The death of the melting pot

America, it has been called the great melting pot were everything blends together to form something new. Now what happens when something won’t melt, not on accord of its properties, but out of refusal? What happens to the melting pot? And what happens when that stuff just keeps pouring in, drowning out everything else? The melting pot becomes a sad stew, devoid of any favorable flavor. That is the problem our country is facing, having the diverse blend of people and ideas from all over the world being drowned out by tidal wave of illegal immigrants flooding across our borders every day.

Immigration has a long history in our country. For many, coming to America is the ultimate dream. During the eighteen hundreds most of our immigrants came from Eastern Europe and Great Britten (Hay, Jeff. Immigration). Slowly after that people began coming from countries farther west and farther south until our country had a steady flow of people from everywhere and we became the most varied culture in the world (Hay, Jeff. Immigration).

Most people who come to this country do so completely legally. They follow the appropriate procedures, and become citizens. These people benefit our culture and society by bringing parts of their culture with them. This adds diversity and new ideas to our society. This also helps people from that country assimilate in the future (Hay, Jeff. Immigration). However, the axe swings both ways and these new people must be willing to try to assimilate in order for the system to work properly. Failure to follow this system often results in discrimination and racism towards what the common person sees as “strange” or “weird” (Torr, James. Immigrants in America). People come from all over the world and they come for as many reasons as the places they come from. War, starvation, religious freedom, politics, a better standard of living, even just a change of scenery, these are just a few of the reasons people immigrate to America.

These are the same reasons illegal immigrants come to our country. These people come from everywhere but mostly from central and southern America due to accessibility (Miller, Debra. illegal immigration). This is when the problems start. Upon arrival the illegals often steal the I.D of a legal citizen or make one up, (Egendorf, Laura. Illegal immigration) both of these things are criminal acts. The fact is that all illegal immigrants are criminals. Now do all of them act like bullet spraying gang lords? No, their crime is much simpler; they are here illegally! Just being here is automatically making them criminals. Many actually go farther than that; twenty seven present of the population in prisons is made up of illegal immigrants (Miller, Debra. illegal immigration). Many illegals are involved in drugs and gangs and more than half of the illegals here have been arrested two to ten times, twelve present of these arrests are for serious crimes like murder, robbery, assault, and sex crimes (Miller, Debra. illegal immigration). These crimes, while horrible, pale in comparison of the main threat; terrorism. Almost every terrorist attack on our countries soil has had illegal immigrant participants. All a terrorist has to do is cross the border and suddenly they can kill at their pleasure (Miller, Debra. illegal immigration). Both of these problems can be slowed down considerably by stopping illegal immigration. Some say that a mass deportation would solve the problem. In twenty-twelve more than forty thousand illegals were deported (Grant, David. Deportation). Deportation is good but it won’t stop the flow of illegals. The best way to stop the flow is a fine, not on the immigrants, but on businesses that hire them. If you make the businesses that hire them loose money on each one they will stop hiring them, and if there are no jobs for the illegals to get they won’t come here because they will have no prospect of income.
Quite on the contrary some people are of the mind that we should embrace these immigrants with open arms. These people say that these immigrants worked so hard to get here, that these hard workers are just what we need. These same people say amnesty is the answer to our problems. While I can see were these opinions come from, they have many flaws. First of all amnesty will not fix immigration. The second we say “congrats you are all citizens” is the second we open our arms to all the worlds’ criminals seeking a haven. On that point, considering amnesty is out, the illegals would be stealing jobs. Our country is almost out of jobs for people and the illegals are the reason. Every job one of them takes is one less job for a hardworking citizen (Egendorf, Laura. Illegal immigration). Probably the most important reason we must stop illegal immigration is their refusal to assimilate. It’s not like they can’t do it, it’s that they don’t want to (Miller, Debra. illegal immigration). The result is large chunks of our society trying to fight against the rest. This problem with immigration is not just bad for society; it’s bad for the economy. It cost 28607.8 million dollars last year just to educate illegal immigrants (Miller, Debra. illegal immigration).

All of this paints a pretty bleak picture for our country. Between the jobs, the crime, and the civil disobedience it’s a wonder we all aren’t in poverty or immigrating ourselves. But there is hope! If we crack down on businesses hiring them and we keep up the deportations there is still is hope. We still might just be able to turn this sad stew back into something good and functional. Something people would be proud to call home. Together we can still save the melting pot.