Immigrants Here For Decades Live In Alternate Societies

By Dustin Mendus

Pew Hispanic Center has released some interesting statistics regarding “illegal” immigrants in the United States, particularly regarding childbirths and length of stay in the United States.

Nearly two-thirds of the 10.2 million unauthorized adult immigrants in the United States have lived in this country for at least 10 years and nearly half are parents of minor children, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

Wow! 10.2 million is a big number, however, let’s break this down: 2/3 of 10.2 Million is actually 6.8 million. Since this is “nearly two-thirds,” and I did the math with this actually as 2/3, I will round this down to 6.5 million. So, we have 6.5 million “illegal” immigrants In the United States who have been living here for at least ten years. Half of this, 3.25 million, have minor children (17 years old or younger). That’s a large amount of data with different meanings when you crunch the first number. 3.25 million have children that are under 18, 6.5 million have been in the United States for more 10 or more years. 10.2 million immigrants in total.

But, people who employ “illegal” immigrants care about child labor laws or much else when they see them as, essentially, disposable employees. When you can easily threaten to deport them for getting “uppity” (read: asking for decent living standards or a wage increase), there is nothing to make the employers enforce normal laws that would, god forbid, hamper their output. Nevermind that these immigrants can’t go to the police  about labor issues. Imagine how that would play out. The victim would be shipped back over the border and the employer might get a slap on the wrist.

It’s safe to say that the society in which the “illegal” operates in is not a society that plays by the rules, so it’s very safe to assume that despite America’s overall place in demographic transition ( a service economy with little need for large familities) does not apply here.  Having more children might be a huge benefit for the same reasons that it works so well in poorer countries.

The Pew Hispanic analysis finds that 35% of unauthorized adult immigrants have resided in the U.S. for 15 years or more; 28% for 10 to 14 years; 22% for 5 to 9 years; and 15% for less than five years. The Center’s analysis also finds that the share that has been in the country at least 15 years has more than doubled since 2000, when about one-in-six (16%) unauthorized adult immigrants had lived here for that duration. By the same token, the share of unauthorized adult immigrants who have lived in the country for less than five years has fallen by half during this period — from 32% in 2000 to 15% in 2010.

Another interesting statistic that the Pew piece brings us. One third of “illegals” have been in America for 15 or more years. We’re talking 1996. Not 2005. These people have been here long before the immigrant scare in the 2000s, and the disturbing backlash of 2011. They aren’t leaving, either.

With all of that in mind, I think it’s safe to draw some conclusions.

1. Border security is inefficient and incompetent. It’s job is to curtail and prevent illegal access to the country. If “illegal”’ immigrants have been in America for 10+ years, the argument for border security “protecting us” from potential terrorists with deportations is null and void. They can’t keep people who are coming to America without any real camouflage from getting in. Do you think these people are going to stop “terrorists”(another boogyman) from getting in our soil?
2. The instruments are all in place to make the secretive society that “illegal” immigrants exist in extremely abusive and relatively similar to a third world country, where these people and their children are forced into a barbaric system without the necessary protections that our constitution provides, where their dignity and human rights will be violated. Any attempts by these people to speak out against this system directly run the chance of deportation.

Start laying off and changing our border security’s tactics immediately, and start naturalizing our massive population of illegal immigrants so we can get rid of this second class of living that these people are forced into. This is the United States, not the third world. The standards “illegal” immigrants subsist in are primitive at best, and need to be rectified.

Dustin Mendus is an undergraduate student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He focuses on cultural geography.