US Immigration Policy

Before researching, I did not know as much as I probably should have about the U.S. immigration. What I learned from researching really surprised me though. I read that there is a limit of 480,000 visas available for family based circumstances. To me, that seems like a huge number of visas given out. However after listening to Greg today, I realized that is hardly enough visas for everyone trying to get into the United States. I also read that nearly 14 million immigrants entered the US between 2000 and 2010. That to me is an astonishing number. Comparing that number though with only having 480,000 available each year is incredibly sad. It makes me wonder what the people who cannot end up getting a visa, do in a situation like that. It makes me curious of the statistics of how many then choose the dangerous route such as drug or sex trafficking.

It seems also that the statistics would be even worse trying to come across the Mexico-United States border. I read that they have extremely restrictive legal limits on green cards and have a lack of immigrant visas for low skilled workers. That made me think of the pictures we saw today of the border between Arizona and Mexico. It started out as nothing but a few light posts, but ended as an actual medal barrier as the time went on due to the growing amount of people wanting to get into the US. I looked up more pictures of the border between Mexico and the United States and I was not expecting what I saw. It was interesting to look at the difference between the US. and how it is so developed versus Mexico where there is still much land left undeveloped. They are two completely different areas, yet only separated by a wall.

With health care being such a big issue right now, I decided to look up statistics on how many immigrants have health insurance, and a little more background information. The information I found was from 2008, but I thought it still gave me a good idea of what is going on. In 2008, immigrants accounted for 29% of the 46.6 million working-age adults that lacked health care, which is about 13.4 million. About half of these were unauthorized immigrants, a third were lawful permanent residents, and the remaining 17% were naturalized citizens. The half that are unauthorized immigrants though make me wonder what would happen if they ended up getting seriously injured and had to go to the hospital. They would first face a huge medical bill, which is bad enough as it is for US citizens, but on top of that would they be risking deportation?

Deportation got me thinking as well. I wanted to know the statistics of how many people are deported on average. From the same site, I read that nearly one million were deported. It was interesting to me however because this number decreased from nearly two million in 2000. This makes me wonder if we have raised the number of visas allowed for the United States? Researching all of this made me think a lot more on US immigration policy than I ever have.