Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States 

BACKGROUND

NOTE: Before beginning my presentation, I want to acknowledge that Unauthorized Immigrants in the US consists of peoples from all over the world. However, I will focus on immigrants from Mexico and Central America in this presentation. 

With the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump in 2016, the issue of illegal immigration became a hot-topic in American political culture. Given the vilification that this group faced as a result of the rhetoric surrounding their lives, the human element of their struggles before migrating and while still living in the United States is lost, in favor of more objective arguments over their legality and their "necessary removal". Here we will review some statistics over the reasons why illegal immigration has increased over the years and browse through data that represents their lives in the United States. 

Homicide and Gang Related Violence 

Compared to the United States, Mexico and Central America suffers from extreme counts of homicides / gang-related murders that are comparable to that of war casualty numbers. Despite not being on active, official wars, these countries have been participants in an ongoing, US-backed "War on Drugs" that results in heavy losses of civilian lives.  Although the majority of drug consumers from this Latin American drug market are United States citizens, Latin American innocent people pay the cost of government-sponsored counter-terrorism programs with their lives, becoming casualties in gang-organized retaliatory terrorism and brutalism. Because these homicides are "too common", first and second-hand victims of these are crimes are often overlooked when they apply for refugee VISAS. 

Poverty and Economic Inequality 

Another significant reason why Mexicans and Central Americans are fleeing from their countries and entering the United States are because their countries rank among the most poverty-stricken and economically unjust countries in the Western Hemisphere. Despite their countries being in agreements and accords like NAFTA that promise to trade their natural goods and cheap labor for justifiable capital reimbursement and investment, large percentages of the population live below the poverty line and their social mobility has been frozen from years. Having thus to compete with US consumers and tourists in the international market for goods and services at the price of the American standard, workers, hopeful home-owners, and middle-class families are virtually incapable of advancing their careers, their savings, or their prospects for the future. 

• Mexico and El Salvador are the countries that produce the largest proportion of the Unauthorized Immigrants that come into the US.  

Unauthorized Immigrants Inside the United States 

The number of unauthorized immigrants that come into the United States continues to rise, and is projected to continue growing despite efforts from the American Political Apparatus to put a hold on the influx of these immigrants. According to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) which governs U.S. Immigration Policy, the US government is allowed to only grant up to 675,000 permanent immigrant VISAS each year across various visa categories. 

In 2023 alone, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended over 2.2 million immigrants attempting to cross the border. 

Unauthorized Immigrants: How do they do in the US? 

We will now be looking at some metrics between both Unauthorized Immigrants and US Citizens on their Education Levels, Incomes, Access to Medical Insurance, and Home-Ownership to compare the quality of lives that this group has once already inside the United States. 

Education

Nearly half of Unauthorized Immigrants stop their education upon finishing High School, that is, if they graduate and receive their diploma. This is notable compared to the 'more than half' number of US Citizens who graduate from High School and continue their education.

Family Income 

There are 3x more Unauthorized Immigrants than US Citizens under the category of VERY POOR - equivalent to an individual earning less than $7,500 per year.

Conclusion

Unauthorized Immigrants make up around 4.5% of the US population and are here to stay, considering the millions of immigrants that flood the border, following a precedented pattern of an ever-increasing number of immigrants that come into the country from the South despite government efforts to thwart their entrance and government-imposed caps on VISAs. These immigrants flee from violence, murders, drug-affiliated gang conflicts, stagnant wages, political unrest, and social inequality which match those of the most war-torn countries across the globe, and their poor living conditions and position "at the bottom of society" continue even after entering the US. They are faced with juxtaposed sentiments of intense hatred, as with the state of demagogue-conservatism in the US, and protection, given some US states' sanctuary policies which avow to uphold their human rights.