Day 1- Crossing the Border

Day 1-

The history and the economics of illegal immigration.

What did we learn today?

Today we learned a little about the economic conditions that migrants are dealing with in Mexico. We see the incredible damage done by NAFTA to those people living in Central America. According to the paper, it has created a push/pull effect. In Central America, the economic situation has become so dire, that migrants literally feel pushed into leaving their homeland. The good economic status of the United States succeeds so well, it is literally pulling migrants into the country.

We learned that close the 2000 to 3500 illegal immigrants live in Kenosha County, about 16% of Kenosha's hispanic community are illegal immigrants.

The Kenosha News lists these as some of the reason migrants are desperately trying to leave their homeland and how they are getting across-

Economic change in Mexico

Population growth in Mexico

Inadequate job creation in Mexico

Fluctuation in US Border enforcement

Changes in US immigration policies

Labor market developements in the United States

Today, we also learned the difficulties for those to enter the country legally. In 1991, almost 1 million legal migrants were allowed to enter the United States on a guest worker program. Today, with demand even higher than it was in 1991, we allow less than 200,000 migrants to legally enter this country on our guest worker program.


So today's questions are-

Should the US increase the amount of legal immigrants allowed into the country on a guest worker program? (by the way, for folks who do not know- we currently have a guest worker program and we have had one since WWII.)

Should the US improve or shorten the path to citizenship for LEGAL immigrants? (I am not talking illegal immigrants)

Should the US concern themselves with the economic conditions in Central America?