Executive Summary
Immigration policies in the modern world are becoming more and more complicated especially with the growth of globalization. There is a growing need for people to migrate from one point to another and at the same time, there is need to protect the local from various negative globalization effects such as terrorism and illegal immigrants. Using radical approaches to immigration may not necessarily lead to the wanted positive intentions of restricting immigration. Instead, they may lead to increased illegal immigration activities. The policies in place are narrow-minded and need for re-evaluating them from a wider perspective.
Immigration policy issues
In the discovery of globalization, there is a renewed discovery of assimilation of immigrants to US citizenship. For a long time, immigrants have been the forefront of creating a new multicultural nation where national identity, rights and organizational capacity of immigrants and locals dissolve to become one. The new multicultural nation replaces the assimilation of immigrants and national identities and cultural affiliations become obsolete due to the loss of original cultural values and identities. The state responds to this by uplifting the status of the US citizen by upgrading the rights of the citizen and loosening the restrictions on citizens. Non-citizens face inflated membership. This is in a bid to strengthen the dominance of US citizens by devaluing the non-citizen members (Bonjour).
Where there are multicultural policies, they are extremely exaggerated or the public is not aware of them. However, research has shown that there is no evidence of immigrant assimilation and as such, there is no loss of national identities and values. In fact, strengthening of the use of national resources and maintenance of national cultures has been on the rise (Boswell). Therefore, there is need to reevaluate the immigration policies and reevaluate the local non-citizenship members. The effort that the state has put in place to restrict immigration can be seen as failing (Bonjour). This is probably due to the wrong view of international migration patterns. Irregular wealth distribution, political wars, and labor needs drive International migration. Therefore, restrictions on immigration do not affect why people migrate but rather increase the use of other irregular means of entry. At a certain level, employers, migration channels and other intermediaries who enhance the continued movement of people control migration (Castles and Miller).
Furthermore, immigration restrictions to some point violate human rights such as the right to protection for those seeking asylum and other vulnerable groups and right to family unity (Castles and Miller). These factors then explain why in the long-run immigration restriction policies often fail. There is an increase in the need to control the volumes of immigrants but at the same time, borders are growing out of control that is maybe why we should build a wall along the Mexican border. However, it is not really a permanent solution, as it will only lead to increased irregular means of entry. There is a need to come up with more effective immigration policies.
Immigration policies aim at establishing an order in which the behavior of a certain group – potential immigrants – heads towards a certain direction. However, many other policies that are not immigration policies also affect the targeted immigration policy trends and their effects are greater by huge factors against immigration policy intentions. Therefore, the whole functioning of the state as an entity affects the immigration trends and setting up immigration policies that prohibit immigration is but a very narrow-minded focus. Many factors are going to suffer because of setting up tough immigration policies that will have a negative impact on the nation as a whole. Sectors such as labor market, development, or education record a reduced inflow of necessary human resource.
What is next for immigration policies?
To get great impact and clarity on developing better immigration policies it is important to have clear targets for policy effectiveness. We have to develop policies that have the power to bring great results. We have to look at the actual effect of policies and not the desired effect of policies. First, leaders should stop creating policies that create the notion that they are in control. The tough-sounding immigration policies often have the intention to sound in control and not the wanted effect of actually controlling the situation. Nevertheless, how do we define the real intended result of an immigration policy? Well, immigration policies are often under many competing influences. For instance, businesspersons prefer more liberal immigration policies whereas trade unions restrict immigration as it threatens the job opportunities that are available for locals. These competing interests go far into government, state departments, ministries and political parties.
There is a need to develop a balancing act among all the factions with the set goal of generally restricting trade so that the developed immigration policies are not harsh. Human rights, business interests, and economic interests should have a balance with the uncontrolled immigration. The government cannot focus on one side of immigration and ignore illegal immigration including employment and residence (Boswell). There is need to use coalitions that concern all the relevant parties to have diverse discussions concerning immigration policies. The coalitions should aim at uniting the divergent interests but agree to have strong immigration restrictive policies. Discursive coalitions have been successfully used to formulate policies such as allowing temporary immigration but this has not been successful as temporary immigrants eventually settle permanently (Cornelius).
Successful immigration policies will, therefore, be a result of the compromise between all the varying factions. The interests of many parties are usually not clear. Moreover, the publicly expressed intention of various stakeholders is usually not a viable benchmark for immigration policies, as they usually do not have the true reflection of their intentions. Therefore, to identify the true intentions and objectives of various stakeholders there is a need to have debates and processes that make known their deepest intentions. With the true intentions of all the stakeholders then it is possible to have specific policy objectives that will lead the discursive coalition. Finally, there is a need to have a clear knowledge of policies that are on paper and implemented policies. After, discursive coalitions, the policies on paper have to convert into action through implementation. The policies will require interpretation and the necessary financial and human resources committed to the actualization of the immigration policies. The robust measures of restricting immigration should not dissolve in political lip singing and hearsay.
In conclusion, the immigration policies of the United States for a long time have been narrow-focused and not all-inclusive. The recent debate to tighten border operations in order to restrict immigrants has led to radical approaches such as considering of building walls along borders. However, these radical approaches will only lead to increased use of illegal migration routes. Furthermore, several factors and factions such as businesspersons, political conflict, dictate migration and so on. Without involving the other parties involved in migration, it is fruitless to try to control the volume of immigrants. To develop more sustainable policies it is therefore imperative that there is a coalition of parties with interests in migration to have an all-inclusive discussion. The aim is addressing and coming up with better immigration policies that will have long-term successful impacts. Finally, the immigration policies will require enough backing from the government such the adequate financial and human resources.