I couldn't think of a title...

The topic of immigration rages on in the United States. Declared by many, next to the war in Iraq, to be the hot button issue of elections, at the local and national level, for several years. In the political arena the issue is painted as black and white with no gray area in between, you either support or oppose illegal immigration. The reality though, is that the answer o the illegal immigration debate lies in the middle, and several sources I found support the same view.

The first article “A surge in immigration is spawning a backlash” http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15767256.html was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer and deals with the immigration debate in Charlotte, North Carolina. In North Carolina, the foreign born population has increased by over 400 percent, with the foreign born population in Charlotte increasing by almost 700 percent. Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph, the local sheriff, has proposed a solution to the illegal immigration in the area, which is to invoke a federal law created in 1996 under the Immigration and Nationality Act by section 286(g), which allows for the deportation of illegal immigrants found guilty of crimes in the United States. I found this solution to be an interesting twist on the issues raised in the articles on Hazleton, where the issue of illegal immigration and crime led to a totalitarian approach to dealing with illegal immigrants. Instead, Charlotte only processes and deports those actually found guilty of crime, taking irresponsible and dangerous criminals off the streets and processing them or deportation.

Another article “Two kinds of immigration,” http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/10/16/two_kinds_of_immigration/

published in the Boston Globe, explored the economic implications of immigration on the workforce of the United States. One of the most interesting aspects is that immigrants accounted for 86 percent of employment in the minor employment force in the last 5 years while minors who reported being employed fell by almost 4.2 million in the same time frame. As has been explored before, in an effort to keep costs down, many employers are turning to the immigrant workforce to maximize their profits and statistics prove that it isn’t just jobs that no one wants that are being filled. The growth of illegal immigrants in the labor force is a double-sided sword. On one hand, the cheaper labor keeps commercial costs down and according to Harry L. Jones of Charlotte is a net gain in terms of diversity as well as economic opportunities. On the other hand however, illegal immigrations create a deficit because they do not pay as much taxes as others.