What is Currently going on with Immigration in the U.S?

Photo Credit: The Department of Homeland Security

More than 43.7 million immigrants resided in the United States in 2016, accounting for 13.5 percent of the total U.S. population of 323.1 million, according to the American Community Survey (ACS) data.

Current Population Survey (CPS) stated that between 2015 and 2016, the foreign-born population increased by about 449,000, or 1 percent, a rate slower than the 2.1 percent growth experienced between 2014 and 2015.

In 2016, almost 76 percent of immigrants in the United States are here legally, while 24 percent of immigrants are unauthorized, according to the Pew Research Center. However, Pew Research Center estimated that out of those 76 percent of immigrants that come to the United States legally, only 45 percent were naturalized in 2016.

Not all lawful permanent residents choose to pursue a U.S. citizenship, but if they do, they can apply for a U.S. citizenship after meeting specific requirements. Such as, being able to read, write and speak in English, understand U.S. history and government, be a green card holder living in the U.S. for five years, and many more requirements, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

A Temple University student, Khanya Brann, 22, of Philadelphia, got her citizenship in July 2017. She and her family moved to the U.S. in June of 2009 from Montréal, Canada because her father got a job as a cardiovascular surgeon at Temple University Hospital.

Unlike, her sister who got her citizenship through their parents, Brann had to go through the immigration process, including taking the immigration test, even though she came to the U.S. when she was 12-years-old.

“I was over 18-years-old when the application got to a place where I had to take it,” says Brann.

Brann said, the test was pretty simple, and they only ask people 10 questions, if they get six of them right then they pass.

“It’s was pretty much stuff I had learned in middle school in the U.S. and high school. I had to study the booklet that they gave you and make sure I knew everything. I was a little stressed about that because I didn’t want to mess this up,” says Brann.

In 2014, the average application took about five months to go through the naturalization process. Now it takes almost twice that. In the past four years, the number of pending applications has more than doubled from 312,027 in September to 753,352 in March 2018, with an increase from September 2016 to March 2017, when President Trump came into the office, according to the USCIS.

There has been a growing wait to become a U.S. citizen in the United States currently. “The application process was tedious. It's a lot of paperwork. Obviously, I'm sending things in, which made it tedious, but not necessarily hard,” says Brann.

Jan Ting, professor of law for Temple University believes that the immigration process isn’t difficult under the new presidency.

“The laws are the same now as they were ten years ago. From that point of view, it's not necessarily getting harder. What is making immigration harder is a demand,” says Ting.

He claims that more people want to immigrate to the United States than ever before. Also, the United States not only takes more legal immigrants every year, but takes them more than any other country.

“The USCIS gives out more green cards for permanent residence in the United States than all the rest of the nations of the world combined,” says Ting.

Each year, the USCIS receives and processes about 6 million immigration applications from individuals and employers, according to the U.S. Immigration, which is a website that provides general information about immigration matters.

Most applicants request one of the following, such as permission to permanently live in the U.S., permission to temporarily work in the U.S., or naturalization as a U.S. citizen. Lawful permanent residents (LPR or "green card holders") have permission to live and work anywhere in the U.S. permanently, and they can attend public schools and own property. In 2017, the U.S. issued green cards to nearly 1 million applicants, according to USCIS.

“The only problem is we give out a million green cards every year, and the problem is that there are more than a million people that want to come into the United States, like 20 times. We're willing to give off a million applications, but they're like 20 million people that want to come into the United States. So that's the problem,” says Ting.

As more people want to come to the United States, it becomes tough for USCIS to accept many applications for people to come to the United States and even get their citizenship.

Ting stated that immigration is controversial, the views of the American people are very divided on that topic; therefore, we have a system in place for resolving these disagreements, which is called the Congress.

Fifty-three percent of the U.S. citizens believe that immigrants coming to the United States make American society better in the long run. However, 14 percent believe that immigrants coming to the U.S. make the American society worse. Compared to those people, who think immigrants will make things worse, 24 percent feel that immigrants don’t have much effect in the American society; while 5 percent are not sure, according to the CBS News Poll.

Even though, more people favor immigrants living in the United States, according to surveys. They still elect Congress, who wants to keep a limit of immigrants from coming to the United States.

“We elect Congress to make the rules. If we don't like the rules, then elect different people for Congress. If we want 20 million people coming in every year, we just have to elect new representatives that agree with that or if we think a million is enough, then we can just keep reelecting the same people, who agree with that process,” says Ting.

Ting claims that the enforcing immigration is part of the Congress job and some laws support Congress from enforcing immigration that hasn’t been previously done in the last administration; therefore, they are more enforcement now than they are before.

However, Eli Gabay, litigation attorney for Solomon, Sherman & Gabay stated the United States need to change their immigration system. He believes there is less alacrity to accept some immigrants more than other and immigration services in more selective with their approval.

He agrees that in some ways the golden doors to the United States have to be monitored in a manner, which allows the law to be carried out humanely.

However, he doesn’t believe the U.S. doors for immigrants shouldn’t be closed xenophobic matter. “To close the door and the xenophobic manner, to declare an immigrant a problem, and a dilemma; and to downgrade them as second class, third class or further citizens and individuals who can be taken advantage because of their immigration status is a travesty,” says Gabby.

He believes that the founders of the country have envisioned laws that were being developed for immigrants to be different from what they are setting up to be now.

“We are a nation built upon immigrants, and we help them immigrant. Every one of us who was an American comes from an immigrant family. Also, yet we forget that today in our treatment of immigrants,” says Gabby.

Gabby stated, there was a law that was instituted several years ago, which said that anyone who was over ten years in the United States with a good record could automatically apply for adjusted legal status, but not anymore. Not it only takes five years to do it, and if they don’t apply for a neutralization status in then, they have to leave or get deported.

He believes it unfair that people can’t get legal status when they have paid taxes and have a family in the United States.

“It is ridiculous to think that we can deport those people, so we should clean the slate and allow people who are over ten years in the United States to simply remain in the United States lawfully. We need to eliminate their fears and to create a happier society, Safer Society for all of us,” says Gabby.