Political Analysis of Immigration Policies in the United States

This essay delves into the intricate political landscape surrounding immigration in the United States, highlighting the ongoing debates and policy shifts over the years. It addresses the challenges in reaching a consensus on comprehensive immigration reform, leading to executive and judicial interventions. The essay examines the demographic trends of immigrants, including undocumented populations, and the impact of policies such as DACA and the Trump administration's border security measures. It also discusses legal immigration avenues, including family reunification and employment-based visas like H1B. The analysis concludes that despite the critical importance of immigration policy, political divisions hinder meaningful reform, emphasizing the need for policymakers to consider the future implications of immigration laws. Desklib provides access to this essay and a variety of study tools for students.

Running head: POLITICAL SCIENCE
Political Science
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Immigration has been an important topic in the political scenario of The United States of
America (USA) for years. The politicians and policymakers have debated over this topic for
decades. The Congress has not been able to reach a viable agreement about a comprehensive
immigration framework or policies, thus it has moved some of the major decisions related to
immigration to the executive and the judiciary branches of the government. The subject of
immigration has been a popular topic of debate in the halls of state and in other government
bodies such as the municipalities. Right after taking the office the president of TheUnited States
of America Donald Trump has taken certain measures to secure the borders, enforced policies
regarding the refugees and has launched various interior enforcement. He has also revoked two
of the programmes sanctioned by the ex-president Obama, which protected the undocumented
families from deportation.
Among the total population of The USA, the population of the immigrants is about 14 percent
according to the data presented by the Census Bureau (Bigo, 2016). The immigrants and their
children who were born in the U.S together form about 27 percent of the total inhabitants of U.S.
Since the year 1970 there has been a steady rise in the population of the immigrants in the
country, but in comparison with the year 1890, there are fewer immigrants living in the United
States today.
One of the major issues regarding immigration is the illegal immigration; there are about 11
million undocumented illegal immigrants present in the country and the number has reduced
since the economic crisis faced in 2008, the economic crisis led some of the immigrants to return
to their own country and others felt discouraged to come to the United States (Carmon, 2016) . In
the year 2017, the Customs and the Border Protection reported a 26 percent of the drop in the
number of immigrants they caught hold of while immigrating into the states, and similarly the

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number of arrests of undocumented people increased a lot, most of the credit goes to the
administrative policies enforced by Trump.
According to the data of Pew Research Center among the undocumented immigrants living in
the United States one-third of them are the parents of the children who were born as US citizens.
Asylum seekers from the Central America mostly comprise of minors who have fled from their
countries in fear of the growing violence, and they contribute the maximum percentage to the
growing population of immigrants crossing over U.S and Mexico border (Balch, 2016). These
types of immigrants have a different type of legal rights under 2008 “anti-human trafficking
law”, the children below 18 years from non-contiguous countries are entitled to a hearing of
deportation before being sent to their respective home country (Bloemraad, Graauw & Hamlin,
2015). There are several laws, which aims to decrease the illegal immigration focuses on the
border security, but there are people who come to the United States in a legal way but overstay
their visa permit in the country and thus they also contribute to the percentage of undocumented
immigrants in the country (Hogan & Haltinner, 2015). According to the data presented by the
Center for Migration Studies, the number people who have stayed back after the expiry of their
visas are more than those who come illegally into the United States.
Coming to the topic of legal immigration, in the year 2016 permanent citizenship was granted
to almost 1.2 million people by the USA, among them two-thirds were allowed on the basis of
the reunification of the family members. Other categories are employment-based, refugees,
asylees, and diversity related. In late 2017, more than four million individuals were waiting for
their visas from the State Department. Several of individuals come to the United States under
non-immigrant visas to work legally in the country (Schuck, 2018). In 2017, the United States
permitted almost about 180,000 visas to the highly skilled workers, called the H1B visas, and

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about 250,000 visas for workers who have come to work on a temporary basis in industries and
agriculture. H1B visas are limited at 85,000 each year, although there are some exceptions for
specific fields.
During the time of President Obama to provide a temporary solution to the legal problems
faced by the undocumented immigrants' several actions were taken. The administration under
President Obama started a program “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) and
under this program, renewable deportation deferral of two years was provided to the immigrants
who had arrived in the United States as minors and who did not have any criminal records
(Freire & Li, 2018). In the year 2014, President Obama tried to provide same benefits to other
five million parents of the citizens of the U.S who were undocumented and to the permanent
residents. However, the administration was sued by 24 U.S. states; they condemned the program
saying that it violates the “federal immigration law” and also the Constitution of U.S.A. Later on,
the program was blocked by a Texas federal judge in the year 2015 and the Supreme Court
finally ended it in 2016.
After Donald J. Trump became the President, he launched several policies which affected the
immigration policies to a huge extent. He focused on tightening the security of the borders and
he instructed the federal agencies “to obtain complete operational control” of the border of US
and Mexico (Alegría, Álvarez, & DiMarzio, 2017). This also allowed the use of “expedited
removal” which means that any person who could not prove that he/she was living in the United
States for more than 2 years would be deported without any court hearing. The second change
brought by him focused on the interior enforcement and priority was given to the removal of the
undocumented illegal immigrants living in the United States. The third initiative adopted by

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Trump was the prevention of terrorism and he banned the citizens from Iran, Libya, Iraq, and
Somalia from coming to the United States for about 90 days.
According to the experts, the chances of reformation of the immigration policies in the USA
are quite bleak provided his position and the political division present in Washington. According
to CFR’s Edward Alden, “There is no appetite in the Republican party to try to go down the
comprehensive [immigration policy reform] road again” (Barnett, 2016). Although reform of
certain immigration policies will take a lot of effort there is one reform, which can invoke action
from the Congress, this is the policy regarding the H1B program. Both the Democrats and the
Republicans have shown considerable interest in the reformation of the H1B visa program which
according to the critics has lowered the cost of labor in the states by allowing the companies to
hire immigrants (Allum, 2015). Thus to conclude it can be said that the issue related to
immigration in the U.S.A. is one of the most crucial political topics in the country. Apart from
the legal immigration, the illegal ones should be kept under severe surveillance and also the legal
immigrants living in the country with expired visas should also be apprehended. Even though it
is a serious issue yet, the reformation of the policies is not possible due to the existence of
disputes and difference of opinions among the various political parties. The policymakers of
U.S.A need to make certain important changes in the immigration laws thinking about the future
of the country.

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Reference List:
Alegría, M., Álvarez, K., & DiMarzio, K. (2017). Immigration and Mental Health. Current
Epidemiology Reports, 4(2), 145-155.
Allum, N. (2015). Paired Samples T-test and the Time Sharing Experiments for the Social
Sciences (2010): Attitudes to Immigration in the USA. SAGE.
Balch, A. (2016). Immigration Politics in the UK and the USA. In Immigration and the State (pp.
97-116). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Barnett, V. (2016). Russian Émigré economists in the USA. In Economics in Russia (pp. 125-
140). Routledge.
Bigo, D. (2016). Frontiers of fear: immigration and insecurity in the United States and Europe.
Bloemraad, I., de Graauw, E., & Hamlin, R. (2015). Immigrants in the Media: Civic Visibility in
the USA and Canada. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(6), 874-896.
Carmon, N. (Ed.). (2016). Immigration and integration in post-industrial societies: Theoretical
analysis and policy-related research. Springer.
Freire, T., & Li, X. (2018). How immigration reduced volunteering in the USA: 2005–2011. The
Annals of Regional Science, 1-23.
Hogan, J., & Haltinner, K. (2015). Floods, invaders, and parasites: Immigration threat narratives
and right-wing populism in the USA, UK and Australia. Journal of Intercultural
Studies, 36(5), 520-543.

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Schuck, P. (2018). Citizens, strangers, and in-betweens: Essays on immigration and citizenship.
Routledge.