegal immigrants in the country. This was, besides, to already registered 34 Million. The influx of illegal immigrants is a social concern given security issues and terrorism. As a society, we have, in recent years, witnessed our fellow citizens being attacked because of their gender orientation. American culture and society have never heard a problem with personal choices. Irrespective of our preferences, we gave an opinion, but our democracy carried the day. With the socioeconomic drawback we had been experiencing, there was a need to contain illegal immigrants.
Pew article offered a different scenario of our state compared to our friend, the United Kingdom. The government has taken an initiative to review immigration laws. Initially, an immigrant could only be allowed on bases on education and employment. Our government has examined the subject of green card issuance and introduced policy that is socially and economically sustainable. Key changes introduced include family-based green-cards, diversity visas, employment-based, temporary permissions and temporary protected status, h-1b visas, and DACA. The move by the government was needed and restored our social status since we show our belief and support of family as a basic unit, enhance our participation on humanitarian grounds, and protect our industries from a labor shortage.